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Originally posted by Guy:
**- Someone mentioned having ship firing animations for only certain weapons, so here's my method. Add these flags to the shän resource: 0x0200 - Ship unfolds when firing guns (weapons of ExitType 0), 0x0400 - Ship unfolds when firing turrets, 0x0800 - Ship unfolds when firing guided weapons, 0x1000 - Ship unfolds when firing beams, 0x2000 - Ship unfolds when firing other weapons (ExitType -1). The 0x0080 flag would be "Ship unfolds when firing specific weapons" - a rect at the end of the shän resource would be used to enter the IDs of up to four specific weapons.
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As an addition to this, weapon glows would allow multiple sets within the sprite and the shän would include a SetCount field along with the rest of the weapon glow stuff. This would allow for small animations when weapons are fired. There would be some flags to allow you to play the whole animation with each shot or to just show one frame and cycle through them shot by shot.
If we also include a Delay field in the wëap resource you could have an animation for a weapon charging up to fire.
- phën resource. A phenomenon resource would allow you to create strange objects within systems with special properties without wasting spöb resources - things like this have been mentioned a number of times before and this is just my explanation. The phën resource would allow you to pick a sprite and animation options much the same as a spöb would. It would have fields such as gravity (or mass as somone suggested) and damage (these fields could then be removed from the spöb resource). The damage would occur when you fly over the phenomenon; a value of -1 would make it lethal. There would be a field allowing you to specify where it lies within the parallax scrolling starfield - positive values to appear somewhere in the depths of the starfield scrolling slowly, 0 to keep it in line with spöbs, or negative values to make it appear above everything else scrolling faster than things below it. It would also include a flag to have it targetable as a stellar or not - you could create some kind of entity living in space which you could hail and talk to :).
- EnginePower. Instead of an Acceleration field in shďp resources have an EnginePower field. The ship's acceleration would be calculated by taking into account the ship's mass including any outfits and cargo currently onboard.
This would also make tractor beams work better if it was used instead of mass - you would no longer find destroyers with powerful engines being dragged along by a bulk freighter with wimpy engines. Or even better, convert the engine power and current heading of the two ships into vectors and add them together to find the resultant speed and direction. This way, two ships could pull in opposite directions and find themselves going slowly the way of the ship with the greater engine power, rather than going the full speed of the one with the greater mass.
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(This message has been edited by Guy (edited 01-29-2004).)
