Need Advice

[Macgeoghagen]

I have been trying my hand at making different weapons. So far I have 7 different variations of shotguns made by modifying the code for the morningstar cannon down to level 1-3 ish. I have single and double barreled versions in cylinder,modified, and full chokes, as well as a blunderbuss. My MSpaint skills improve daily for making icons.

A. How do I get the icon for the active gun to show up in the circle at the bottom left of the screen? I have been using the zubrin ship as my test ship and can find no code in the ship xml that would put a picture down there.

B. How do you get the "blaster" effect to be different colors? Thats the effect from the bolide laser. I found the thread on coloring lasers and followed the instructions for adding the different RGB levels after the 0x part, but they are all red/orange, regardless of the color option I choose. My eventual intent is to make a series of guns with this effect in different colors, with purple being the strongest and red the weakest. Double and single versions will be available.

C. When I get my skills up to the task, I intend to make a weapon that will put a forcefield bubble around the ship so that you can shield against enemy fire and ram things with it. I haven't found a mod yet that does this. Does the game code support the addition od such a device?

[Aury]

A) that's not truly possible, not without screwing up the game's targeting system.

B) it only works on certain beam types: ie, you can't use it with blaster and particle, but you can use it with laser lightning and heavy blaster beam types.

C) sort of, but it would likely be quite buggy and it would definitely be very gimmicky, as collisions between objects are very problematic with detecting.


Also, I would like to really discourage people from making graphics in MSPaint, unless you really, really know what you're doing x_x

[Macgeoghagen]

A) could a line of xml be put in with the user interface to tell the game to get the weapon icon and put it there after it draws the UI background? Or is this too big a stretch?

B) Thanks for the advice. The heavyblaster effect works great.

C) It can wait until I'm a better modder.

MS paint is very limited, But it works for me. My icons are very basic.

[Aury]

A) No - UI is on the foreground, you can't manually put anything on top of it
B) Ok
C) I'd wait till george implements something for better collision detection.

If you're planning on uploading the mod to xelerus I'd stick with stock icons until you can get something nice unless you're planning on marking them as placeholders & mark the mod as being in development (Ref: Xelerus modding standards)

[digdug]

C. When I get my skills up to the task, I intend to make a weapon that will put a forcefield bubble around the ship so that you can shield against enemy fire and ram things with it. I haven't found a mod yet that does this. Does the game code support the addition od such a device?

There is 1 weapon like that in Weapons Extended, it is an area weapon with an animated custom graphics.
Search for Circle beam at line 1611 of WE_digdugweapons.xml in this mod:
http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=612

I also made a second weapon resembling the defensive weapon in Cybernoid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernoid if interested) but then i removed it from WE.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/720869/circleball.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/720869/circleballmask.jpg

I also tried to make an auton circle the playership very fast with a very short range area weapon, making it look like the auton hits its targets on collision.

What I noticed is that weapons like that are overkill, they really stop nearly all projectiles, and hit spaceObjects so many times that you are invulnerable.
That does't mean that you should do some tests on your own, on the contrary! Let me know if you discover something cool

[Macgeoghagen]

I was able to make a super short range omnidirectional laser with a high enough fire rate that it looks like a solid beam. it has a lifetime of 2, a fire rate of 3(20 per second), and damage of 1d4. I'm going to reduce the damage to 1d2 so that its less of a godmod. The damage is good, but you have to go in close to use it. Great for kamikaze players. If I could make an effect thats a 90 degree arc of a circle I could turn this into a directional partial shield

I have come to a problem with the heavyblaster effect. It does not show when the ship is facing exactly left, right, up, or down. it works on all diagonals.

[Aury]

IIRC, it does not work below magnitude 3 or 4.
It's a known bug, but apparently its not high up on the priorities list last I heard.

[Macgeoghagen]

magnitude?

[Aury]

yeah, there should be a modifier that works with some beam types called magnitude.

ie, for the blinder cannon: magnitude="3"
lower magnitudes = smaller projectiles. IIRC, the largest magnitude is 11 used on the solar flare cannon

[Macgeoghagen]

I'll take a look at the solar flare cannon to see how and where magnitude is used. I hope it doesn't make the effect huge and goofy looking.

[Macgeoghagen]

I found a line labeled intensity. That got it to work. Now I have different colored lasers from level 1 to 12.

[Aury]

ohh... it was intensity >.<
sorry about getting that confused :/

[Macgeoghagen]

That's fine. It got me to the info I needed. Now I have 22 different weapons mostly done. I just need to fix the prices and the icons. Now I'm working on making a player version of the ronin/A gunship. I have a working ship, but the UI still shows the sapphire yacht in the bottom corner. I think i'll have to make a new shield/armor display section.

[digdug]

I think i'll have to make a new shield/armor display section.

yes

here we have some very nice worksheets and templates for shields and HUD :
http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=634
http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=354
http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=81

[Macgeoghagen]

Thanks. I'll see what I can do with those.