(TEST RELEASE)CustomLasersv0.21 WIP for 1.77trunk/may31,2012

[Amaranth]

I wouldn't know whether these are possible, but how about the possibility to change your laser colour (purely cosmetic, with no other gameplay effects)? or if you keep bouncing your laser off the heat limiter it will eventually break and you might need to high-tail it to the nearest station to get it fixed or even replaced?

[SandJ]

if you keep bouncing your laser off the heat limiter it will eventually break and you might need to high-tail it to the nearest station to get it fixed or even replaced?

Doesn't it cut out specifically to prevent that?

[Commander McLane]

I wouldn't know whether these are possible, but how about the possibility to change your laser colour (purely cosmetic, with no other gameplay effects)?

Changing your laser colour is not only currently possible, but has always been possible.

There is a shipdata key solely for this purpose: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Shipda ... aser_color

[CommonSenseOTB]

I wouldn't know whether these are possible, but how about the possibility to change your laser colour (purely cosmetic, with no other gameplay effects)

Good idea. Right now it's tied to the ship itself so different colors for different lasers, not really. But what if the color was tied to how hot(damaging) the lasers on a particular ship are? In Elite A they had different damage for a laser depending on what ship it was on. So a military laser on an adder sucks while a military laser on a Ferdelance kicks butt. Doing this as an addon for the core ships should be doable, might be worth a look later and would go well with what I'm making now.

Been a productive couple of days, have the menu options working well, have a good overall framework for the oxp done(mostly) and have just finished 4 virtual lasers just like the originals(and replace them) that work within this framework. There's provision built in for making the damaged version of the laser do anything you want really. Just like the normal virtual versions you could alter the fire rate(0.1sec or slower, the range(12500,15000,30000), the damage(plus or minus), extra heating(while trigger pulled), energy used(plus or minus), dual modes or switching, basically anything else you want to script in. If you want sound effects to play when or while the laser is damaged or a switch in capability happens then just script it at the provided spot for each laser in the main script. For custom weapons like the rail gun or the carebears laser it should be no problem to have it virtually take up a weapons mount and heat up and cut out like a normal laser and fire by the regular laser trigger/key. Turrets as equipment might fire only when you pull the trigger in that view and heat up. The R-Type weapon is also possible(the laser temp gauge would double as your weapon charge gauge, hold the trigger to charge, let go of the trigger to fire and otherwise shoot single small shots by pulling the trigger repeatedly). This would use either the original lasers or an external entity(s). I can see a lot of possibilities for this switching technique.

As I want to do some of the named weapons in Elite cannon(pardon the pun ) I'm starting with something called a "Hassoni-Kruger Burst Laser". It fires bursts of 3 shots with a range of 15000. Should have it do more damage than the original Military Laser per shot but have it heat up quicker too. It will be a Dogfighting laser with better potential at short range than the old military one, balances and tradeoffs will make it desireable for some players. Being able to make this weapon work properly will be the test that will make or break this oxp. So far I have just the 3 shot bursts and the range and it is pretty cool!

Other lasers of note to do:

Hassoni-Variscan and Volt-Variscan lasers that can can tune themselves for different effects at different ranges.
Ingram Megablast Pulse Laser for medium range and higher yields for long dogfights where cool lasers are a must. If it's good enough for the boys in blue...
Hassoni HiRad Pulse Laser, low fire rate, long range, high energy use, lotta damage, good for sniping, particularily on a big Anaconda.

There will be some dual mode mining laser variants, one for defense(limited range) and few other drawbacks, and one for combat with good range but some other minor limits and drawbacks that will make life interesting. Looking forward to these.

These are just guidelines as only the practical result of the attempt will determine what the exact lasers will be. Practice before making the really cool custom weapons.

Anymore ideas on this custom weapon/laser stuff or other elite cannon weapon knowledge that might not be in the elite manual, please, share.

[Cody]

other elite cannon weapon knowledge

Did they have cannons in Elite?

[SandJ]

other elite cannon weapon knowledge

Did they have cannons in Elite?

What about Twin Plasma Cannons - or can only canon cannons be Elite cannons?

[CommonSenseOTB]

other elite cannon weapon knowledge

Did they have cannons in Elite?

What about Twin Plasma Cannons - or can only canon cannons be Elite cannons?

Very punny!

[cim]

What's the script one would use to query if the player's ship can equip a laser in a specific mount for example the aft mount position? In other words to find out if lasers are even mountable in a specific mounting position.

Currently? Check if there's currently a laser there. If there is, lasers can be fitted there. If not, try adding a pulse laser. If there is now a pulse laser there, lasers can be fitted there (and remove the pulse laser). If there isn't, the ship doesn't have that mount. Give me a couple of days, and I'll add a way to view the weapon_facings parameter of shipyard.plist for player ships, since that method is excessively convoluted...

player.ship.weaponFacings is now available in current nightly builds.

[CommonSenseOTB]

What's the script one would use to query if the player's ship can equip a laser in a specific mount for example the aft mount position? In other words to find out if lasers are even mountable in a specific mounting position.

