Siege Laser Variant

[Dark-Zero]

I'm gonna start working on a Cannon, that works in the emplacement of the seige laser, the goal of this cannon is to make it similar to something like, either the Wave motion gun of the yamato,from the Space battleship yamato anime series (Or starblazers in english) Or the Arch-angels, Positron blaster( From gundam seed).

Now first off im going to use the Energy torpedo as a base, those cannon are not lasers but rather a giant shot, Going to give it a size(or at least try) slightly smalar than the ship firing from, Attempt at making the trail effect to the shot long enough to make it seem like a laser afterward. and then on the impact make it similar to an energy bomb explosion, Maybe use the crisis stat on the weapon and experiment with it. Il also give it a long charge time, and a high energy drain, as if the only way to max the charge speed will be to deactivate other weapons, shields and engine all together. (Oviously the AI will be to dumb to do that, but meh, its not an Ai weapon ;P)

Also, i remember seeign a vid, i think from Arparso, about one of his mod, or ship, having a charging sound that lasted a few second befor the actual fire, THat is somehting i wnana to do, but am clueless how at the moment. so if any care to give a hand with that

If anyone have suggestion in how to do things, especially in terms of the "how to give lenght to the shots trail. id be gratful

PS: Reference vids aboutt h wave motion gun :link remvoed due to problems
   and the Lohengrin at 1:45 min:  Lohengrin

[Keldane]

Greetings! I think I may be able to offer some help, if only with the animation part. First, how much experience do you have with designing your own weapon animations?

[Dark-Zero]

Dependins on what "Animation part" your talkign about. The weapon itself stay the same, it will use the siege laser model. the Effec o f the shot, im working on that, i know how to change color, size, lentgh etc. But i wouldn't go and try to make a weapon effect from scratch right away. But its gonna be similar lookign to the energy torpedo, that is why i use it as template.

really, the most problem i figure to have is putting a sounds that works as a charge up sounds and the the weapon fire is released,

ALso if it spossible, Since the weapons use 3 effect, the start, the trail and the hit (or landing)  Is it possible to make the start have a charge up effect? (To see the energy build up at the tip of the gun befor the release?)

[Arparso]

Here's how I've done the charging-up effect of the beam cannons for my FS2 mod:

When coding the start, travel or end effect in efx.ini or mod_efx.ini, each EFX block is comprised of a bunch of different types of effects like FLARE, STRIP, SNAKE, etc.
Most of these effects include up to four timing settings: Delay, Attack, Sustain and Decay.

• Delay: how much time goes by after invoking the weapon effect, before that visual effect part actually starts to show up
  
• Attack: the duration of the "build-up" phase, where the effect grows to its specified size
  
• Sustain: how long the effect stays at its specified size
  
• Decay: the duration of the "tear-down" phase, where the effect shrinks to 0 again (to avoid a sharp cut-off of the effect)
  

Now the Start and Travel effects of the weapon usually start exactly at the moment the weapon fires. The End effect will be started when the weapon hits, which would be instantanous for laser-type weapons or when the projectile collides with the target for projectile-based weapons.

To achieve a charging-up effect, you simply need to delay the Travel and End effects. Use the Start effect to create your charging-up and adjust the Delay of your other effects accordingly. For example, one of my beam cannon effects looks like this, omitting all non-related parameters:

Code: [Select]

// Start
EFX 1
FLARE
Delay 0
Attack 1.5
Sustain 2.5
Decay 3
FLARE
EFX

// Travel
EFX 2
STRIP
Delay 1.5
Attack 0
Sustain 2.5
Decay 3
STRIP
EFX

// End
EFX 3
FLARE
Delay 1.5
Attack 0
Sustain 2.5
Decay 3
FLARE
EFXNotice how the delay of Travel and End EFX matches the Attack duration of the Start effect. Thus it appears as if the laser starts firing immediately after being fully charged.

Also keep in mind that you generally want a short delay, because the game will not account for these delays when calculating the caused damage. This means, that a laser immediately applies damage to a target, even though it appears to still be charging. This is generally not a huge problem, but you'll want to keep the delay as short as feasible.

For the appropriate sound I'd advise making a single sound file combining both the charging-up and the fire sound and simply include that in a SOUND block in the Start effect.

[Mularac]

If you look back into the f2 thread of this forum, you'll see that I've also managed to make a fix of sorts that would insert a delay between the charging of the weapon and the appearence of the damage in the ship, but that can only work if you apply an extra hardpointing slot in that same location as your weapon.

[Arparso]

I know, but it's a rather ugly workaround not really applyable to most ships I'd need it for, because of Nexus' harsh limitations regarding the number of hardpoints. I'll be sticking with the false delay I have now - looks convincingly enough and is easy to implement.

[Mularac]

can't argue with that I'll see if I find an other work-arround.

[Keldane]

Giving length to the shot's trail:

If you're using a Flare for the ball of energy at the head of the blast, and a Snake for the trailing laser, giving it the length you want is as simple as determining the maximum distance at which the weapon can fire (say, 20000 meters), the rate at which it travels (2000 meters/second), and making the NodeAtt, NodeSus, and NodeDec values of the Snake total the length of time it would take the blast to travel it's maximum distance (in this case, 10 seconds). I would probably go with a NodeAtt of 0, NodeSus of 8, and NodeDec of 2. This way, the Snake is at its full width directly behind the ball, and the last 20% of it slowly tapers to a point.

Below is an example set from my mod_efx.ini file, assuming a travel time of 4 seconds at maximum range.

Code: [Select]

EFX 327 // Prototype Beam Cannon

FLARE
Type 12
Size 500
Color 0.5 1 0.5
Color 0 0.5 0
Attack 1
Decay 3
FLARE

STRIP
Texture 12
Length 750
Radius 200
Color 0.5 1 0.5
Color 0 0.5 0
Attack 1
Decay 3
STRIP
EFX

EFX 328

FLARE
Type 4
Size 5000
Color 0.5 1 0.5
ColorB 0 0.5 0
Attack 0.1
Multiply 5 1 0 0
FLARE

SNAKE
Texture 11
TexScale 2000
SRadius 200
ERadius 200
Color 0.5 1 0.5
ColorB 0 0.5 0
NodeSus 3.2
NodeDec 0.8
SNAKE

EFX

EFX 329

FLARE
Type 4
Size 1000
Color 0.5 1 0.5
Color 0 0.5 0
Attack 1
Sustain 1
Decay 2
FLARE

EFX
Note that the 'Multiply 5 1 0 0' line in the Flare is to make it appear brighter by concentrating 5 flare effects into the same small area. It applies 5 flares in a radius of 1 meter with 0 size variation and 0 random delay between each appearing. It may just be my graphic settings, and I find that without this, the flare appears a little feeble.

[Dark-Zero]

Thanks alot for the tips