Development Log

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Arcalane
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Development Log

Post by Arcalane »

Devs, post your works!

I finally cracked the problem with tesla colouring, so all I need now is a turret and sounds.

Default appearances;

No target;
Image

Target;
Image

As you can see, tesla 'beam' appearance changes on whether or not it's striking a ship.

Ed: I should note that the tesla weapons are prone to causing some lag. Use them very sparingly, as they will hog system resources if you have too many (three or more, in my experience) firing at once.
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Arcalane
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Post by Arcalane »

For those wondering, the Tesla is a highly customizable weapon. You may be wondering if the appearances are fixed. They are most definitely not. You can have your Lightning Streams look like the first shot in the post above all the time, if you want.

To give you an idea of how flexible the modding for the tesla is, it has nine dedicated fields for modifying it's appearance. Yes, nine. It has a total of eleven fields, two of which control duration and starting deviation.

What does that mean? Well...

You can easily control the width, amplitude and frequency, edge colour (want pink, orange, yellow, purple or even mauve lightning? now you can!) of the streams, the alpha of the white core, the alpha of the edge colour.

Three fields control the appearance of the beam whilst it is contacting a target, and three more fields control the appearance of the beam whilst it is not in contact with a target.

As well as this, you can easily control the duration of the stream, and similar to beams, you can control the rate at which it rakes over a target, if you choose to have it do so.

Combined with the appearance, this means you can make a short duration high-powered zapper, or a long and draining stream that gradually strips the armour off your enemies.

This flexibility comes at great cost, however. We will have to remove the "UPLOAD TO SHIP DATABASE" button in order to make room for all the edit fields. String extraction for the Tesla may also not materialize, but we'll see.
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Post by Kaelis »

Arcalane wrote:We will have to remove the "UPLOAD TO SHIP DATABASE" button in order to make room for all the edit fields.
No we won't. Use the Eff button to add another 'tab' to weapons, like i did with sections.
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Post by Arcalane »

Derp.

In other news, I fiddled with the default on-target appearance so it looks a bit nicer and more lightning-y;

Image
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Post by Arcalane »

As you've all seen I've been experimenting with bubble shields as they're relatively simple (just giant sections) whilst waiting for Kaelis to finish up cool stuff. :P

Not much to say, except that I'm mulling over more weapon concepts and trying to think of other cool stuff to add. I'm not coming up with much though.

Another weapon project that's on the drawing board is a special new weapon. It is, in fact, the most harmless weapon ever. How? Well, it does a grand total of 0 damage per frame.

"But that's madness!" I hear you cry. Not so. This is not your average weapon. In fact, it could hardly be called a weapon. The most damage it can do is to burn your retinas if you stare at the source. What is it, then?

That's simple. It's a humble targeting laser. Designed to work as an innocuous 'driver' gun for the turret system, this targeting laser emits a thin red beam that highlights a target, potentially warning of impending doom. The best part? It generates absolutely no noise. Now you'll never have to put up with those headache-inducing noises generated by other beam turrets being made into jury-rigged laser-pointers!

An early concept included an uninterceptable invisible bullet which made a 'target locked' fauxplosion upon impact. Personally, I prefer the idea of a targeting laser, as it has many, many uses, especially if it can act as the designator for weapon banks. :)
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Post by Arcalane »

Development is a long and hard process, filled with distractions and awesome music.

Here, have a teaser;

Image
[Thursday 27th] [03:50:39] <Arcalane> all of those are seperate shots~
[Thursday 27th] [03:50:59] <Siber> With all their own deviations?
[Thursday 27th] [03:51:00] <Hades_> kewl
[Thursday 27th] [03:51:02] <Arcalane> yep
[Thursday 27th] [03:51:07] <Arcalane> that's why some of them are crossing over
[Thursday 27th] [03:51:48] <Siber> That was my first clue
[Thursday 27th] [03:51:51] <Arcalane> looks like I have a little fine-tuning to do but otherwise it's good as done
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Arcalane
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Post by Arcalane »

Hell, have some more teasers!

Image
Testing the High-Velocity Rocket in the Sandbox.

Image
Oops? I think I set the lifetime too high!

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Not something you want to be on the recieving end of.

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Hestia Alpha sporting single autocannons, at Kaelis' request.

Image
Modified Menu Cronus loadout.
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Post by Arcalane »

Wrapping up work on the weapons pack. So far, so good, although at this stage I'm thinking of scrapping the targeting laser.

Mostly all I have to do now is run around in circles and make sure I have all the ETurrets and EBullets set up, because god damn it's annoying to have to fix small problems just because I forgot to copy one turret. :|
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Post by Arcalane »

Wheeeee~

Hint; none of these were made by modifying existing code;

Image

Image

Image

Image
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Post by Arcalane »

Dicking around with the room code;

Image

More dicking around;

Image

Image
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Post by Arcalane »

I got bored and... creative with the Particle Cannon. The result of this? It is now possible to determine the angles submunitions will be dispersed at.

Image

Suffice to say, it involves randomly picking between 1 and -1, and then multiplying an l_special value by that number and then randomly picking a number between 0 and that l_special value and then shooting off in the assigned direction. Pretty cool 'eh?

Examples;

If you set it to 180, the shots will go everywhere.
If you set it to 90, the shots will make a half-circle behind the impact.
If you set it to 0, the shots will go backwards in a small blob.

And so on! In the screenshot above, the value was set to 100 to intentionally exaggerate the angles to make it easier to tell. I'm tired, okay? :P

Ed: As a sidenote, this code can (and will) be ported to the Autocannon at some point in the future. The default values will remain unchanged, of course. :)

Autocannon shots, however, will be projected "forwards" of the shot. Imagine a gun that fires a canister. This canister explodes mid flight, sending it's payload further forward. Simple as that. This will allow for missed AC shots to still have a good chance of damaging their target if intercepted at close range. The default spread (360) will remain unchanged.
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Post by Arcalane »

Kaelis and I have been meddling with particle effects. Oooh, pretty~

Image
Messing with the P-Cannon trail

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The newest version of the P-Cannon's trail, now subtler

Image
Toying around with colours. It's like a fireball!

Image
PD Flares
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Post by Arcalane »

Heap thine praise upon Kaelis;

Image

Image

Image

Image

Patience is a virtue.
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Post by Kaelis »

Image

http://filesmelt.com/Filehosting2/downl ... ntest3.rar
http://filesmelt.com/Filehosting2/downl ... ketest.rar

Use left mouse button, right mouse button and space.

Warning: Possible danger of sanity loss.
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Post by Arcalane »

Upcoming minor changes;

Autocannons and Particle Cannons will no longer spawn submunitions if you set their subdamage to 0, for those of you who like the weapons, but dislike the concept of the submunitions or find the spawned shots to be causing balance problems.
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