Currently? Check if there's currently a laser there. If there is, lasers can be fitted there. If not, try adding a pulse laser. If there is now a pulse laser there, lasers can be fitted there (and remove the pulse laser). If there isn't, the ship doesn't have that mount. Give me a couple of days, and I'll add a way to view the weapon_facings parameter of shipyard.plist for player ships, since that method is excessively convoluted...

player.ship.weaponFacings is now available in current nightly builds.

Thanks cim. I upgraded to rev 4917 from I think 4902(the one I loaded up eventually to check out the laserHeatLevel) and did I get a shock as the menu listings on the equipment screen for my custom lasers oxp weren't working. I eventually figured out that it was because I was awarding equipment with the key in equipmentinfo "available to all" = false and it is not allowed now I guess. Somewhere along the way to 4917 this was changed, it worked before however!

Perhaps when implementing equipment taking cargo space was when this was changed.

Were any of the other equipmentInfo keys changed in this way that might be a surprise to oxp authors or might make a few oxps have a slight problem?

I'm just asking so I or others don't have unexpected problems. It had me quite concerned for a couple of hours until I found what the problem was. Thought you broke my oxp, haha!

[CommonSenseOTB]

Than something completely different. Most scripters don't make fully use of the possibilities of a frameCallback. It triggers on every frame, therefor it is unknown how often it triggers. To give a script that information, it passes a ∆-time parameter of the passed time since the last call. Most scripters I have seen, ignore that valuable info. In the case of the stations, the lift just moves one meter on every frame. That means they move much slower on computers with low frame rate than on faster computers. Better would it be to define a target speed (60 m/s in the example below) and multiply that with the passed time. That way the lifts move at a fixed speed on all computers.

...

This is why I try to read every post. Thank you very very very much Eric! I was just trying to eliminate variations in fire rate caused by low frame rate and this delta value should allow the counters for each weapon facing(forward, aft, port, starboard, and the weapon selected for the customview) to be incremented exactly the real time that has past. Just what I needed and thanks again Eric, I had no idea this existed.

Read my signature. <Two thumbs up>

[cim]

Thanks cim. I upgraded to rev 4917 from I think 4902(the one I loaded up eventually to check out the laserHeatLevel) and did I get a shock as the menu listings on the equipment screen for my custom lasers oxp weren't working. I eventually figured out that it was because I was awarding equipment with the key in equipmentinfo "available to all" = false and it is not allowed now I guess. Somewhere along the way to 4917 this was changed, it worked before however!

The documented behaviour is that equipment with "available_to_all" = false should only be available to ships which allow that equipment explicitly in their shipyard.plist. I don't think anything's changed with regards to that. Of course, if you're doing custom equipment, no ships will have it in their shipyard.plists unless you're doing custom ships specifically for that equipment as well. There may have been a way somewhere to bypass that check, perhaps.

[Eric Walch]

Thanks cim. I upgraded to rev 4917 from I think 4902(the one I loaded up eventually to check out the laserHeatLevel) and did I get a shock as the menu listings on the equipment screen for my custom lasers oxp weren't working. I eventually figured out that it was because I was awarding equipment with the key in equipmentinfo "available to all" = false and it is not allowed now I guess. Somewhere along the way to 4917 this was changed, it worked before however!

The documented behaviour is that equipment with "available_to_all" = false should only be available to ships which allow that equipment explicitly in their shipyard.plist. I don't think anything's changed with regards to that. Of course, if you're doing custom equipment, no ships will have it in their shipyard.plists unless you're doing custom ships specifically for that equipment as well. There may have been a way somewhere to bypass that check, perhaps.

It has changed last week when I noticed this bug. Equipment that was not allowed for a certain ship through the "available_to_all" = false key could be awarded by script. If it is not allowed for a ship, also a script should not be abel to award it.

[CommonSenseOTB]

Significant progress after a lot of time consuming trial and error. The custom menu now only offers weapons to mounts that the player ship has thanks to the newly added player.ship.weaponFacings, the timing of the laser fire rate is perfect now throughout all framerates thanks to the delta time parameter, and I now have instant firing of the weapon as well the moment you pull the trigger thanks to the newly added player.ship.laserHeatLevel. Many thanks to cim, another_commander and Eric Walch for helping this concept get this far. At this point it's as useable as the original lasers and immersion is maintained. Kinda cool to see the Ingram 1928A2 Beam Laser fire at a rate between the original pulse and military lasers.

After 2 days of nitpicking it's on to damage control and extra heat up...

[Thargoid]

And ideally don't forget to include a work-around for missions like the Constrictor so that kills by a player using it actually get the proper credit/reaction from the game (to prevent mission breakage).

At least until this request gets reviewed and hopefully acted upon.

[CommonSenseOTB]

And ideally don't forget to include a work-around for missions like the Constrictor so that kills by a player using it actually get the proper credit/reaction from the game (to prevent mission breakage).

At least until this request gets reviewed and hopefully acted upon.

Definately important, particularily when it comes to an oxp weapon...how this oxp works is by simulating the different weapon characteristics but when you actually fire your weapon, it is one of the original lasers in your ships weapon mounts that actually makes the shot and this eliminates any "counts as kill" problems therebye maintaining total compatibility with missions.

I imagine there will be alot of 1.77 trunk playtesters wanting to try out a test version of this crazy, off the wall oxp concept of mine when it is ready.