Yet another question...

I'm working on an idea brought up in a weapon idea thread. Basicaly it's a rocket that jumps into the system and attacks the player.

I enlarged and modified the emp torpedo spin for use as a ship sprite, gave it an invisible high damage/ close range/ short life weapon, and the only thing that's giving me trouble is the fact that the rocket doesn't destroy itself in the explosion. I can send the plug to anyone willing to look it over for me, I just can't figure out why it won't work.
(I'm attatching a pic of the weap resource)

Attached File(s)

• ResEdit.gif (26.51K)
  Number of downloads: 63

Can't see anything I could suggest. Just to make sure: the rocket has less shields and armor than the weapon effect, or doesn't it?

I would tend to be pragmatic, and give the ammo field a value of -999, that may work...

Pace (haldora- said:

,Sep 24 2004, 08:43 AM)
Can't see anything I could suggest. Just to make sure: the rocket has less shields and armor than the weapon effect, or doesn't it?
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The rocket has the same amount of sheilds and armor as the weapons damage, but for some reason the rockets frag me but don't get damaged at all by the blast.

Zacha Pedro, on Sep 24 2004, 01:05 PM, said:

I would tend to be pragmatic, and give the ammo field a value of -999, that may work...
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I tried it, but now the rockets explode in a tiny fireball and don't do any damage to me. What exactly does the -999 do?

-999 ammotype: ship blows up to fire.

For the first question: did you make sure that it doesn't have the "doesn't hurt firing ship" flag checked? Is the blast radius large enough to cover the missile?

You might try (with the non -999 ammotype attempt) buying such a missile ship yourself and attacking things.

Have you tried a negative armor recharge for the rocket ship?

Perhaps the fact that its a turreted weapon affects the self-damaging bit?

Wyvern, on Sep 24 2004, 07:59 PM, said:

-999 ammotype: ship blows up to fire.

For the first question: did you make sure that it doesn't have the "doesn't hurt firing ship" flag checked? Is the blast radius large enough to cover the missile?

You might try (with the non -999 ammotype attempt) buying such a missile ship yourself and attacking things.
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Yeah, that flag was never checked, and when I bought the ship, I was able to blow myself up perfectly. I'm thinking it might be something to do with the mission I used to send the ships after the player. If the SpecialShip goal is set to "Destroy all ships", would that mean they can't destroy themselves?

SpacePirate, on Sep 24 2004, 08:19 PM, said:

Have you tried a negative armor recharge for the rocket ship?
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The negative armor recharge didn't do anything. Does it mean the armor slowly goes down on its own? Because the problem is that the rocket doesn't take ANY damage from its own weapon.

(EDIT)

brindyblitz, on Sep 25 2004, 12:44 AM, said:

Perhaps the fact that its a turreted weapon affects the self-damaging bit?
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Well, I tried changing it to a front quadrant turret, then to an unguided, but neither changed anything.
(/EDIT)

This post has been edited by Picquilarius : 24 September 2004 - 08:50 PM

EDIT: Nevermind.

This post has been edited by orcaloverbri9 : 24 September 2004 - 09:21 PM

A negative armor recharge should make the ship slowly die. At least, I think it is a negative armor recharge...

I think what we're learning is that AI ships cannot be hurt by their own attacks... Unfortunate if true.

~ SP

SpacePirate, on Sep 25 2004, 01:58 AM, said:

I think what we're learning is that AI ships cannot be hurt by their own attacks... Unfortunate if true.
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Have you tried to modify one of the stock weapons by adding the -999 to see if it works? In Override, as a test because people said the AI would never fire a weapon that could make a ship destroy itself, I modified the hunter missile with the -999 value, and when I test ran it, I saw that every UE warship were blowing up because they fired the hunter missile.

So, I decided to take that modified weapon resource and change its I.D. and stuff, that's how I was able to make the Kamikaze Drone plug-in. I wonder if this method will work on Nova.

Coraxus, on Sep 25 2004, 07:09 AM, said:

Have you tried to modify one of the stock weapons by adding the -999 to see if it works? In Override, as a test because people said the AI would never fire a weapon that could make a ship destroy itself, I modified the hunter missile with the -999 value, and when I test ran it, I saw that every UE warship were blowing up because they fired the hunter missile.

So, I decided to take that modified weapon resource and change its I.D. and stuff, that's how I was able to make the Kamikaze Drone plug-in. I wonder if this method will work on Nova.
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Well, I gave the rocket's weapon the -999 and it blows itself up real nice. It's just that it doesn't do anything else BUT blow itself up. I also tried giving it 2 weapons, one with 1 life that has the -999, and one with slightly longer range that frags the player, but that didn't work out either.

Alternate notion: Don't try to make the ship blow up at all. Instead, give it an invisible sprite and make it untargetable. Then, give it a super missile (1 ammo), and check the run away when out of ammo flag so you don't end up cluttering the system with invisible ships that don't go away. (Note: don't make it invisible until you're sure its behavior is what you want!)

Plus side: You now have this oversized missile as a normal weapon that can be used by other things.

It's supposed to blow up, but as long as the weapon itself was fired, did the weapon itself fire? If so, then try increasing the range of the explosion radius, also if need be, try to increase the speed of the flying rockets as well.

You can download my Kamikaze Plug-In, and check the ratio stat of weapon damage, and explosion radius...Yes, I know its for Override, but you can try to get an idea from it. The only thing to worry is the Nova game engine.

I'm not really up on plug building, but could you give this ship a weapon with a sprite that looks exactly like it, but is a guided missile, then have the explode on firing flag (or whatever) checked? If the ship had no explosion when destroyed, it might look like it jumped into the system, then just started tracking on its enemy once it got there.

MickyBIs

MickyBIs, on Sep 27 2004, 12:20 AM, said:

I'm not really up on plug building, but could you give this ship a weapon with a sprite that looks exactly like it, but is a guided missile, then have the explode on firing flag (or whatever) checked? If the ship had no explosion when destroyed, it might look like it jumped into the system, then just started tracking on its enemy once it got there.

MickyBIs
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That may be what I have to do, but it wouldn't be nearly as cool. Is there a way to make a weapon have infinite range?

Picquilarius, on Sep 27 2004, 10:57 PM, said:

That may be what I have to do, but it wouldn't be nearly as cool. Is there a way to make a weapon have infinite range?
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No, but 32567 should do for pretty much any case. That's over 30 screen widths, for some perspective.

~ SpacePirate

Picquilarius, on Sep 25 2004, 04:35 AM, said:

Well, I gave the rocket's weapon the -999 and it blows itself up real nice. It's just that it doesn't do anything else BUT blow itself up. I also tried giving it 2 weapons, one with 1 life that has the -999, and one with slightly longer range that frags the player, but that didn't work out either.
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Increase the mass (and possibly death delay) of the rocket/ship. This way, the only thing the weapon needs to do is trigger death for the ship. (It doesn't need to actually do any damage). The explosion of the ship will do all of the damage itself.

If the self destroying weapon itself doesn't work, why not try having the weapon fire an invisible, self-destroying weapon that may or may not deal its damage to whatever it is attacking, then submuntion instantly into the massive damage dealing weapon.

Because evidently when you fire an AmmoType -999, a weapon sprite is never created at all.

What about giving it a primary weapon with extremely high range that does what you actually want, and marking the self-destroying weapon secondary? Maybe it'll get a shot off first before it dies that way.

-reg

This post has been edited by Regulus : 29 September 2004 - 10:40 PM