Trail System

Note that as of Tremulous 1.1.0 there is no way to trigger a trail system with map entities. However, a trail system can be attached to a Particle System with the childTrailSystem key.

Files matching the pattern scripts/*.trail are loaded as trail system description files. Each .trail file can contain an arbitrary number of discrete trail systems, much like a .shader file can house many shaders. A trail system is declared by a name followed by curly braces within which the functionality of the trail system is defined. For example:

   aShinyNewTrailSystem { } 

Inside the particle system declaration are placed up to four trail beams. Beams are identified by the keyword beam and curly braces:

   aShinyNewTrailSystem
 
   {
 
     beam { }
 
     beam { }
 
     thirdPersonOnly
 
   } 

The thirdPersonOnly keyword may be used to specify that the trail system is not visible from the first person if it relates to that client. A trail beam describes the appearance of one element of the trail system:

• shader <shader> - the shader to use to texture this beam.
• segments <number> - the number of quads that make up the beam.
• width <frontWidth> <backWidth> - the width of the beam at the front and back.
• alpha <frontAlpha> <backAlpha> - the alpha of the beam at the front and back.
• color { <fr> <fg> <fb> } { <br> <bg> <bb> } - the color of the beam at the front and back.
• segmentTime <time> - how long a single segment lasts when the trail is only attached at one end.
• fadeOutTime <time> - how long this beam takes to fade away.
• textureType [stretch <frontTC> <backTC>][repeat [front|back] <repeatLength>] - how to texture the beam. stretch causes the texture to be stretched from the front to the back using the specified texture coordinates. repeat causes the texture to be repeated over a specified length either from the front or the back.
• model <model1> <model2> ... <modelN> - use one of the specified models as the particle. This cannot be used in conjunction with the shader keyword.
• modelAnmation <firstFrame> <numFrames> <loopFrames> <fps>sync - animation parameters to use when model particles are employed.
• realLight - light particles using the lightgrid instead of fullbright.
• jitter <magnitude> <period> - this specifies a random jitter of the position of each beam node by magnitude every period.
• jitterAttachments - if this is specified the end points of the beam are jittered as well as the intervening nodes.