Splash Damage 3.x script (now with more explosions) - Version 3.4 - Now with.. more stuff

[Mistermann]

@stevey666 - you're doing an awesome job advancing this script!  Thanks for picking it up and not only improving it, but adding some nice additional features around eye candy.

I have a small request - degrading smoke effects over time.

This isn't likely for everyone, but something I'd like you to consider via configurations if possible.

Example
Initial Target hit and explosion = Medium Smoke & Fire (don't recall the numeric for this)
2 minutes later the effect turns into Small Smoke & Fire
2 minutes later the effect turns into Medium Smoke
2 minutes later the effect turns into Small Smoke which remains on indefinitely

Lots of configurable options here, I suppose.  Your call on the progression of where to start and how to degrade.  Thanks for considering.

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

Any chance of a mushroom cloud? Not necessary nuclear though.

[Kurdes]

1 hour ago, Mistermann said:

@stevey666 - you're doing an awesome job advancing this script!  Thanks for picking it up and not only improving it, but adding some nice additional features around eye candy.

I have a small request - degrading smoke effects over time.

This isn't likely for everyone, but something I'd like you to consider via configurations if possible.

Example
Initial Target hit and explosion = Medium Smoke & Fire (don't recall the numeric for this)
2 minutes later the effect turns into Small Smoke & Fire
2 minutes later the effect turns into Medium Smoke
2 minutes later the effect turns into Small Smoke which remains on indefinitely

Lots of configurable options here, I suppose.  Your call on the progression of where to start and how to degrade.  Thanks for considering.

Problem with this is, that even the small smoke is a little bit to big for a vehicle and is overlapping with the original effect. I've settled with smoke size 5, as this is the most matching with the original effects. Also i'm using my smoke mod in addition, but it has a hardcoded time by ED and dissapears after 7 minutes.

[stevey666]

2 hours ago, Mistermann said:

@stevey666 - you're doing an awesome job advancing this script!  Thanks for picking it up and not only improving it, but adding some nice additional features around eye candy.

I have a small request - degrading smoke effects over time.

This isn't likely for everyone, but something I'd like you to consider via configurations if possible.

Example
Initial Target hit and explosion = Medium Smoke & Fire (don't recall the numeric for this)
2 minutes later the effect turns into Small Smoke & Fire
2 minutes later the effect turns into Medium Smoke
2 minutes later the effect turns into Small Smoke which remains on indefinitely

Lots of configurable options here, I suppose.  Your call on the progression of where to start and how to degrade.  Thanks for considering.

Thanks! Something like this is relatively easy to implement, though you get issues with effects overlapping as Kurdes has said.
These are the 8 bigsmoke sizes. 

 

The script uses 6 (medium smoke) for allvehiclescookoff by default.  The small fire+smoke(1)/smoke(5) are slightly bigger than the default vehicle burn off (when testing with IFV).

I've recorded a test video for triggering it on one vehicle compared to base dcs, small fire(1) and medium smoke (6) triggered at the same time, small fire effect is later removed, small smoke (5) triggered and medium smoke removed. After some time the small smoke is removed and then I've fast forwarded til both are put out.   At the end of the video Ive showed what it looks like if the small smoke is kept around indefinitely.   In the vid I also move around a little so you can see the clipping of smoke/fire.  The clipping issue is significantly worse if you try to put a small smoke onto a small fire.

Let me know what you think and I can add it in

1 hour ago, VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants said:

Any chance of a mushroom cloud? Not necessary nuclear though.

What kind of size are you thinking?  I have something similar at the moment with the vehicle IEDs which ended up a little mushroomy, and we have a giant explosion option as well.  With the effects the way they are I've not been able to get a giant rising cloud since I'm doing everything with triggered explosions

 

Edited June 16 by stevey666

[Mistermann]

Yeah, in my Into The Jungle mission, I remove the previous effect, then apply the new one so there's no overlap.

Stevie, I doubt you need a code sample of how I did it.  Happy to provide if you want.

Maybe that approach helps?

Edited June 16 by Mistermann
Better explanation

[stevey666]

1 hour ago, Mistermann said:

Yeah, in my Into The Jungle mission, I remove the previous effect, then apply the new one so there's no overlap.

Stevie, I doubt you need a code sample of how I did it.  Happy to provide if you want.

Maybe that approach helps?

When you say the previous effect, do you mean the additional bigsmokes? Or the DCS vehicle fires? The overlapping I'm referring to here is the original DCS vehicle fire/smoke getting covered or clipping with the bigsmoke effect - which also varies on zoom levels, we also get the same kinda stuff with multiple bigsmokes if we don't use them smartly 

Thats the base dcs fire/smoke clipping with medium fire bigsmoke effect

Having both bigsmoke fire 1 and smoke 5 gets us a nice flame and a nice bit of smoke, which some hiding of the smoke when we zoom out.  the medium flame is just crazily big imo though, is that what you'd want in your missions still?

