Cinematic Explosions-Stations and L and XL Ship Death

Please Watch Videos :)

Description

I have always hated how games could have gorgeous graphics, and then (In my opinion) lame explosions, endless space 2...sins, I fell off those games because, I don't know I just didn't get any satisfaction from the booms when a capital ship went up. Games like Eve Online (I used their explosion trailer song) look great and the explosions I used as reference but...its Eve, so I'm good, I tried playing, no thanks. And an old game called Hegemonia Legions of Iron had some spectacular explosions for 2008 that still hold up today.  Also Nexus The Jupitar incident was an inspiration as well.

I really create mods to fix annoyances I find personally, but I am also secretly hoping someone with ACTUAL coding knowledge can improve on/ make better what I upload.  I would love for someone to build on this, optimize the XML without quality loss etc.  If not though, it works

Some points to go over before you install if you wish to

Are These lore accurate and stay within the realm of realism Tophat?

These are not lore accurate.  These explosions are as realistic as laser beams and space ships fighting around a blackhole.

Wow you made this whole thing yourself?

No, Big credit to TheRealGibbon (For allowing me to see how to even edit explosions) and Macbain81 (For getting his mod integrated into the base game. They are the creators of More Dramatic Explosions and Fire and Smoke.

Oh Ok, but you made it, so you must be a god level coder!

I am am a 3D modeler professionally who couldn't code the word RED to be in red. This has been completely vibe coded using the games effects.xmI.  I know AI is a contentious subject right now and I completely understand not wanting to download this.  This is also why I won't be taking personal requests on things to change/add, I am just not good enough to do it without breaking everything.

I had AI take the effects XML and change it around to my own personal vision.  It took 87 xml swaps and game restarts because there is no viewer so I would create it like "Can we increase fadeout by a third?" then I'd have to swap files, start game, see if anything changed etc, go back and say "it didn't work, what do you even do here??"  Overall I am VERY happy with what this mod accomplishes.  At the very least I have ships on my own game blowing up the way I want.

I don't mind AI, let me have it!  How's the performance?

Well it's certainly not going to increase your performance...it's pretty effects heavy, because of how it handles assets, apparently there was no brightness control so I had to stack images which gave it a multiply brightness effect.  I play on a 3080ti and did see frame drops but I was blowing up multiple XL's.  I can't speak to big fleet battles but, I'd imagine, it could get a little crazy... It looks cool but the devs are smart, probably reasons they didn't go crazy. I'm just a rando so you may have to adjust draw distance, quality etc.

Is this save game compatible

Should be, it just changes effects, but as always download at your own risk

Can I use this with other explosion mods?

Not if both mods use the same parts of the effects.xml file.

Fire and smoke will not be compatible

skazheniykhaak- Cinematic Light Weapon Impacts and Explosions will be visible if you load my mod after. It will be all his weapon effects/surface damage effects/smoke etc but it will be my ship death sequences. Please watch Station Death video for reference.

Installation instructions

Extract to extensions folder....to Delete: Delete from extensions folder.  I would not use vortex (Did not test Vortex).  Just manually extract

Main features

-Significant end explosion for L and XL ships.  S and M ships have a bit more propagation and minor explosions.

-L and XL ships now have the core looking like its going critical before exploding

-L and XL ships now have an orange to blue ending explosion effect from stacking

-Farther reaching particles/sparks

Requirements

None that I know of, I do own all the DLC, but unsure if certain explosions are tied to DLC.

Shout outs

TheRealGibbon and MacBain81