With the new terrains being created, with custom texture files, seeing tanks against the background may become next to impossible. As an example, I saw a desert terrain texture map that would render the Panzer and the Osty invisible, or nearly so. What's the answer? Rooster-tails, i.e. the dust cloud kicked up by moving tracks on all but the wettest ground.
My proposal is this: The dark tan dust trail would only show up if the vehicle was moving...otherwise it dissipates rapidly. I may be mistaken (happened once before, when I thought I'd made a mistake, but hadn't), but this should be a snap to implement. We already display graphically oil leaks and such for aircraft; this would use the same rendering, but with a different color. This causes little to no framerate hit now, and the only trick would be to allow it to start and stop when ever the vehicle did. Plus the panoramic view of massed vehicles trundling over the land trailing long fingers of dust behind would look soooooo cool! How about it, HTC? This ought to be so easy (heard that before, haven't you
), it could be implemented in the next little patch.
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Sabre, a.k.a. Rojo
(S-2, The Buccaneers)
[This message has been edited by Rojo (edited 10-16-2000).]
