Triggering and complex firing sequence, Got it working thx!

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AnnihilatorX
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Triggering and complex firing sequence, Got it working thx!

Post by AnnihilatorX »

Image

I am working on a ship design and had done animation of a core shield as below:
(Probably need firefox 3 to view animated PNG)

http://hiyukihome.110mb.com/roland/ani/

I would like to make the following but am stuck on how to:

Referring to the first image, I have a line of weapons at the bottom. I would like the mining laser on the very right to lead and trigger all others in a sequence with varying delay, and use that mining laser to trigger the core open up sequence. In the finished design all the weapons will be at the core.

Starting from the right each weapon performs function as follows:

ML - Acquire target and fire a painting laser, damage 0
ML - Lens flare effect for core charging, damage 0, charging time 75 frames. Charging initiates after the core shield has fully opened
ML - Extra lens flare effect during main laser fire.
Tesla - Main laser fire effect, damage 0
Beamer - Main weapon beam, for visual effect and act as a narrower beam in cool down
Beamer - Wider main weapon beam
Shock beamer - Flash effect, damage 20
Shock beamer - Main weapon beam visual enhance, damage 0

Apart from the first 2 MLs, all other weapons fire at the same time.

The timing is as follows:
0-320 frame -> Core shield opens
320-395 (duration 75) -> Charging effect
395-545 (duration 150) -> Weapon firing
545 - 585 (duration 40) -> Weapon cool down (only the narrow beamer and the 2nd ML active at this stage)
585 - 905 (duration 320) -> Core shield close.


I have got the animation fully functional. But I am at a lost how to implement triggering to trigger all the weapons in accordance of the firing sequence, and most importantly, how to activate the animation and prevent it from re-opening prematurely.

The settings for the animation had already used up the advance and retract delays and I cannot prevent it from immediately reopening after fully closed. I don't know if triggering can help.

I did some sandboxing, and found that "trigger off" has no apparent use. It cannot be use to stop, reset or disable a rotation nor movement. Once a rotation is enabled, I cannot found a way to disable it. It'd loop forever.

I cannot find a way to disable weapons using trigger off and with mode set to shooting nor enable/disable either.

If I set the first ML to activate the core shield opening sequence, activate the weapon, and after the weapon fire the shield closes due to delay of retraction; I cannot find a way then to stop the shield from re-opening itself prematurely before the weapon finish reloading; since trigger off does not work.

Anyone knows how this can be done, and know how to use trigger off? Thanks very much
Last edited by AnnihilatorX on Mon Feb 02, 2009 1:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
D00D!
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Post by D00D! »

I'm not entirely sure how to do it either but there is a fairly basic ship that uses a basic weapon-based trigger called Pendulum packaged in the downloads.
It's a fairly basic recoil trigger but it works so try studying it.

Past that and I can't help you since I'm struggling to get it working without bugs.
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AnnihilatorX
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Post by AnnihilatorX »

Thanks, I'll look into it.

It's strange how trigger 1 and 2 are both set to the same thing.
AnnihilatorX
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Posts: 116
Joined: Sat Mar 01, 2008 3:49 am

Post by AnnihilatorX »

Thanks very much. Finally I can get the main cannon to work as I intended:

http://hiyukihome.110mb.com/roland/TridentExodus.sb4

I've attached my sb4 file for anyone who want to see how complex linking and triggering works.
Link delay is a bit bugged. Apparently the child turret must have a reload time equal or greater than link delay for the proper delay timing to work.
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