Piercing, Penetrating, and Medic overlay effects

The colors and effects are difficult to distinguish, especially from a distance. If you're looking for a medic (and this applied particularly before the scoreboard update) it can be misleading as you run up to someone with a piercing weapon, and if you're used to playing as a medic it can be cofusing. I've blown up plenty of piercing flak shells in my face because of it.

From what I can see it looks like most of overlay effects are from standard texture packages like xgameshaders.utx, and some shaders in druidrpgshaders1.utx.

I went through some of the standard texture packages for candidates. Note that most of these would just be the overlay effect, not the combined effect. The environment maps would fine as replacement textures though.

I like the first one: TexEnvMap'EpicParticles.PlasmaCube.PlasmEnv1'

Are those just screenshots from unrealed? Is there a way to see what overlays look like, or do you have to make a new static mesh?

Here are a couple from back when I ran my server.

Poison: Shader'XEffectMat.goop.GoopShader'
Freezing: Combiner'WeaponSkins.Skins.BallLauncherCombiner'
Vorpal: Combiner'EpicParticles.Shaders.Combiner4'
Piercing: TexPanner'XEffectMat.Shock.ShockCoilPanner' (not very good, its just black and purple, but served its purpose of being different)

My server had vorpal and super vorpal (had higher odds, but also had a list of boss monsters it couldn't pop)
I can try and get some screenshots when I reboot later.

greg11 wrote:

I like the first one: TexEnvMap'EpicParticles.PlasmaCube.PlasmEnv1'

Are those just screenshots from unrealed? Is there a way to see what overlays look like, or do you have to make a new static mesh?

Here are a couple from back when I ran my server.

Poison: Shader'XEffectMat.goop.GoopShader'
Freezing: Combiner'WeaponSkins.Skins.BallLauncherCombiner'
Vorpal: Combiner'EpicParticles.Shaders.Combiner4'
Piercing: TexPanner'XEffectMat.Shock.ShockCoilPanner' (not very good, its just black and purple, but served its purpose of being different)

My server had vorpal and super vorpal (had higher odds, but also had a list of boss monsters it couldn't pop)
I can try and get some screenshots when I reboot later.

Plasma cube (for piercing) was also my favorite, since it's very different from the other effects. CO_shader and pSymbol_shader also look cool in action. Health cube (the effect used on heath pickups) would be a nice alternative for medic, but I'm pretty sure it is also the effect used for the "healing waters" weapons used on death warrant, so it could lead to some confusion.

I'm not exactly sure how the overlay effects work (masked self-illumination or a combiner?) but I didn't spend a lot of time investigating it. If you know the exact method, then you would just load up a weapon in the animation browser (main package is weapons.ukx) and apply it as a skin. Or make or edit a weapon class to test in-game. I just wanted to throw some ideas out. Your choices were also pretty cool, just checked them out in the editor.

greg11 wrote:

Are those just screenshots from unrealed? Is there a way to see what overlays look like, or do you have to make a new static mesh?

Those look like they're from the editor, yeah. I think it'd be good to get some in-game shots of what those look like as using a material as an overlay can be a bit different to using it as a skin.

I've also spent some time making my own slightly altered versions of the Healing weapon shader. I can post up the texture file or screenshots later if anyone wants to take a look.

Also, FWIW, I think the Piercing overlay might be better to change. Cloudy blue texture just doesn't say "Piercing" to me.

Jefe wrote:

Health cube (the effect used on heath pickups) would be a nice alternative for medic, but I'm pretty sure it is also the effect used for the "healing waters" weapons used on death warrant, so it could lead to some confusion.

The material used in DWRPG for Rejuvenating Waters weapons is the Health Vial material, it's reasonably distinct.

I found some old screenshots of the overlays. The resolution isn't that great because it was after my vid card died.

The red one looks pretty good, and is very distinct from the other red weapon effect, vampire.

I edited the title because I forgot about one other effect: Penetrating, which also is easily confused with piercing, not only in color, but also in name.

Also, FWIW, I think the Piercing overlay might be better to change. Cloudy blue texture just doesn't say "Piercing" to me.

I agree. Hopefully both piercing and penetrating will be changed.

The material used in DWRPG for Rejuvenating Waters weapons is the Health Vial material, it's reasonably distinct.

Thanks for clearing that up.

greg11 wrote:

I found some old screenshots of the overlays. The resolution isn't that great because it was after my vid card died.

I like the red one, that's nice although maybe a little garish. Slightly similar to Rage too, but I wouldn't discount it out of hand for that.

The green one would look nice with a little bit of transparency added, but I think it's an improvement over the green electrical energy used by the current poison overlay. I know for a fact that there are several other liquid slime textures that would also be good choices for poison overlay (and that's just counting the ones preexisting in 2k4).

Blue one also looks good, but the black-and-purple one is meh. There are a lot better materials just in 2k4 by default.