Let there be more lights!

[DCoder]

So, it's been a while since we've had an update, eh. Well, even without the update posts, things have been happening behind the scenes, trust me or just look at the changelog or the roadmap to see what's been going on.

Ares is not dead, damnit!

When pd wrote the original RP, he was still in high school, meaning lots of free time.
When VK started NPatch, he did not have a job, which also meant free time.
When pd started RP2, and later Syringe/Ares, he was also unemployed, with, you guessed it, free time.
When I started helping out with Ares, I had no job though I was already interviewing, so I had a limited amount of free time, which lead to me spending as much of it on Ares as possible, and implementing lots of things.
When VK got a job, his free time dwindled, reducing his NPatch activity.
When pd got a job, his free time dropped as well, and his interest shifted to UT2k4, leaving Syringe and Ares as they are.
When I got a job, my free time also waned, which is why Ares doesn't display that many signs of life recently (which is not exactly true, btw, I've been working on it and other useful DLLs quietly, you'll see soon enough).

So when you complain that Ares is not as feature-rich as NPatch, you are basically saying that I, spending an hour a day on it, should be able to do as good a job as VK did while spending about four hours a day (I'm just guessing here).

Eye candy
But enough talking! With a title like that you're probably expecting some visuals. Ta-da!



That, my friends, is an RGB-composite spotlight. Now spotlights work again, and colour composites can be toggled the same way as a Combat Light's:

Code:

[Building]
HasSpotlight=yes
Spotlight.DisableRed=;y/n - defaults to n
Spotlight.DisableGreen=;y/n - defaults to n
Spotlight.DisableBlue=;y/n - defaults to n
Spotlight.IsInverted=;y/n - defaults to n , if set, it draws blackish, like the ones from the two Power Plants in the image. Color composition in this mode is not supported.

(In order: GAPILL - Blue, NALASR - Blue, TESLA - Green, ATESLA - Red, GAPOWR - Blackish).

Noticably there are quirks with the starting beam position, I hope to have those ironed out in time... The falling beam itself is also hard to see in a static pic, but it looks better ingame.

This color-switching functionality is present in the original YR 1.001 code, I'm just hooking it up to INI flags for now. I'll work on making it better.

[Beowulf]

That's... interesting... I was hoping for better alpha lighting when I saw the thread title though.

[Marshall]

Awesomeness!

[mt.]

Spotlights! nice

[Tempest]

kewl..

[MRMIdAS]

Those dark lights would take a while to get used to, I'd keep bricking myself because there's "floaters in my base"

[~Guest~]

the main question is, how big are Ares going to be before release

[DCoder]

So far, Syringe.exe is 114 kb, Ares.dll is 287 kb and Ares.dll.inj is 11 kb.

[~Guest~]

well, I didnt ment how many kb, I meant feature-size(my bad)

[mt.]

well, I didnt ment how many kb, I meant feature-size(my bad)

http://bugs.renegadeprojects.com/roadmap_page.php

[AprilWar]

So if it is HasSpotlight=true
we will get the predefined values and if it's set it to
'yes'
we can use the new feature? KOOOOL

[DCoder]

Uh, no. You set it to true or yes (no difference at all) to get the spotlight. Then you set or omit the DisableXXX flags to tune its color. Voila.