[kapuhy]

Originally Posted by gap

If I got you correctly:

- damage boxes tell the game where to hit for triggering certain damage effects;

Yes, damage boxes assigned to FX bones work exactly like standard SH3 style damage boxes. You hit part of DMG_col model within boundaries of the box, zone that is assigned to this box gets damaged.

Originally Posted by gap

- damage zones (assigned to various boxes) decide which effects should be played and at which level of damage;

All boxes that are defined for FX "parent" bones have been assigned only one type of damage zone - the New_FX_Zone1, only zone in Zones.cfg file that does use FX gr2 file's bones at all.

Here's how this zone is defined:

[New_FX_Zone1]
Multiplier=1.000000
Flotability=0.000000
HitPoints=180
Destructible=No
Effect1=FX_L1, 40
Effect2=FX_L1, 60
Effect2=FX_L2, 60
Effect4=FX_L1, 85
Effect5=FX_L2, 85
Effect3=FX_L3, 95
Armor Level=20
Critic Flotation=0.300000
Critical=No
FloodingTime=60
CargoType=None
Crash Depth=0.01

It doesn't care at all about which type of effect is assigned through controllers to an FX bone. Only thing it pays attention to is how the FX bone is named. All these "child" fx bones that fx controllers are assigned to are named like this:

FX_LX_Dummy_Y

where X is either 1,2 or 3 and Y is I guess like bone's index number. So the zone definition basically says: "play all effects that are assigned to L1 bones at 40% damage", then "play all effects assigned to L1 and L2 bones at 60% damage" and so on.

You can asssign any FX effect to any "child" bone so nothing stops you from having fire, explosion, and lets say water splash all assigned to different "FX_L1" bones in FX file - and they will all play when damage reaches 40%, as long as their bones have "FX_L1" in their name

Originally Posted by gap

- FX bones determine position/orientation of the played effects.

Yes.

Originally Posted by gap

In other words (correct me if I am wrong):

- if a box located let's say near the bow gets assigned a zone with a fire effect among its effects;

- if that box is damaged beyond the level which triggers the fire effect;

- if "fire bones" are equally distributed along the ship:

the whole ship will be set on fire, not only her bow.

You can distribute bones wherever you wish and assign any type of effect to any of them, as long as their names match what's defined in New_FX_Zone1 shown above - they will all trigger.

Originally Posted by gap

On a side note, I think it is legitimate assuming that if no fx bones are found for a given effect, the effect will originate (only) from the center of the damaged box triggering it. E.g. in stock games aircraft have no FX file assigned; if an engine nacelle is damaged, we can expect a black smoke trail to originate from there and only from there

Only zone that makes any use of fx bones is New_FX_Zone1. All other types of damage zones that you can assign to damage boxes work like they worked in SH3/4 - they have effects specified in their zone definition and these effects will indeed originate from center of the box. In fact even stock SH5 ships use SH3 style zones for a lot of things. On the other hand - nothing stops you from assigning engine smoke to one of fx bones as well and if you do that, you'll have it trigger (at location of fx bone you assigned it to) the way I described above - when damage to New_FX_Zone1 reaches 40%.

Overall - I think the FX files in SH5 are very under-utilized at the moment, and with some creativity you could do basically any combination of effects trigger whenever and wherever you wish, it would just require creating more zones that use FX file and more variations of FX bone names. At its heart though, entire FX file is just a fancy way to have effects trigger in different places than center of the box.