Spearhead 1944 Scenario Effects

The effect objects added by Spearhead 1944 allow scenario creators to add special effects, such as fire, sounds, smoke and light effects, to there scenarios without the need of scripting.

Ambient Light Effects

Light 100 m Illumination

Creates a light source with a slightly concentrated light source.

Light 300 m Illumination

Creates a light source, illumination is uniform within 300 m, useful when you want to have visibility during night time.

Artillery Ground Lights

Simulates light casted by distant explosions. Can be used either to create the atmosphere of a battle or as a way to illuminate the area around the player from time to time.

Artillery Sky Lights

Simulates the light of explosions reflected by clouds or particles in the air.

Ambient Misc Effects

Ground Fog linked to player

Creates fog out of particles around the player, in principle to be used in conjunction with vanilla fog for a more dramatic effect.

Low Fog

Creates rectangular patches of fog, to be placed over puddles, lakes, river beds etc. It can be rotated to fit the area better.

Night Clouds linked to Player

Simulates night clouds during night time made out of particles. Useful when you want to benefit from the lighting of a full moon without using vanilla overcast and still have clouds.

Ambient Sound Effects

Big Fire Burning Sound

Creates a sound source of a burning place.

Binaural Battle Sounds

Plays sounds of distant explosions and shots straight into the headset using binaural sounds. Useful when you want to create a battle environment.

Fire Effects

Big Fire

Creates a relatively big fire, with its own light source and sound. Does damage to players and AI.

Fire Burst

Creates a fire, with its own light source and sound. Does not do damage and its direction can be tweaked by rotating the object.

Line of Fire

Generates a 1 meter line of fire effect. Does not have its own light or sound source, does not do damage. Its direction can be tweaked by rotating the object.

Roof Fire

Creates fire effect which sticks to the highest point in the vicinity either is a roof or floor. Does not have its own light source, though it has a sound and it does not do damage.

Small Area Fire

Creates a fire effect covering a small area on ground, it has no light source of its own and does not do damage.

Small Flame

Creates a fire effect in a column. Does not have its own light source, it has a burning sound and does not do damage.

Small East-West Flame

Creates a 1 meter line of fire on the east-west axis, it has a sound, the orientation of the effect/object is not tweakable as for the line of fire effect from above.

Small North-South Flame

Same effect as above only that is generated on north-south axis.

Smog Big

Creates a plume of smoke above an area.

Smog Night

Creates a smoke effect which is visible during night time and simulates distant fires or smoking area. Does not have a light or sound source.

Smoke Medium

Creates a smoke effect, when you want to make a fire more “smoky”, it has no sound or a light source of its own.

Wreck Fire

Creates the wreck on fire effect, uses less particles than vanilla one, it has some randomization built in so the same effect may differ in appearance when used more times. It does damage to units and it has a light and sound source.

Technical Description

All visual special effects are executed on the client side of our game hosting system. Currently we don’t have SFX executed on the server. They are not synchronized across clients per se but they behave like they are (with some delays which should not impact gameplay). If it is needed we can have scripts executed on the server and synchronized.

Visual appearance of the special effects in Eden Editor will be different most of the time from what you see in the mission. That is why you should inspect them while running the mission to see the final outcome. In Eden Editor, for example, you might notice lights flickering when placing objects that have a light source. Also, some sounds might be muted, with the exception of the SFX objects which are sounds only.

SFX objects are dependent on player distance to those objects, so make sure your character is close enough to see the SFX in action. The “activation” distance may differ in the future but for now, most object’s triggering distance is set to style="text-align:right;" | 500 m meters.

There are a series of objects that will not be executed in Eden Editor because they are not dependent on distance to the player or position on the map, and this will save performance. Also these objects can be placed anywhere on the map. You only need to place one to get the desired effect. Any additional object of those types will be auto-deleted.

So far in this list of objects we have:

• night_clouds
• fog_around_player
• artillery_sky_lights
• artillery_ground_lights
• binaural_battle_sounds

ⓘ

• All objects can be created using createVehicle command and deleted using deleteVehicle.
• All objects are available for Zeus.

Some effects depend visually on the direction of the object set in Eden Editor, e.g. fire burst. Some effects are calibrated for usage during night time, usually the name of the object will provide a hint, e.g. Smog Night. Not all fire SFX have a light source or a burning sound. For saving performance you can use only one light source and/or one sound source in case you have a group of fire effects in a relatively small area. (Sound source can be found in assets under SPE effects in Eden Editor as objects)

Related Functions

The following functions handle the SFX objects.

SPE_fnc_initObjectFX	\WW2\SPE_Core_f\FX_ParticleEffects_f\FX_System\fn_initObjectFX.sqf
SPE_fnc_isObjectFXActiv	\WW2\SPE_Core_f\FX_ParticleEffects_f\FX_System\fn_isObjectFXActiv.sqf
SPE_fnc_ObjectFXHandler	\WW2\SPE_Core_f\FX_ParticleEffects_f\FX_System\fn_ObjectFXHandler.sqf
SPE_fnc_setObjectFX	\WW2\SPE_Core_f\FX_ParticleEffects_f\FX_System\fn_setObjectFX.sqf

SFX Entities in Eden Editor

Display Name	Class Name	Activation Distance	Multiple allowed	Direction has Effect
Small Column Flame	Land_SPE_FX_small_flame_01	200 m
Small East-West flame	Land_SPE_FX_East_West_Flames	200 m
Small North-South flame	Land_SPE_FX_North_South_Flames	200 m
Small Area Fire	Land_SPE_FX_Area_Fire	200 m
Roof Fire	Land_SPE_FX_Roof_Fire	200 m
Smoke Medium	Land_SPE_FX_Smoke_Medium	500 m
Fire Burst	Land_SPE_FX_Fire_Burst	200 m
Smog Big	Land_SPE_FX_Smog_Big	2000 m
Smog Night	Land_SPE_FX_Smog_Night	2000 m
Big Fire	Land_SPE_FX_Big_Fire	500 m
Small Flame	Land_SPE_FX_small_flame_02	200 m
Light 100 m Illumination	Land_SPE_FX_light_100	500 m
Light 300 m Illumination	Land_SPE_FX_light_300	500 m
Big Fire Burning Sound	Land_SPE_FX_burning_sound_big	200 m
Night Clouds linked to Player	Land_SPE_FX_night_clouds	20000 m
Artillery Sky Lights	Land_SPE_FX_artillery_sky_lights	20000 m
Artillery Ground Lights	Land_SPE_FX_artillery_ground_lights	550 m
Binaural Battle Sounds	Land_SPE_FX_binaural_battle_sounds	20000 m
Low Fog	Land_SPE_FX_low_fog	2000 m
Ground Fog linked to Player	Land_SPE_FX_player_fog	20000 m
Line of Fire	Land_SPE_FX_line_of_fire	1000 m
Wreck Fire	Land_SPE_FX_wreck_fire	200 m

Eden Editor Attributes

The following attribute can be used to turn off all effects without the need to remove carefully placed objects from the scenario.

Eden Editor >> Attributes >> General... >> [SPE] Effects >> Enable Objects Effects

In order to only turn off a specific effect use the attribute found in the object specific attributes.