Structure of a Beam

In my quest to find the "perfect beam", I conducted a study of 16 beams.
The stats for each beam is in the .txt file, recommended to import into Excel.

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Highway of Life said:

Can you change the way a beam looks?
Basically, can I go into Nova somewhere and be able to insert a graphic that makes a tractor beam look like a tractor beam? instead of a straight beam with a width from the beginning to end a set width.

Also, is there a way to change the way the transparency and glow looks?

Here it is in pictures...
This is how a current beam looks:

How do I make a tractor beam like this:

And a beam look like this:

This post has been edited by Highway of Life : 20 January 2006 - 04:26 PM

Use weap sprites instead of beams.

Alternately, this topic would be of much greater help to you.

This post has been edited by rmx256 : 16 January 2006 - 07:25 AM

Try this for the first one:

Make the "beam" weapon the shiny thing that you see at the base. Make it an unguided turret and sub into a small piece of the beam you want, and make this sub into itself. Use the SubLimit field to control the maximum length of the beam. To get the proper effect, make subs fail when it expires and give it a ProxRadius of 32767 so that it subs instantly but fails at a certain length or when hitting the target.

Oh, and set the sub to have the explosion you want.

This post has been edited by orcaloverbri9 : 21 January 2006 - 10:18 AM

rmx256, on Jan 16 2006, 06:24 AM, said:

Use weap sprites instead of beams.

Alternately, this topic would be of much greater help to you.
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That is topic is quite a bit of help, thanks for the link.
How would I make a beam a weapon sprite?

orcaloverbri9, thanks for the info, its a little confusing right now, but I'm sure I'll understand what you're talking about when I get into the weapon res and work with it a bit.
I'm assuming the 'sub' field is in the weapon resource?

In relation to the topic..

Is it possible to make a completely circular beam?

I have other questions...

well, you could make a weapon with a very large, completely circular sprite, and make it refire instantly and give it a lifetime of 1.

orcaloverbri9, on Jan 16 2006, 09:32 AM, said:

Try this for the first one:

Make the "beam" weapon the shiny thing that you see at the base. Make it an unguided turret and sub into a small piece of the beam you want, and make this sub into itself. Use the SubTheta field to control the maximum length of the beam. To get the proper effect, make subs fail when it expires and give it a ProxRadius of 32767 so that it subs instantly but fails at a certain length or when hitting the target.

Oh, and set the sub to have the explosion you want.
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I just understood what you said. That would work I think but would it would look weird if the ship you were targetting moved, and then the beam would look cut?
Or would it somehow stay intact for a full unbroken stream?

This post has been edited by Highway of Life : 17 January 2006 - 12:03 AM

Well, since the shots sub instantly, it should expire instantly, so I would think it would look like a normal beam.

While the negative impact would still cause the Tractor-Sprite-Based-Weapon™ to draw its target toward the firing ship, it would not cause the ship to "lock on" the way actual beams with negative impact do.

Ie. the sprite-based version would pull stuff toward you, but the real beam-version distinguishes between the heavier ship and the lighter one, and locks the lighter ship to the heavier one, even if the lighter one is firing the weapon. However, you might actually prefer the "always sucks" effect, because it truly is attracting the tartget, rather than chaining the two ships together.

Sprites can be masked to be transparent in the center, yes?

Yes.

Edwin_again, on Jan 16 2006, 10:44 PM, said:

well, you could make a weapon with a very large, completely circular sprite, and make it refire instantly and give it a lifetime of 1.
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I am talking about a beam weapon.
What you say, I'm guessing would probably work, but I want a beam

Incidentally...
If you had a turreted beam with negative recoil;
when it was fired, would it go straight forward, or in the direction of the turret?

Recoil is always front/back with respect to the ship. Has nothing to do with the angle of fire.

An unfolds-to fire would work, but would make an uncomfortably large sprite. It is my experience that performance greatly suffers when a small(ish) ship has an unfolds that is more than twice the size of the unfolded ship- I can slow from 27 frames per second to 5 or 6 when a large unfolds to fire ship is in system, but more than one does not do any greater damage, which I find odd.

Qaanol, on Jan 18 2006, 07:02 PM, said:

Recoil is always front/back with respect to the ship. Has nothing to do with the angle of fire.
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Drat! One perfectly good ship idea down the drain!

Unless...

Is there some other way of moving a ship via weapon (Non "front to back")?

I did a study on Beam structures, testing 16 beams with various sizes and colors to help you see which options I chose.

The next post contains the last two screenshots, and the xml file.

beam1.jpg (5.74K)
Number of downloads: 52 beam2.jpg (4.49K)
Number of downloads: 35 beam3.jpg (3.41K)
Number of downloads: 46 beam4.jpg (3.78K)
Number of downloads: 47
beam5.jpg (3.4K)
Number of downloads: 34 beam6.jpg (2.87K)
Number of downloads: 41 beam7.jpg (2.71K)
Number of downloads: 38 beam8.jpg (3.32K)
Number of downloads: 44
beam9.jpg (5.58K)
Number of downloads: 38 beam10.jpg (7.02K)
Number of downloads: 47 beam11.jpg (8.81K)
Number of downloads: 47 beam12.jpg (14.19K)
Number of downloads: 50
beam13.jpg (16.88K)
Number of downloads: 61 beam14.jpg (16.59K)
Number of downloads: 61

Last two attachments, plus a tab-delimited file.

beam15.jpg (9.98K)
Number of downloads: 50 beam16.jpg (10.59K)
Number of downloads: 51 beams.txt (6.62K)
Number of downloads: 37

Looking pretty good. Have you tried negative inaccuracy?

No, interesting...
Is that an allowed value?

EV Nova bible said:

Inaccuracy The weapon's inaccuracy as it leaves the ship (ignored for guidance-10 point defense beams) 0 Fires straight 1 and up Fires with up to this amount of inaccuracy (in degrees)

This post has been edited by Highway of Life : 20 January 2006 - 04:04 PM

It should make the beams be spaced regularly. For instance, -10 inaccuracy should make the beams appear in 10-degree increments.