Moving Alpha Lights¶

The original game includes a little-known flag that allows all ObjectTypes (anything placeable on the map - Projectiles, Trees, Overlays, Smudges (not the IsometricTileTypes), Aircraft, Infantry, Vehicles and Buildings) to have a lighting effect displayed on them. [ObjectType]â–ºAlphaImage=ALPHATST instructs the game to display ALPHATST.shp on the object as a lighting effect. The SHP must be saved without any compression (just like mouse.sha).

Ares adds the following improvements to this feature:

  • The lighting effect will follow the object around as it moves, rather than staying where the object was created.
  • The effect will be inactive when a unit is cloaked, disguised as a terrain object or moving below the surface.
  • If the SHP has multiple frames then it is interpreted as a multi-facing image, and the largest N frames in the image are used as facing-specific versions (in this case, N is the largest power of 2 that is less than or equal to the number of frames in the SHP, e.g. 2/4/8/16/32/64...). This is supported only for TechnoTypes.

Note

Alpha Lights on moving objects are a potential source of lag.

Note

Only TechnoTypes are fully supported. Animations are supported since Ares 0.5.

New in version 0.1.

Changed in version 0.5.