To me, a lot of the draw of the Ypsilon wasn't just a huge laser cutting a gouge into the terrain, it was having the giant space destroyer descend from the sky, and fire a giant laser from a visibly huge cannon.

Victim: OH SHI-

That's the 0div cannon, dipstick. It's:
*Cannon appears on screen*
Oh shizzle...
*Cannon charges*
Quickly! FI-

One more idea, since num seems to want to stick to the whole thermal energy-based idea; Nova Cannon. Takes a full 30 seconds to charge up and then fires a very large fiery ball of energy at the planet, which would then implode into itself and then explode, disintegrating everything while leaving a pleasant orange glow that would probably not only blind you but melt your retinas if you stared at it.

Extra win if it would then form a short-lived blackhole to emulate a real supernova on a smaller scale.

AHAHAHAHHHAAAAA *snort* haahabhahha ahh ha. NO truly Epic laser is complete without lag. Everyone knows that.
Silly Rabbit.

Unless your machine is capable of executing it without lag. Sorry if your computer sucks.

If you do it right, lag can be avoided completely. And thats what I'm intending to do.

Deepgroups for terrain destruction and lua for actor/item destruction?

It's be cool if you actually made them explode into a red mist. Of antigravity, to simulate vapor.

I'm gonna use deepgroups only when necesary. They can be incredibly power and destroy stuff thats not ment to be destroyable. As for Lua based effects on actors caused by the attacks, yeah, I really want to experiment with those.

But mostly I'm just make it basic and make sure the particle counts and effect sizes are not ridiculous and not unnecesary. Sometimes in explosion effects some particles might be completely trivial and not even noticable or just plain useless.

What I meant was that, if it doesn't lag, IT'S NOT BIG ENOUGH YET.

Great design philosophy.

I can't tell the level of sarcasm here. It's ambiguous. Either very sarcastic, or actually honest. I just can't tell.

Hmmm, it's THOR who's posting. I'd go for 'a very witty sarcasm'.

The point is to make it epic but not lag.

Most likely.


I SUPPOSE that that way works too... But it will always be more epic if it is made so big that it lags.

It would be a cool effect.
It gets quiet, then a massive, extremely bright beam strikes down, eating on the terrain. The ground vibrates. Around the beam, objects start to float up (actors, particles.) Low, rumbling sound sets in. A massive shockwave blasts away from the beam from both sides (in total silence), evaporating actors into red bood particles that float slowly away, the beam getting brighter in the process. Then the beam pulls up from the centre with an explosion and disappears, all the particles that were floating are pulled towards the centre (or just fall down if they are further away). A deafening explosion sets in during this last stage. Finally, only glowing edges of a giant crater remain to remind the world of the...uh...the...horrendous Omega Experiment?

PS Lag probably included