What the heck are these floating strings?

[RikOz]

I was really curious about these way back during live, and I'm still curious now. I see these in the warehouse maps, looking like strands of spider silk. At first I thought they were just unintentionally-visible seams in the textures, but then I realized that something like that would be more of a straight line. Then there's the fact that these things are floating a couple feet above the floor.

 

[Redlynne]

Ever heard of cobwebs?

[RikOz]

25 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

Ever heard of cobwebs?

Er, yes, I mentioned that in the OP.

 

These aren't abandoned warehouses - webs that stretch across corridors don't survive constant traffic.

Edited August 31, 2019 by RikOz

[Vanden]

Those are (probably) the beams of light from the lamps in the warehouse. They're conical shapes with semitransparent textures, that become less opaque the farther from the lamp they get; a common trick to make lights look like they're casting light without any fancy real-time lighting effects. Looks like the texture compression on the light texture file introduced an artifact at the very edge of the texture causing it to not be perfectly transparent.

 

And might I say that is a completely inappropriate outfit for a young woman to be wearing to a crime hotspot where there will be boys.

Edited August 31, 2019 by Vanden

[Spotlore]

Procedural generation in its early days.  😛   

[srmalloy]

Working from memory, according to Positron when I asked him at an event held at the SDCC many years ago, they're edge artifacts from the semitransparent textures used to create the lighting cones, because the game engine didn't have the power to do proper dynamic lighting.

[Six-Six]

trip wires. 

[Oubliette_Red]

Nemesis plot... lines.

[RikOz]

5 hours ago, Vanden said:

And might I say that is a completely inappropriate outfit for a young woman to be wearing to a crime hotspot where there will be boys.

That's actually one of her more modest outfits. That's my character "Triple-N", a name I chose because the filters wouldn't let me call her "Nearly Naked Ninja" 😄

3 hours ago, Six Six said:

trip wires. 

That actually occurred to me - I hypothesized that they were some sort of triggers for events, and weren't actually supposed to be visible.

 

But the lighting artifact explanation makes sense. Thanks!

[Chuckers]

Stretch marks. 

 

[Heraclea]

5 hours ago, Vanden said:

And might I say that is a completely inappropriate outfit for a young woman to be wearing to a crime hotspot where there will be boys.

What does one wear to a crime hotspot these days?

[Vanden]

16 minutes ago, Heraclea said:

What does one wear to a crime hotspot these days?

More!

[Heraclea]

If I had a crime hotspot, it would be strictly white tie and tails.

[Six-Six]

4 hours ago, RikOz said:

That's actually one of her more modest outfits. That's my character "Triple-N", a name I chose because the filters wouldn't let me call her "Nearly Naked Ninja" 😄

 

I've seen movies about this. One is Naked Assassins (?) I think, about three scantly clad Chinese or Japanese crew of attractive women who use this exact tactic. It wasn't a porn parody, nor even a B-movie, but a honestly serious effort. I don't recall the plot details, but I'm sure it was all right. They may have come out with a sequel or two. Another whose title escapes me was a male ninja or another form of oriental fighting machine that didn't want to be hampered down by clothing when he fights. This latter one was from Hollywood, if I'm not mistaken.

[merrypessimist]

5 hours ago, Heraclea said:

What does one wear to a crime hotspot these days?

As little as possible.

[PSLAnimal]

Cosmic strings.

[DoctorHugh]

Quote

This is a superhero MMO, so obviously these are SuperStrings.

 

[Kyksie]

13 hours ago, RikOz said:

That's actually one of her more modest outfits. That's my character "Triple-N", a name I chose because the filters wouldn't let me call her "Nearly Naked Ninja" 😄

 

I hopped on just now and "Naked" is OK in the character creator.

[RikOz]

18 minutes ago, Kyksie said:

I hopped on just now and "Naked" is OK in the character creator.

Huh, must be a recent change. I originally made the character back on live and it wouldn't let me.

 

I'll assume the filters would still stop me from using "Nazi" - back on live I made a character that I ended up calling "Grammar 5th Columnist". He was a joke character who did nothing but sit in chat, correcting people's grammar. It amused me for ten minutes 😛

 

Edited September 1, 2019 by RikOz

[Justisaur]

I thought those were incarnate threads.