making the sprite work

hey guys,

I'm back again with another issue. I just can't ever finish these plug-ins as I always get more ideas. Anyway I'm working one making a Kamakaze fighter weapon. The weapon itself is working, I have it set as a guided missile and I'm using a viper sprite as the image. The problem I'm having is that the sprite wont always point the right direction. Let me try and explain. Some angles I fire it at will cause the "ship" to come out backwards or sideways or whatever, and instead of correcting itself to fly strait it just assumes that that is strait and carries on like that.

So far I've tried changing the sprite file from 108 frames to 36 with no effect, I've tried playing around with the firing position, moving it from center of ship to all other positions also to no effect. I briefly tried playing around with the firing at a certain angle option but that didn't seem to do anything either, although I only tried it at 0 degrees.

I just don't understand why this sprite would work in this manner when a normal missile or anything else adapts to whatever angle your firing at and flies strait.

As always I would GREATLY appreciate any help you guys can provide!

Thanks again;

Geoff

QUOTE (Arringfray @ May 17 2010, 12:02 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

hey guys,

I'm back again with another issue. I just can't ever finish these plug-ins as I always get more ideas. Anyway I'm working one making a Kamakaze fighter weapon. The weapon itself is working, I have it set as a guided missile and I'm using a viper sprite as the image. The problem I'm having is that the sprite wont always point the right direction. Let me try and explain. Some angles I fire it at will cause the "ship" to come out backwards or sideways or whatever, and instead of correcting itself to fly strait it just assumes that that is strait and carries on like that.

So far I've tried changing the sprite file from 108 frames to 36 with no effect, I've tried playing around with the firing position, moving it from center of ship to all other positions also to no effect. I briefly tried playing around with the firing at a certain angle option but that didn't seem to do anything either, although I only tried it at 0 degrees.

I just don't understand why this sprite would work in this manner when a normal missile or anything else adapts to whatever angle your firing at and flies strait.

As always I would GREATLY appreciate any help you guys can provide!

Thanks again;

Geoff

FYI: A screenshot might be helpful.

I'm no expert, but for starters you were right to remove the extra frames in the ship sprite; (guys, correct me if I'm wrong but) WEAP sprites can't handle extra frames like banking.

Check which flags you have checked in the WEAP resource.

Also, investigate the weapon's SPIN resource.

There are two ways to do this that I know of. The first way is simply to make it a guided missile. You do have to eliminate the banking frames for that approach. This is simpler, but not as cool.

The second approach would be to carry the ship as a key carried fighter, and give it one weapon that does whatever damage you desire, but destroys the firing ship in the process. Look in the Nova Bible, it will give you the values to put in. This method is a bit superior in my mind because you can launch the fighters, have them escort you, and decide to die when you choose to hit the fire button, instead of launching them like missiles, as well as being able to handle banking frames. Cooler, but more complicated, though not much.

Give your weapon Inaccuracy of -4 and flag it to Fire Simultaneously and give it an exit point of From Center of Ship. Then give it Speed 300 and Count 300. Buy 90 of them. Fire once. Now you can see why the ship is facing the wrong direction sometimes.

thanks for all the replies everyone!

It turns out that I had fixed it with the change in the sprite from 108 to 36 but I had made the correction in my back-up copy and not the plug-in in the plug-ins folder...smacks self on head.... Anyway I swapped it and sure enough, everything is working ok now.

So thanks again for the help guys and next time I'll try not to be such a dunce

Geoff

I thought of another reason why kamikaze fighters as key carried ships are superior. Guided missiles have a set life-span, after which the shot detonates or expires. A fighter, in reality, would not do that. So, having a suicide bomber would really be the ultimate guided missile, since you would launch, fire, and watch it zip around as long as necessary until hitting the target, no range necessary.

While I agree with krug that the carried fighter method is mostly superior, there is one thing the AI does that screws it up: they don't fly at the target. They get in range, open up with guns, and drift by. Rarely do they get up close and personal with their target. It's possible the AI would do it in this case because their suicide weapon would have such a sort range, but I can't say for sure. You could also just give the missile a REALLY long count so they'd inevitably hit since the AI can't dodge. You'd also need to make sure the AI didn't use the weapon, though. Players would dodge, and it'd seem weird to see a fighter explode when nothing hits it.

Ya I was thinking along the same lines as Darthkey as well. I figured that either the fighters would never hit or they would explode prematurely which is why I opted for the guided missile version. The other problem with making them as actually ships would be if you had other escorts, as when you told your fighter to attack then the other ships would attack as well which could pose other problems. I saw this as a long range tactical weapon which would weaken your enemy before you sent in your other ships.

The biggest advantage I can see to using actual fighters would be the call back option in case you misfired or changed your mind on the target, but I think I still like the guided missile version as it's easier and gives you more customization options.

Give the fighter a 0 inaccuracy beam weapon with a range of 1 pixel, set to self destruct. It should prevent the fighter from going off too early.