Hi all, I was told this was a better forum to ask such a question. I'm trying to visually show the activation of a device that can be put on walls, in tree's, or on the ground. It's sort of a beacon like device, and since I'm just learning all this, not very capable of doing anything complex and I was told this is more of an artsy kind of a question. Anyone have any ideas on how I would show something off (device, object, location, etc...) either as some sort of highlight or w/ broadcasting waves around it so that a player could see it from far away and know where to go? I'm looking for any sort of special effect that would show something off in the distance as if it were "activated" and the player would see it and head towards it. I'm using the OGRE game engine. Any help much appreciated.

So what your asking is how can you visually get the players attention and draw him to some location? Generally (and asthetically) speaking, its better to use other cue's like waypoint displays, audio, or mini-maps/radar/compass to direct the player to specific locations/beacons, since visual identification can be obscured by whatever terrain or environment your using and it would look odd to see it through walls/solid rock/whatever.

Other methods could involve flares shot into the air or colored smoke (or whatever else you can think of), explosions are always a good attention grabber. You could also try a beam of light streaking into the sky, you could write that off as your "beacon" device merely being used as a form of tracking to it can be painted by an orbital satelite or whatever. Or you could try a pulsing light about the size of a mouse cursor overlayed on the players screen that gets bigger as he gets closer to it. This way when he looks in the beacons direction the pulsing light would get his attention and direct him there.

I have a small device that I'm thinking I will put on the wall of my model by using a decal (after I learn how to do that of course). When this "device" is activated, I want to mark it by surrounding it with "rings" that pulse from a large ring to a smaller ring, then back to the larger size ring and then they get smaller, repeating this. Sort of like an animated decal I guess. So it keeps pulsing and gets the players attention marking this device as the "activated" device.

Can anyone sort of guide me through how to make such an effect? Or what tutorials I need to read to make this happen?