Modding factories and exhaust

from Sins Forums
I've been modding SINS since it hit store shelves. I have two questions that I'm sure have been answered somewhere, but I can't seem to find them on the forums.

1. Is it possible to have one capital ship factory build two ships at the same time. And I don't mean two factories on one planet. I want only one factory (will be using a custom model) that has two construction areas and acts as one entity, but builds two ships.

-I personally think it's something that is hard coded and can't be changed right now, but I'd like to know what everyone else thinks.

2. Is it possible to change the exhaust of ships so it doesn't change colors. I don't want my exhaust turning to purple or green because my player icon is purple or green. I want it to be a constant, realistic flaming exhaust. I mean, seriously, purple fire and smoke? (And please don't give me any of that technical mumbo jumbo about reactors and space stuff. I don't want purple exhaust.)

-Again, I think it's hard coded.

Any and all help is appreciated.

Thanks,
derbal213
modding
4,764 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
1. Yeah, it is hardcoded.

2. Might be possible to change it by altering pipeline shaders (GS_Exhaust.fx file in PipelineEffects folder), but so far I haven't been able to do that. Sort of difficult to make sense of a small piece of code when you don't know what half of the variables stand for...
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I've been waiting for someone to test this - is it possible that the housecolor is controlled in the data channel of the exhaust texture? If it is, should be pretty easy to remove that part.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
1. Yeah, it is hardcoded.
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Thought so. Thanks for the confirmation.

2. Might be possible to change it by altering pipeline shaders (GS_Exhaust.fx file in PipelineEffects folder), but so far I haven't been able to do that. Sort of difficult to make sense of a small piece of code when you don't know what half of the variables stand for...
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That's what I thought too, but I can't make sense of any of the GS_Exhaust file either.

I've been waiting for someone to test this - is it possible that the housecolor is controlled in the data channel of the exhaust texture? If it is, should be pretty easy to remove that part.
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No idea.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
I believe that the exhaust color is controlled outside of both the particle texture and particle system itself. Many exhausts use recycled textures, and since exhaust needs to be recolored according to faction color it wouldn't make sense to store the appropriate data in the texture itself.
As for the particle files, I tried changing the pipeline effect from GS_Exhaust to Particle_Additive (what most "normal" particles use), but there was no change.

So it is a good bet that the system is hardcoded. If the color was controlled through pipeline effects, changing that would make a difference.