Since you said I can provide the final answer, here it is:
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Sorry everyone, I've been on vacation for a few days and was unable to check the forums during that time. I have seen the thread and checked the death damages. Yes, I admit that I have made a simple mistake with the death damage values. Now that that's cleared up, here's why:
When I made the custom experimental explosions I thought that the single death damage being dealt at the start didn't fit with the subsequent explosions happening on the unit. So, I decided to space it out along the subsequent explosions, so it would fit more, but I did NOT intentionally increase the total damage being dealt.
If I recall correctly, I've pre-defined 3 types of damage to be done during the subsequent explosions in the blueprint and then from there I call it with the unit's .lua script: small, medium, and large explosion death damage. Now, I thought I fine tuned that to amount to the same total damage as the normal death explosion. But then when I added or removed certain subsequent explosions during the development process, I probably forgot to re-calculate the total damage at one point (I had to do this for each subsequent explosion removed or added), so it ended up being more.
As far as other comments go:
Is adding goofy effects to the game really a primary concern of the community? What about fixing all the connection and desync issues, expanding the player base, tightening balance or improving hardware lag? There's a lot of gifted people here that would like to make faf better. I feel like your talents might be better utilized in other areas.
I don't see the allure of rks_explosions. I want to know what it is people like (or dislike) about the mod.
In particular, do you really find the normal explosions inadequate? Do you feel that this is a more relevant concern than the aforementioned problem areas of FA? Do you really find these added effects aesthetically pleasing and if so, how old are you?
Well, I am only a 1500-1600 rated player. I do not have nearly enough experience nor knowledge to healthily contribute to the game's balance. I also do not know enough to contribute something more than what has already been worked (and IS being worked) on as far as the other issues go (desync/conn issues, and I actually don't know what you mean by "hardware lag", if you mean CPU utilization (sim speed optimizations) we can't do a lot there without the source code.).
So I decided to simply work on something that I am both decently good at and that doesn't require deep game mechanics knowledge or anything like that. I personally found the default explosions quite bland and unappealing, so I decided to work on this mod. As it was said, it is still a MOD. Nobody forces anyone to play with it, I simply made the mod for myself and others who think the game is lacking in the visual aspect. And yes, I also did this to increase the playerbase, one aspect that was also mentioned. I cannot say for sure whether more people like it than dislike it, but one of the MAIN reasons I started work on this is to make the game look more appealing in casts. And casts, I think I can safely say, are bringing the most people into this. So yes, I am indirectly working on that aswell.
As for the other flame arguments: Sheeo has only been (actively) working on the mod for a few weeks, and the visual changes to the experimental deaths have been done before that, so he had nothing to do with this cock-up. It is entirely my fault that it has slipped by, and I apologize, but I do ask for at least some tolerance for error. This was up to this point a one-man job and in just a few months 95% of FA's unit deaths have been changed. It is quite a lot of work so it is entirely possible for tiny mistakes like this to slip by. You might consider it a big mistake, but trust me when I say (and modders will back me up on this), compared to the amount of other things that could (and did, during the development, luckily I caught most of them) go wrong, this is pretty small.
That being said, this mod is still in development and is only about 40% done in acheiving what I want with it. Most of the effects you see could pretty much be considered placeholders.
So, to summarize, I would like to, first of all, thank the person who spotted this, and it will be fixed in the next version. I would also like a bit more tolerance towards not just me, but all modders, when tiny mistakes like this happen. They happened, are still happening, and will happen with every mod, and even major game patch! Even FAF patches sometimes had bugs or errors that required a hotfix, so it is, if I may say so, unrealistic to expect a spotless development cycle for anything, be it a (featured) mod, (community) patch or even an AAA game.
And second of all, yes, we are working on a way to make the explosions optional. But due to the way particle emission works in FA this is really difficult, if not impossible. Particle emission is simulated aswell, so you are technically changing the simulation if you emit for one person and not for the other. But nevertheless, we are working on finding, if all else fails, a work-around. Not all hope is lost
And third of all, thanks to everyone for the support for the mod, and yes, even to people that spot mistakes like this and don't like the mod. Your feedback is, in turn, making the mod better. Even if you don't like the mod, that's fine. The feedback from people that don't really like in it's current form it is actually better most of the time. You don't need to use it, but I'm always open to suggestions as to how to change them to better suit a wider audience, even people that do not like them right now. A lot of people that didn't like the previous versions actually like the current version... As long as it's not a flame war, many things can be achieved.
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That's it. Quite lengthy but it needs to be to correctly answer all the fuss that came from this. Thanks for letting me post an answer to this.
Statistics: Posted by BRNKoINSANITY — 07 Jul 2014, 18:01
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