New Feature: "Glow" textures

[Mattn]

i don't think that everything should glow - e.g. who would take a medikit into a battle that is given the position of the solider because it's glowing?

[MCR]

Medikit glow will be deleted  !

[Mattn]

all i wanted to say is "just because you can .... you maybe should not in every case "

[MCR]

I know, Mattn. If you believe it or not. 
Now that I know how I can control this glow almost perfectly from the texture side my experiments are beginning to get professional
You can add so much to those textures if you make just some leds (pixels) glow...

[MCR]

I also reduced the glow from the particle beam & plasma weapons already in trunk (thanx BTAxis for the cutouts) to make the glow more detailed & subtle there...
I hope this is okay for you BTAxis... 

[docwild]

A glowing gun ought to increase the chances of being hit from a distance. They look very nice, I just don't think anyone would ever build a tactical weapon like that. The army does whatever it can to eliminate muzzle-flash, for instance. Being aliens though, maybe they haven't read Sun Tsu's Art Of War and all the old tricks are new again. Maybe that's the way to beat them, we could build a giant wooden rabbit...

[MCR]

A pk3 patch for the weapons has been sent to Sourceforge.

I hope you all like the new, upgraded weapons like I do, although they might not be 'realistic' whatever that may mean in a game with plasma blasters, laser pistols, particle beam cannons, U.F.O.s & aliens  ...

Here are the raw & unedited cut-outs (maybe incomplete) in xcf file format, if someone wants to play around with them... :

http://www.mediafire.com/?yiienjyjm4h

http://www.mediafire.com/file/yiienjyjm4h/WeaponsGlowmapsXCFSource.7z

(doublechecked, should work...)

[Hertzila]

MCR, can you make the glowmaps that are along the barrel/muzzle flare brightly when the weapon is fired? Since, if following my heat radiator explanation, those glowy parts on plasma and particle weaponry that are along the barrel would glow because they are working to prevent the meltdown of the weapon. So, when fired, they would do extra work when they try to remove the heat from the discharge.
Think of it as an alien version of muzzle flash.

Being aliens though, maybe they haven't read Sun Tsu's Art Of War and all the old tricks are new again.

I doubt they have read any of their own warfare books either, if they have even written any. Maybe that's why we humans are beating them.

[Legendman3]

Maybe that's the way to beat them, we could build a giant wooden rabbit...

XD good one dude lets do it

[Mattn]

i've reworked some parts of the glow management, looks like i broke the material glow with it, but at least it's no longer glowing everything now, the mesh glow looks fine now on my hardware, geoscape, too.... feedback is welcome. are you getting brush glows?

[arisian]

I'm getting some brushes that glow and some that don't in the latest version, though you and I have been messing with a lot of the same stuff in our parallel efforts to fix the same problems, so I'm not confident that the issue isn't on my end.  Out of curiosity, what did the issue turn out to be?  That way I can be aware of it in the future.

[Mattn]

some state related bugs, some stuff wasn't deactivated properly - that's why i was trying to put it into one function. but it looks like i still didn't fix it in a clean way for the material system. will try after your patch from the tracker (shader merge) to fix that issue, too. (i you aren't faster )

[MCR]

Upgraded Firebird dropship:

[MCR]

MCR, can you make the glowmaps that are along the barrel/muzzle flare brightly when the weapon is fired?

No (not yet).

[MCR]

@Mattn:
The reduced glow looks better because it prevents flickering when moving the camera... 

But imho it could be a little bit stronger...
Don't worry about the strong glowing UFOs - I am working on v3 of this...