Basically, I have a projectile (specifically, an AEmitter) I want to make a fairly smooth trail, but it seems to just be making blobs of emissions. Is there anything that can be done about this beyond reducing the projectile speed so the trail blends together a little better?

You can try making the emitter emit the trail particles slightly forward and/or backward, if that's possible. It could make the trail blend together a bit better.

The emitter really only emits the particles properly until a certain point when it starts emitting more than one at a time. It probably does this like one particle per frame or something. You can try making the particles be created through lua though, it seems to be a bit smoother than an emitter if you make it emit one whenever possible, as in with no breaks or anything.

Confirming that emitters only emit up to once per frame, and it doesn't do it at intermediate positions in between frames. As 4zk mentioned, what you COULD do is to make the emitter emit several offset emissions, so as to emulate emissions in between frames, possibly by means of EmissionOffset and all that. A more consistent way of doing it would be with Lua, also as mentioned. An example of this would be the Imperatus heavy sniper, which has a super neat AND coherent smoke trail, ripe for copypasting.

A most useful script indeed. This should help immensely.

Oh my god. Why didn't I think of trying this before.

Since I never did show the results...

Went from;



to;

Pistol shots;



Rifle shots;



A pretty significant improvement, I'd say.

I also just applied it to the old Rail Rifle I posted in the Mini Mod thread, since the trail on that was quite erratic. It looks so much nicer and consistent now!

Can you tell me what is that mod?

Untitled Tech: viewtopic.php?f=61&t=31318

It's really balanced, but the AI is broken. A patch is right around the corner.

thank you so much, you are really gentle

No problem! It's one of my favorite factions in the game so it's easy to recognize.