[MOD] The Vindicator (Animated Artillery Beam)

[slowriderxcorps]

Made an account so I could share this outside of the FTL subreddit.

Ever wondered what the Artillery Beam was going to look like initially? Well thanks to files that were left in the standard game after being scrapped, you can. This mod takes two unused files and makes a couple of minor graphical and textual tweaks in order to animate the nose of the Federation Cruiser to reflect the charge status of the Artillery Beam.

Video of a test of the graphics (odd-coloured pixels were fixed): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA-tqjJQWLM

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?z66yk5194agf7k0
Alternate Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wrdjoiqrmnllc ... icator.ftl

Side-note: I'd love to also put up the full collaboration of all the minor aesthetic tweaks I've done over the past month, but I'm not sure since it uses graphics from diversityMod, and even if the author of that mod (liakad) said it was okay to use them, I'm not so sure...

[TheNewbie]

I really don't understand why they removed those animations. They look so good.

[speedoflight]

Ow, thats nice. I assume u can make custom animated artillery spots right? (but i am thinking.. it will be very tedious.. to place the weapon exactly in the firing point of the sprite..).

[slowriderxcorps]

I really don't understand why they removed those animations. They look so good.

Well as I found out shortly after making the mod, I found out that weapons aren't rendered when you make an FTL jump. So as a result I put a semi-transparent graphic of the beam back atop where it appears so that the silhouette of the ship isn't blatantly broken when jumping.

As for why it was removed, here's Justin Ma's response to the subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/ftlgame/comment ... ot/c9m0prm

[NewAgeOfPower]

Hey man, I never got around to telling you I really liked your mod.

How would one go around animating the Arty for a custom ship?

[slowriderxcorps]

Hey man, I never got around to telling you I really liked your mod.

How would one go around animating the Arty for a custom ship?

Hmm.. It certainly wouldn't be easy, and would necessitate creating new weapon graphics that resemble the part of the ship you want to animate. The thing to remember is that the weapon graphics will appear below the ship in terms of layer order, so unless your ship graphics have some degree of transparency where the beam will be placed, you won't see it at all. At the same time though, just making that part of the ship graphic completely blank is bad as weapons aren't rendered when making FTL jumps, leaving your ship looking.. incomplete.

[NewAgeOfPower]

Mind if I use your mod as a template? I think I've gotten this figured out : ]

[slowriderxcorps]

Mind if I use your mod as a template? I think I've gotten this figured out : ]

Sure you can! In seeing this pop up, it reminded me that since its release, I made some slight tweaks to it in its integration with my main mod, the sM Polish Kit. A couple of minor touches to make it look a little smarter. This standalone mod has now been updated with the revised graphics.

[Estel]

This nice little mod doesn't seem to work properly with AE:
http://s16.postimg.org/scmymn4sz/fed_b.jpg

Any chances for updated release?

Cheers,
/Estel

[slowriderxcorps]

This nice little mod doesn't seem to work properly with AE:
http://s16.postimg.org/scmymn4sz/fed_b.jpg

Any chances for updated release?

Cheers,
/Estel

The animated Artillery Beam was integrated into the sM Polish Kit as well as my EngiB None Man Army mod. The mod has almost been fully readapted for AE, so if you want to get it working, give that a shot and tell me what you think (since nobody seems to be giving me any feedback.. )

Alternatively, you can find the lines that were added within the code for AE that defined where the Floor Layouts were placed and implement them in manually. Right now, I've gott too much on my hands to help immediately..