how would I create one?

I thought it would be kinda fun to design a new weapon. I don't have much experience with this, other then making beamed weapons and Nova makes that quite easy. So I thought I would make the Pulse Phaser Cannon normally found on the defiant class ships from star trek.

So with that said I'm trying to figure out how to do it. What I want to have it do is fire from 2 different exit points (IE both sides of the ship, kinda like the Mod Starbridge,) at the same time; however, I would want it so that if just one of the two energy packets hit then only one would issue damage and the other would just miss. I know I could just make a sprite file with 2 energy packets but if I did that then it wouldn't make a difference if one or two hit as the weapon would do the same damage.

I was looking through the weap resource and saw something about burst mode and multiple weapons fire at same time. So I was wondering if I gave a ship 2 of these weapons, set 2 exit points and had them fire at the same time would this give me the desired effect? If not then is there any other way you guys can think of for me to accomplish what I'm after?

As always thank you guys very much for any and all help you can provide

Geoff

QUOTE (Arringfray @ Apr 27 2010, 06:55 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

So I was wondering if I gave a ship 2 of these weapons, set 2 exit points and had them fire at the same time would this give me the desired effect?

I believe this should work. Try it out and let us know. You want to pick an exit type for the weapon, say Gun Exit Points. Each ship has four exit points for each exit type, so you want to set two of them to be the same point on the left side of the ship and two of them to be the same point on the right side of the ship. Say, (-20, 0, 0) and (20, 0, 0).

You might need to make the ship have four of the weapons, because otherwise it might fire two at a time from “different” exit points that are on top of each other. I don’t know for sure. It might even be that firing multiple weapons simultaneously makes them all leave the same exit point. I have not tested this, but it will be very easy for you to test it.

In fact, you could easily make several different version of the weapons and one ship, and then test them all in-game one after the other and let us know the results.

Edit: you do not want to use “fires from closest exit point to target” so make sure that is not checked in the weapon.

And if firing simultaneously doesn’t work out, you can approximate the behavior with reload 0, burst reload whatever you want to reload to be, and burstcount 2.

Whichever method you pick, the effect this will have is if you let the player buy more than the stock number of copies of the weapon, it will not make the pairs of shots get fired faster.

If you want that to happen, it can be done with submunitions, but if you want the shots to be parallel you will need on shot to fire from the center of the ship, submunition after 1 frame into two shots at -90º, and each of those to submunition after 1 frame into one shot going forward. So a little tricky.

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 27 April 2010 - 08:29 AM

I've been doing extensive testing with weapon configurations for HOTS. Arringfray, as usual, Qaanol was right the first time. Set the weapons to fire simultaneously and that will do the trick. Also, make sure the exit points you picked for the weapon alternate sides. By this, I mean the first point should be on one side, the next on the other, the third on the first side, and the last back on the second side. This way the weapons will never fire from the same side.

Also, while you can allow the player to buy more than one of the weapon, doing so will cause the weapon to fire from both sides as normal, but also have more shots under one/both sides, depending on how many the player has. Example:

If the player has only one weapon, the weapon will fire from one side at a time. Two weapons gives it the 'Defiant Phaser' look. Three will have the same look as two, but one side will do more damage than the other because it's actually firing two shots rather than one. Four will double the damage of two, but otherwise look the same. Additional weapons will just add another shot to one/both sides.

Also, in honor of the epic-ness that is the Defiant Class of Federation Starship, I thought it would be good to post these images:

Sorry for any slowed load times, these are just too awesome not to post.

This post has been edited by darthkev : 27 April 2010 - 09:57 AM

QUOTE (Arringfray @ Apr 27 2010, 06:55 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I know I could just make a sprite file with 2 energy packets but if I did that then it wouldn't make a difference if one or two hit as the weapon would do the same damage.

This is how it was done in the only plug-in I've ever seen that fully replicated USS Defiant. Yes, it did the same amount of damage whether both hit or just one, but that didn't seem to be an issue; it's a relatively small ship, so they weren't very far apart, and usually if one hit the other did as well.

Of course, that was back in EV Override days. In EV Nova , the really elegant solution will involve multiple exit points as others have been describing.

I actually sat down and made a whole Defiant plug a year or so back. I haven't posted it because I borrowed the graphics from SFA and STN. However, I can confirm that while you do not need two weapons to make the weapon fire from multiple exit points, it does make the weapon fire more reliably from both exit points with two of them. I did, however, make mine a 90 degree forward shooting turret. Shoot me a PM with your e-mail and I'll send you a copy of what I've got.

thanks everyone for the posts. I used the mod starbridge as my testing platform as I already knew it had 2 working exit points. With 2 weapons equipped and the setting "Multiple weapons fire at the same time" turned on it does fire from both sides, thus creating a dual firing weapon that allows for only one packet to hit and the other to miss.. I then played around with the burst feature and have it set to fire 3 packets and then need to reload.

So all in all it's working well. Thanks again for all your help and input guys, it's greatly appreciated!

Geoff

Nice little thread. I'm taking the liberty of making Modesty's Carrier function similar to how it does in Starcraft (hopefully neater) and the info here helped me give the interceptors double blasts. It doesn't seem like it will be hard as I already have multiple ideas of how to make it work. Can't say when I'll finish it because I won't be testing it until I've finished with my other stuff.