Non ELS LED Lights?

[Khanage 59]

So, after playing around with F5544's police Landstalker with the Strobes mod by Kit, I noticed this little bar at the back of the roof had lights flashing on and off. I'm guessing this is because the lights on the bar are classified as indicators, so they flashed in accordance with the Strobes mod. Now, if we were to change the color the lights on the bar to, say, blue and red and of course 'split' the bar in half so the bar has both a blue lit side and red lit side, it would look like LED lights, without the use of ELS. I'd like someone with Zmodeler experience to confirm whether this is possible or not, and if it is possible, this idea should be exploited so more people make their models to work in this way.

 

Long post, huh?

[Iconography 1384]

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I may be wrong, but I'm fairly certain I've seen cars use this setup before but I can't remember which ones they were.

[Khanage 59]

So then it would work? I'd love to get more developers aware of this, I mean, LCPDFR has over 100,000 users, right? So this could be pretty beneficial to a lot of people.

[dakotag 16]

it is possible vv seen it on a few cars but i'm not sure how its done... :P

[Khanage 59]

Hmm.. I'm not very experienced in Zmodeler (I started modeling yesterday), but here's my idea: Get a ordinary lightbar, take out the lights and replace them with indicators. There are two sets of these indicators, one set blue, the other red. So half of the lightbar has blue 'indicators', the other half red 'indicators'. Now leave the rest to the script ;)

[Mustu 230]

Hmm.. I'm not very experienced in Zmodeler (I started modeling yesterday), but here's my idea: Get a ordinary lightbar, take out the lights and replace them with indicators. There are two sets of these indicators, one set blue, the other red. So half of the lightbar has blue 'indicators', the other half red 'indicators'. Now leave the rest to the script ;)

 

So what you're saying is we would have the lights on the bar mapped to flash with the indicators? But wouldn't that clash with people who  use the indicator script? 

[Ekalb 262]

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Edited January 1, 2014 by Ekalb

[Khanage 59]

Ekalb, I see what you mean. However, i'm pretty sure we can somehow tweak the strobes script, or get a pro like julionib in in this. Can't imagine it'd be too hard to fix this if you're in the know how, and I believe you can prevent AI from using the script by tweaking the config file. For the glow around the indicators, we could remove the glow altogether and replace it via a script.

Mustu, yeah it'd probably clash but I'm sure if someone with the indicator mod would want something like this they'd just remove the indicator script. I myself will attempt to learn some coding and see if we can fix this however.

One things for sure, if we're actually gonna go through this it'd be a shit ton of work. Totally worth it though IMO.

[Ekalb 262]

I think you're a bit too optimistic about what is possible with script mods. See some of the lighting work done by Mulledk19 on youtube to see what he has managed to do with indicator flashing, but he is perhaps one of the most knowledgable mod developers out there. Kit, who made the strobes mod, had tried to alternate sides but could never work out a way to do it. 

 

It's definitely not a novel idea and is something that most people will think of when playing with lightsemissive objects (indicators, breaklights, headlights etc.) on modded cars. Currently though our problems are, as i said:

1 - If you were to assign different sets of lights to indicator_lf, indicator_rf, indicator_rr and indicator_lr, then you potentially have four different combinations of lights. However, currently there aren't any available scripts to control each of them separately. 

2 - Using the indicators for your emergency lights obviously takes them away from being used as regular indicators. Really you could have your indicators serving both purposes but then you'd have your indicators doing funny things. Furthermore, whenever AI are driving the vehicle and indicate to turn they would activate part of their emergency lights, and I don't think this is just something that a script could easily disable.

3 - The orange glow around each dummy. This could be hidden or used effectively, but I don't think it could be removed altogether.

 

Really, the fact that there are four different sets of indicators means you could have a primary lightbar as functional as one you would have in ELS. Then you'd just need to add an environmental lighting effect as you see in els now. However, the mod support in terms of being able to control each of them separately is not available. As I mentioned, some headway has been made by mulledk19 but I'm not sure what the extent of his abilities are in that arena. 

