Re: Ship Invisibility
 

The ship wouldn't be invisible for players, either. You'd still see a red triangle around it, wouldn't you?

And I wouldn't be surprised if the game crashed the first time a weapon tried to target the alphaless ship.

Re: Ship Invisibility
 

Well, the game wouldn't crash... But it'd be impossible for projectiles/beams to collide with the ship so you could never destroy it (unless you knock down its shields and finish off the hitpoints with the same hit). Black parts in the alpha channel are merely non-solid, not "invisible" if there's something in the RGB channels there... Non-zero RGB with zero Alpha gives you the transparent glowing effect used for the ship lights and Kawangi reactor glow.

This would allow you to create an insubstantial / indestructable "ghost ship" which could be really interesting http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif (I think it'd only be destroyed by the bomb or a nova if you don't give it a shield)

Re: Ship Invisibility
 

I tried it, and the results were strange. Instead of being invisible, it came out as loads of black lines. Whether it could be destroyed or not remains to be seen.

But yeah it'll raise up too much problems so I'll just equip them with cloaking devices, make them shadowy, and then we'll have as close to invisible as possible.

Since the race I'm making these for are called Phantoms, maybe I could make a ship called the Phantom Menace. ; - )

Re: Ship Invisibility
 

As a variant of this, I've tried to make "invisible mines" by referring to a non-existent image for the particle. BIIIIG mistake - this brings the engine to its knees in terms of FPS.

Re: Ship Invisibility
 

If you want an invisible projectile, just don't put in a sprite entry (SPRI). There's no need to "draw something invisible".

Re: Ship Invisibility
 

Alright. I've decided to have three different ships for the Phantoms, two would be just standard ships but with cloaking devices, and the third one would be a special event ship which would be indestructable. I could make this "ghost" ship appear only in a Kawangi-type event.

I'm happy with that idea.

Re: Ship Invisibility
 

Just an announcement to all:

I should be releasing my mod in a few months. I originally was thinking February next year, but now I'm thinking more like late November this year for a beta, and the full version (fixing any bugs you guys find, and just generally improving it) around May 2008.

While I probably should call this one something like "Weird Races," as it's got dozens of them, I've decided to call it Peculiar Planets, partly because it sounds much better, and also it's not just more races, I've got plenty of new quests and a few more weapons, too.

Watch out for it!