[C.Weapon Designs/Ideas] Rod's Heap of Weapon Designs

[AquaRegisteel]

Well, I succeeded in turning your cell-charged laser into a fully-functioning beam weapon I'll post some screencaps and details about it tomorrow when I have more time, but I love what I made out of your spritework

[rodprior700]

@Sleeper Service
I see. It's a good thing FTL can deal with that, but my memory seems to be mistaken. I could've sworn it worked like this time ago... . Anyways, I'll do my best to get those issues fixed to make the weapons more mod-friendly. Just one thing, should all the sprites (idle, charging, firing) be directly vertically or should they be in their own line? FTL isn't really cooperating with me to get the answer. After I find out I'll fix that with all of the current weapons and then continue on new designs with these details in mind. Thanks!

[rodprior700]

@AquaRegisteel

That's great to hear, since I didn't know how compatible the sprites would be with the game upon seeing Sleeper Service's comment on the designs. Nice work, can't wait to see it in-game.

[rodprior700]

Update 20/07/2017
I'm working on a new weapon, it's got a lot of frames to work on so it'll take a bit of time to get up and running. Current version is not FTL usable, since I don't know how I could fit these frames together. Can anybody tell me how to get the frames to fit for in-game function? Red = idle Green = firing Blue = charging
Once they're fixed, I'll place them on the main post.

how_can_a_space_gun_use_mags.png (20/07/2017)

how_can_a_space_gun_use_mags_3xzoom.png (20/07/2017)

[Sleeper Service]

Ok I was mistaken previously, FTL does indeed arrange its sprites horizontally (been a while since I looked at FTL anims ). However, typically the weapons need to be oriented upwards. You can do this with the rotate tool in gimp. Here's how FTL weapons sheets typically look like:

They can be of any length but from my experience really complex, long sheets with 30+ frames can cause problems. But the space gun should still be ok. Some more points:
Each frame of the anim has to be the same size.
For the space gun the frames where no mags are involved should be larger with blank space around them. FTL cant deal with multiples sheets for one weapons or weapons sheets where frames are different sizes for certain parts of the animation. Essentially the main body of the weapon needs to be in the same place for each frame.
When a weapon fires multiple shots it goes cycles throught he frames after the charged frame multiple times, once for each shot. That matter if you want to do complex stuff like reload animations. Essentially the reloading must be part of the fire cycle, or the mag can't be ejected during the fire cycle. If the reload animation is part of the charge anim and the mag is ejected during the fire cycle it will just re-appear for the next shot. You'll probably want to learn how to put the anims into the game if you want to make sure that they can actually work as intended.

Your animation phases are correct.
As you have probably observed from the weapons in game, they can have charge up, charged and firing frames. You got that down nicely. FTL knows what parts of the animation is which by telling it the frames that are the charged frame. The charged state of the weapon can only be one frame. FTL also needs to get told a fire frame to know at which point of the anim it should spawn the weapons projectile. For reference, this is how FTL gets told these data:

Code: Select all

<weaponAnim name="ba_laser_burst_scatter_2">
   <sheet>ba_laser_burst_scatter_2</sheet>
   <desc length="12" x="0" y="0"/>
   <chargedFrame>5</chargedFrame>
   <fireFrame>8</fireFrame>
   <firePoint  x="15" y="8"/>
   <mountPoint x="4" y="36"/>
</weaponAnim>

<weaponAnim name="ba_beam_bo">
   <sheet>ba_beam_bo</sheet>
   <desc length="8" x="0" y="0"/>
   <chargedFrame>1</chargedFrame>
   <fireFrame>2</fireFrame>
   <firePoint  x="17" y="16"/>
   <mountPoint x="5" y="67"/>
   <chargeImage>weapons/ba_beam_bo_glow.png</chargeImage>
</weaponAnim>

These are the weaponAnim data bits for the two weapon sheets posted above. Note that the second one, the beam weapon, uses a glow image to visualize the weapon charging, instead of an animation. The glow image is faded in as the weapon charges and becomes transparrent again when the weapon is fired. You won't need that for the stuff you are currently doing, just thought it might be worth mentioning that this exists as well.

Looking at the vanilla stuff can clear things up more.
You can use Slipstream Mod Manger to extract FTLs files. This will give you access to the anim sheets, like the one above, and to the data files that tell FTL how to handle the individual graphics.

Ok enough waffling, have fun making those weaps!

[rodprior700]

I believe I got it right this time. I've also remade the charging animation because of... how complicated it would actually be to make the mag anim. coughlazynesscough
Horizontal starter
All three mixed
2x zoom ATM

[rodprior700]

Update 20/07/2017 #2
Added new weapon 'mag_fed_lasergun'. All three required stages for it's usage are in one spreadsheet.
1 more weapon should come out today.

[rodprior700]

Update 20/07/2017 #3 Final
Created my most complicated weapon yet, the Radioactive Artillery . Full charging, idle and firing in main post.
Developing flak projectiles for it's use within FTL. Will update tomorrow, as it's just the normal flak projectiles in bright green.... if I can find the flak projectives within the modmanager extracted game files

[Lamina]

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[mr_easy_money]

Update 20/07/2017 #3 Final
Created my most complicated weapon yet, the Radioactive Artillery . Full charging, idle and firing in main post.
Developing flak projectiles for it's use within FTL. Will update tomorrow, as it's just the normal flak projectiles in bright green.... if I can find the flak projectives within the modmanager extracted game files

If you haven't found then yet, there called:

shotgun_glow.png
shotgun_2_glow.png

Unless I'm blundering and those are for the charge.

those are the images for the weapon itself, not the projectiles.

the projectiles are found when extracting resource.dat -> img folder -> weapons folder -> they're called as follows:

• debris_large_strip_3.png
• debris_med_strip_5.png
• debris_small_strip_6.png

searching dlcAnimations.xml (after extracting data.dat -> data folder) for the images gives you the animation data, and searching dlcBlueprints.xml for the name of the anims shows you how it's used (here, the first two are used as the actual damage dealing projectiles, while the last one, the small one, as the fake distraction stuff)