Edited June 16 by stevey666

[Mistermann]

My misunderstanding, Stevie.  Thanks for looking into it.

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

4 hours ago, stevey666 said:

What kind of size are you thinking?  I have something similar at the moment with the vehicle IEDs which ended up a little mushroomy, and we have a giant explosion option as well.  With the effects the way they are I've not been able to get a giant rising cloud since I'm doing everything with triggered explosions

 

This is kinda what I am thinking,  I really like this kind of explosion, and allow me, to a certain extent, for a tactical device. 

[stevey666]

5 hours ago, VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants said:

nd allow me, to a certain extent, for a tactical device. 

Is there a particular set of weapons you want to have this?  I can create a new TacticalWeapon function to put out a small mushroomish explosion

 

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

Well, there is a little mod call F-22A Raptor Enhancement Mod, which features air launch tactical nuke, both A2A and A2G.

And a little digging later - hey! You have posted there!

 

[stevey666]

1 minute ago, VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants said:

Well, there is a little mod call F-22A Raptor Enhancement Mod, which features air launch tactical nuke, both A2A and A2G.

And a little digging later - hey! You have posted there!

 

Hah yes, unfortunately making a proper nuke feasible and good looking.  Think I binned the mod because the radar screen was bugged for me.   I'll look into making a tac nuke style cloud - will keep you posted

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

No rush here. Thanks for all the good work.

[stevey666]

12 hours ago, VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants said:

No rush here. Thanks for all the good work.

Not too difficult as i'm basically taking what I have already.  With my current knowledge of DCS this is the best I can manage and this only works because triggered explosions work differently below 1.6m vs above 1.6m.  If its above 1.6m at ground level it is a puff, if its below 1.6 it interacts with the ground and has a rising cloud effect - you can tell the stalk of the mushroom like explosion differs in colour to the rest as that's the only one above 1.6m.

Will be added to 3.4 as part of a long list of new features and options (over 10) - Tactical Explosion.  It's defaulted to be much bigger than the vehicleied explosion.

 

--

Mistermann's suggestion of a sequence of fire/smoke (Advanced sequences) is also pretty much completed.  Need to test and record a video for that too.  Eventually (and I'm not looking forward to this part) I'll need to document all the features before I can release 3.4.
 

All the latest stuff is on github here if anyone wants to use it

https://github.com/stephenpostlethwaite/DCSSplashDamageScript/blob/master/Splash_Damage_main.lua

Edited June 17 by stevey666

[Dangerzone]

Love your work.

I have a couple of questions re the gigantic explosions. 

First - I notice that the radius and height are not constants, but a fixed parameter. ie:

--Trigger the explosion
    local maxRadius = 200 * sizeScale
    local maxHeight = 500 * sizeScale
    

Before I start hacking around with the code to meet my requirements - just wondering if there's any reason that this is like this, or if it's safe for me to change these to a constant / setting at the top so these can be customised for each purpose?

Secondly - I notice that the checks appear to be done on a timer, as opposed to checking for event.hit or event.dead. My limited understanding - I would have thought that hooking the event function and checking for event.hit or event.dead and seeing if it references one of the units would be more performance friendly than doing a scan every second to see if something is hit. Please don't take this as criticism - I'm not saying this is the case, nor saying what you should be doing - I think you've done a fantastic job - this is more to query my understanding so I can learn the pro's and con's of why it was done this way - if you don't mind sharing. 

[stevey666]

25 minutes ago, Dangerzone said:

Love your work.

I have a couple of questions re the gigantic explosions. 

First - I notice that the radius and height are not constants, but a fixed parameter. ie:

--Trigger the explosion
    local maxRadius = 200 * sizeScale
    local maxHeight = 500 * sizeScale
    

Before I start hacking around with the code to meet my requirements - just wondering if there's any reason that this is like this, or if it's safe for me to change these to a constant / setting at the top so these can be customised for each purpose?

Secondly - I notice that the checks appear to be done on a timer, as opposed to checking for event.hit or event.dead. My limited understanding - I would have thought that hooking the event function and checking for event.hit or event.dead and seeing if it references one of the units would be more performance friendly than doing a scan every second to see if something is hit. Please don't take this as criticism - I'm not saying this is the case, nor saying what you should be doing - I think you've done a fantastic job - this is more to query my understanding so I can learn the pro's and con's of why it was done this way - if you don't mind sharing. 

Hey there, thanks! 

The radius and height are set like that so they can be scaled with ["giant_explosion_scale"] = 1, I probably wanted to have them set as an option in the past but was happy with what I had as a feature there - options/config keys an be added easily there though.

I made the giant explosion feature before I knew a lot about the events like hit, dead etc.  I'm relatively new, started playing DCS at the start of the year and I'm using AI to help write this (I can read code/script and I have a background in powershell, never wrote LUA before DCS - AI isn't particularly easy to work with tbh).  I'm planning on reworking it in 3.4 to trigger giant explosion from events like you say- I have a LOT of stuff working with events in 3.4. 

