[Tutorial] New Guide on creating weapons

[kestrelfan]

ce on my cpu is broken

You may want to provide further details in the dedicated topic.

i have :/

[Auron1]

I am building an Ion beam (yes, for science!), but I was wondering one thing about the animations. Using the "Pike Beam" as general ref., FTL beam weapons charge with their related glow.png becoming brighter every second → when they are at 100% FTL switches to the 2 second frame, the ready-to-fire image (the first frame is the weapon w/o power).
Is such behavior mandatory for all beams?
I mean, can I add a charging animation like lasers or am I forced to stick with the glow.png? Thanks

[RAD-82]

I am building an Ion beam (yes, for science!), but I was wondering one thing about the animations. Using the "Pike Beam" as general ref., FTL beam weapons charge with their related glow.png becoming brighter every second → when they are at 100% FTL switches to the 2 second frame, the ready-to-fire image (the first frame is the weapon w/o power).
Is such behavior mandatory for all beams?
I mean, can I add a charging animation like lasers or am I forced to stick with the glow.png? Thanks

No, you are not forced to use a glow.

If you want to see the power of an ion beam, check out my fleet. If you go down to the Jellybeam ship, you can find a link to a video by Biohazard063.

FTL doesn't play the same on every computer. When I developed that 1-length, 2-ion damage, 1-system damage, 1-shield-piercing beam seen in Biohazard's video, it would only hit shields twice on the computer I used, meaning it would only remove two layers of shields when I used it. When Biohazard uses it, you can see that it hits more than that, and will remove all shield layers from any ship. The continuous hits on shields is why the ion beam is considered overpowered.

[Auron1]

I am building an Ion beam (yes, for science!), but I was wondering one thing about the animations. Using the "Pike Beam" as general ref., FTL beam weapons charge with their related glow.png becoming brighter every second → when they are at 100% FTL switches to the 2 second frame, the ready-to-fire image (the first frame is the weapon w/o power).
Is such behavior mandatory for all beams?
I mean, can I add a charging animation like lasers or am I forced to stick with the glow.png? Thanks

No, you are not forced to use a glow.

If you want to see the power of an ion beam, check out my fleet. If you go down to the Jellybeam ship, you can find a link to a video by Biohazard063.

FTL doesn't play the same on every computer. When I developed that 1-length, 2-ion damage, 1-system damage, 1-shield-piercing beam seen in Biohazard's video, it would only hit shields twice on the computer I used, meaning it would only remove two layers of shields when I used it. When Biohazard uses it, you can see that it hits more than that, and will remove all shield layers from any ship. The continuous hits on shields is why the ion beam is considered overpowered.

Uuuh, interesting mod there! I'm going to check that out ASAP.
And thanks for replying. I can tell you that my Ion-laser is not meant to deal hull/sys. damage, but I have to decide how long it strikes...

[Auron1]

Someone needs to test it... for science!

Imagine an "Experimental Neural Stunner" of some sort that doesn't always work but when it does, it works hard. Might make for an interesting gimmick gun or ship strategy.

I have finished creating the weapon animations, now I need to draw the "explosion" effect. I am not sure how it will look like yet...

[Auron1]

Can anyone explain me how sounds and images work when writing the Blueprints.xml file?
With my previous laser I used in-game sounds, but for the new weapons I would like to use different ones. However, when checking FTL vanilla blueprints.xml and CE one, I noticed that often the sounds have strange names, apparently unrelated to the .ogg files.

[meklozz]

Can anyone explain me how sounds and images work when writing the Blueprints.xml file?
With my previous laser I used in-game sounds, but for the new weapons I would like to use different ones. However, when checking FTL vanilla blueprints.xml and CE one, I noticed that often the sounds have strange names, apparently unrelated to the .ogg files.

Check sounds.xml and dlcSounds.xml, if something like flak has sound like flak and flakImpact1, the files have tags pointing to ogg like:

Code: Select all

<!-- Flak weapon sound -->
<flak volume="10">weapons/bp_missile_large.ogg</flak>

or

Code: Select all

<flakImpact1 volume="10">dlc/AESFX_FlakImpact1.ogg</flakImpact1>

@edit
Also, this very guide explains this, if you write here, we should at least be able to assume you read the first post.

[Ferociousfeind]

I don't know if this is a dumb question or not (or if I even should be posting here), but can you have an array of images as the my_weapon_strip.png, instead of just one long line? e.g.

1 - 2 - 3 - 4
5 - 6 - 7 - 8
9 -10-11-12

instead of

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12

?

[Arfy]

I don't know if this is a dumb question or not (or if I even should be posting here), but can you have an array of images as the my_weapon_strip.png, instead of just one long line? e.g.

1 - 2 - 3 - 4
5 - 6 - 7 - 8
9 -10-11-12

instead of

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12

?

Hmm, nope -- has to be a line.

[Ferociousfeind]

I don't know if this is a dumb question or not (or if I even should be posting here), but can you have an array of images as the my_weapon_strip.png, instead of just one long line? e.g.

1 - 2 - 3 - 4
5 - 6 - 7 - 8
9 -10-11-12

instead of

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12

?

Hmm, nope -- has to be a line.

Alright, thanks.

And another issue, I've been trying to convert my_weapon.zip (example name) to my_weapon.ftl, but instead it keeps the .zip via my_weapon.ftl.zip. It lets me change the .zip to .abc (for example) and back to .zip, but it refuses to let me change any file extensions to .ftl

I've tried using ZipCleaner, but it doesn't appear to change anything (as in, still can't change .zip to .ftl)

This issue is relatively new, since I was able to freely convert any files I wanted between any extensions, "real" (like .zip or .abc) or "fake" (like .ftl or .foshizzle). Even the files I had been able to change, refuse to change back to .ftl if I change them to .zip, outside of ctrl+Z.