[BadMotha_AK47 0]

It sure would be nice. I luv ELS and all but it is alot of extras for the game to run and prone to making FR crash IMO. As well as just being a resource hog.

 

Like playing with AI for example, I found that I basically have to use an ELS POLPATRIOT and leave the POLICE and POLICE2 non-ELS. Reason being is that with LCPDFR the POLPATRIOT is rarely ever spawned, unless u play as the normal character, allowing the police to all spawn as they normally would. While u can edit the ELS config to allow for more active ELS cars in a single instance, this hogs resources further than it does already. I think ELS as-is is just better for Online use experience w/ LCPDFR. But for SP to work normally and not have Police vehicles just disappearing during heavy pursuits and such, u'd have to edit the ELS config to allow more ELS units, again I stated why this is bad.

 

The only thing about using non-ELS is the lack of overall control that ELS gives us, and the extra realistic siren capabilities. But for those who can't run all these extra scripts and mod extras, having a better non-ELS vehicle design sure would be nice. Look at the lightbars/indicators of the GTAV vehicles. They are as they should be, using all sorts of various bars and leds and yet it uses a similar way of scripting as GTAIV in that regard. So it is obviously possible to do. And as we see in the video above. So yea I am all for making non-ELS vehicles better.

[kadu 28]

Non ELS led cars are possible.

[Khanage 59]

Of course it won't have nearly as many as functions as ELS (or maybe it will..), but more features can only mean more bugs, especially for a heavily modded 6 year old game. So anyway, the situation we have now is basically indicator vs LED lighting, what would you rather have on your vehicle (not AI vehicles)? We can disable AI from using the script altogether, so it only works for you, and then its up to you whether you want indicators or lights. Personally I'd rather have the lights. I've experimented with the F5544's landstalker and I don't see much of an orange glow around the lights, it's hardly a nuisance. If I can make this at least half-decent I'd be happy, and I'm sure others would be as well, as this is much needed.

[kadu 28]

anyone make a new LED lights scripts...

[Khanage 59]

Hold on to your hair Kadu, this is just a concept. I don't even know if i'm actually gonna make this script yet.

[kadu 28]

You can do that?

[EnterName 15]

Wasn't Sam at some point working on a non ELS LED script/mod?

 

I don't remember the name, but there is a topic about it around somewhere... There is even a trailer out, although Sam said there was a lot of work still needing to be done before release.

 

Since I'm a fan of LED lights but can't stand the ELS door bug, it did catch my interest at that time, but I guess he's been to busy with the work on 1.0...

[Khanage 59]

Well I'd sure love to beat Sam to it lol. Of course, if he really did work on such a script. Usually something of that sort would appear on the home page, yet I never heard of it.

[EnterName 15]

Well I'd sure love to beat Sam to it lol. Of course, if he really did work on such a script. Usually something of that sort would appear on the home page, yet I never heard of it.

 

I did search the forums a bit and found the thread: '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

 

It's called "ELS Dot Net". Sam's last post in the topic is from October 2013 and, as I guessed, saying that the project's on hold because he's busy with 1.0

 

Edited January 2, 2014 by EnterName

[kadu 28]

I ill ask for others scripters

[Khanage 59]

I did search the forums a bit and found the thread: '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

 

It's called "ELS Dot Net". Sam's last post in the topic is from October 2013 and, as I guessed, saying that the project's on hold because he's busy with 1.0

 

The illumination mod seems to use corona's and it mentions that the LED lighting needs a lot of work. My idea focuses solely around LED lights and nothing else, without the use of corona's. Also, he's developing a script, whereas I plan to release some sort of Non-ELS LED lightbar for modelers to use. If Sam never manages to complete the LED side of the script, I'll set my idea into motion. Thanks to all you guys for the advice!