If you make any improvements, I can add them in if its something you'd like to share.  Feel free to reach out to me on discord if you have more questions etc

Edited June 19 by stevey666

[stevey666]

Advanced Sequencing is done for now, fixed a bug with it triggering early for moving vehicles.  Fast moving vehicles have been a bit of a problem with the script since they can exist in a weird semi dead until they stop.

Here is an example (recording from replays which - since I am using % chances - we get different cookoffs every run of the replay.

 

 

[Lekaa]

I will try adding this to the foothold missions that i have. Any typical log errors of nil or object is nil etc?

[stevey666]

48 minutes ago, Lekaa said:

I will try adding this to the foothold missions that i have. Any typical log errors of nil or object is nil etc?

Pretty much all logging is behind debug flags.  There are a number of nil and object errors in those but they "should" be behind safe calls and not pop error boxes.  3.4 is getting close to completion - just need testing and foothold scoring adding for some of the new bits like cluster weapons.

The script has many customisable options so feel free to reach out on your discord or dm me if you want to discuss the best setup for you (or any changes/reqs)

[HawaiianRyan]

With the latest build you posted last night, I'm seeing a small puff about 300 - 500 meters above ground units when they do a cookoff effect. Could also be related to ground unit explode on death logic.

Edited June 19 by HawaiianRyan

[stevey666]

1 hour ago, HawaiianRyan said:

With the latest build you posted last night, I'm seeing a small puff about 300 - 500 meters above ground units when they do a cookoff effect.

Ive seen this before and thought this was fixed, did a little testing just and some filming last night and didn't see this happen - do you have a replay where it happens or a miz where its reproducible?

 

Thanks!

 

edit:  Just saw your edit, I'm able to repro on the groundunit explode on death - will review

 

edit2: should be fixed now, thanks for letting me know

Edited June 19 by stevey666

[stevey666]

Alright I think I'm done with features now, I'm moving into a full testing and bug fixing phase.  Would appreciate any suggestions/testing on the new stuff (as per the github) if you have it, will release next week probably

Have also adjusted the strobe/beacon so it can be done via radio commands
 

 

Edited June 20 by stevey666

[Jogaredi]

Hello, @stevey666 I would like to contribute with a small modification that I made on version 2 of the script. It was to minimize the load on servers with a lot of AI, and what it does is to track only the weapons that are thrown by the players.

The code is literally two lines, and I leave it here in case you find it interesting and want to implement it in version 3.4.

["only_players_weapons"] = true, -- track only weapons launch by players

A global variable for enable/disable the functionality.

  if splash_damage_options.only_players_weapons == true and event.initiator:getPlayerName() == nil then return end

And the line to exit the function onWpnEvent and not include in the table.

In the version 2 of the script it was like this:

function onWpnEvent(event)
    if event.id == world.event.S_EVENT_SHOT then
      if event.weapon then
        local ordnance = event.weapon
        local weapon_desc = ordnance:getDesc()
        if string.find(ordnance:getTypeName(), "weapons.shells") then 
          debugMsg("event shot, but not tracking: "..ordnance:getTypeName())
          env.info("SplashDamage : event shot, but not tracking: "..ordnance:getTypeName().." ("..event.initiator:getTypeName()..")")
          return  --we wont track these types of weapons, so exit here
        end

        if explTable[ordnance:getTypeName()] then
          --trigger.action.outText(ordnance:getTypeName().." found.", 10)
        else 
          env.info("SplashDamage : "..ordnance:getTypeName().." missing from script ("..event.initiator:getTypeName()..")")
          if splash_damage_options.weapon_missing_message == true then
            trigger.action.outText("SplashDamage : "..ordnance:getTypeName().." missing from script ("..event.initiator:getTypeName()..")", 3)
            --debugMsg("desc: "..mist.utils.tableShow(weapon_desc))
          end
          return -- we wont track weapons that are not on the list
        end
       
        if (weapon_desc.category ~= 0) and event.initiator then
          if splash_damage_options.only_players_weapons == true and event.initiator:getPlayerName() == nil then return end
          if (weapon_desc.category == 1) then
            if (weapon_desc.MissileCategory ~= 1 and weapon_desc.MissileCategory ~= 2) then
              tracked_weapons[event.weapon.id_] = { wpn = ordnance, init = event.initiator:getName(), pos = ordnance:getPoint(), dir =

Just after the if (weapon_desc.category ~= 0) and event.initiator then line.

Thanks for taking the time to review, improve and test this old and much needed script.

Best regards.

[stevey666]

@Jogaredi That's an excellent addition, thanks.  I've added it in.

 

3.4 testing still underway, made a bunch of fixes to some kill feed stuff.  Need to test trophy and lekas integration now.

Edited June 26 by stevey666

[titi69]

apparently some change were made by ED, not sure how it will impact using Splash Damage 3.X on top of it

 

[SaitouJaga]

Can you tell me which version has a game menu?