[Question] Cloaking using shaders

[outlandishmango]

hi everyone  :)

 

wondering if it could be done with the same shader that is responsible for the shields, now i am no good at shaders( I have tried and failed many time), but this is me trying again lol.

 

not sure if or how it can be done as i am only just learning LUA and also as i said not good at coding shaders (YET),

but me and a friend was talking about how the shield shimmer every now and then looked a bit like the cloaking effect from a romulan ship and that sparked a long debate on weather it would work or not.

 

So to the Question

[*]

Is it possible to edit the shader file/s to work with a key press to cloak/uncloak the players ship

 

[*]Would it cause to much lag as the player moves under cloak

 

[*]Would it need to be only server side so that other players who don't have the cloaking Module cant see your ship (like it was in Freelancer)

 

now i know that the devs are thinking of putting a cloaking device into the game sometime in the future but would be nice to help out and see if we can make a stable one that might get the devs eye (high hopes ) :)

 

i would love to hear everyones opinion on it and see if we can get one that works and then put it up here as a community built mod.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                     

 

I have one mod to my name and that one is based off of Sether0 mod Universal System.

 

Universal System

Sether0 Mod :- http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,3214.0.html

 

Another Universal Module

MY mod :- http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,3412.0.html

[Feather]

1- Shaders are accessible as some mod exist to make shields less "I'm blue-dabadi-dabada"

 

2- Imo not much more (maybe less) than a player with shieldBRAAWWWWMMMMMMBL

 

3- I sadly don't think so, not using the shaders at least (which are managed client-side only). BUT I think you can call the server to send to the client something telling "stop rendering that because it's dead/just teleported away", when you're actually just cloaked, or something like that, and have that linked to a function of your module, which could be forged to actually be displayed as a weapon (so you can bind it without GUI and API madness).

Then, once that's done, simply add a cooldown by binding to it an equivalent of overheating (double overheating in fact, an overheating for the time cloaked, an other for the cooldown), and firing any other weapons actually instant overheat it and put you back under cooldown.

 

Here's the logic, I know how to code that, but my laziness actually overlap on multiple sectors.

Have fun :D