Questions here: an inquiry thread! [Updated Sep 15th, 2014]

[WhiteWeasel]

Hey, I have a question. When I use a mod I made for FTL, and then fire up a game without SMM, I still get the mod taking effect. Is that normal?

You actually don't have to launch FTL from SMM to play with your mods, as long as you've patched them. You can patch, decline its offer to run the game, close SMM, and then go launch it from your desktop or dock or taskbar or something. But to play vanilla again, you must load up SMM again and click patch with nothing checked. What you're doing is pretty much patching the backup of vanilla that SMM has made before you patched any mod, ever.

Ohhhh... An I thought I coded something wrong. Also my second question. How do I add a custom projectile sprite to my weapon, and can I have an image of one of the burst laser bolts to I can use it as a base?

[redstonetorches]

How do I add a custom projectile sprite to my weapon?

If you already know how to make a projectile animation, ignore this part:
Ok, so, for example, if you want to make a gun that shoots a nyan cat, you would take a picture of nyan cat off of the internet, scale it down to a normal projectile size (you just have to assume) in some sort of image manipulation program. If you wanted to make it so that nyan cat would run in flight, you would add multiple pictures side by side, like the frames of a gif.

Here's how to actually make your gun use that projectile:
The first step would be to add it to your animations.xml.append in your data folder. If you don't have an animations.xml.append sheet, here is what would be in one:

Code: Select all

<animSheet name="nyan_cat" w="480" h="40" fw="40" fh="40">weapons/nyan_projectile.png</animSheet>

<anim name="nyan_cat">
   <sheet>nyan_cat</sheet>
   <desc length="12" x="0" y="0"/>
   <time>0.2</time>

Next, you would go into your blueprints.xml.append where I assume you have already written the code for your weapon, and in the <image> tags you would write the name of your anim. I highly recommend you make the name of the animsheet and the anim the same.

Since I am not sure how to add an image to this you can download FTL UnPacker from somewhere in the forums and it will unpack your data.dat and resources.dat so that you can look at the game files and clarify anything that may not have made sense coming from me, and you can also go into the unpacked img folder and find the picture of a laser bolt (in the weapons subfolder) and edit that, and save it as a new one.

[WhiteWeasel]

How do I add a custom projectile sprite to my weapon?

If you already know how to make a projectile animation, ignore this part:
Ok, so, for example, if you want to make a gun that shoots a nyan cat, you would take a picture of nyan cat off of the internet, scale it down to a normal projectile size (you just have to assume) in some sort of image manipulation program. If you wanted to make it so that nyan cat would run in flight, you would add multiple pictures side by side, like the frames of a gif.

Here's how to actually make your gun use that projectile:
The first step would be to add it to your animations.xml.append in your data folder. If you don't have an animations.xml.append sheet, here is what would be in one:

Code: Select all

<animSheet name="nyan_cat" w="480" h="40" fw="40" fh="40">weapons/nyan_projectile.png</animSheet>

<anim name="nyan_cat">
   <sheet>nyan_cat</sheet>
   <desc length="12" x="0" y="0"/>
   <time>0.2</time>

Next, you would go into your blueprints.xml.append where I assume you have already written the code for your weapon, and in the <image> tags you would write the name of your anim. I highly recommend you make the name of the animsheet and the anim the same.

Since I am not sure how to add an image to this you can download FTL UnPacker from somewhere in the forums and it will unpack your data.dat and resources.dat so that you can look at the game files and clarify anything that may not have made sense coming from me, and you can also go into the unpacked img folder and find the picture of a laser bolt (in the weapons subfolder) and edit that, and save it as a new one.

Cool. I found a picture of the laser sprite. It has four laser bolts on them. Do I just edit all four? How does the game know to separate them if they are in one image?

Also for the life of me I can't figure out how to get my beam weapon with a custom sound to play.
-removed-

[redstonetorches]

Do I just edit all four?

That's what I was talking about for the gif thing, as the projectile flies, it will quickly switch through the four frames so that it's not one still image, even though they fly too fast for most to notice.

Also for the life of me I can't figure out how to get my beam weapon with a custom sound to play.

I will check it out. EDIT: Your subfolders are in the wrong order. It should go audio>waves>weapons>sound goes here.

[WhiteWeasel]

That's what I was talking about for the gif thing, as the projectile flies, it will quickly switch through the four frames so that it's not one still image, even though they fly too fast for most to notice.

Doubly so since my railgun projectiles travel about twice as fast as a standard laser bolt. I kinda fudged it and made it a single image as you won't really be able to tell anyways.

I will check it out. EDIT: Your subfolders are in the wrong order. It should go audio>waves>weapons>sound goes here.

IT LIVES!!!

[WhiteWeasel]

How do you make cloaked images? I can't find a way for gimp to paint "transparent" shades. Also the lack of a hard eraser in gimp is annoying too.

[NarnKar]

Cloaking tutorial.

GIMP does have a hard eraser, WhiteWeasel. You need to check "hard edge" on the tool options, when the eraser is selected.

To do transparency, just adjust the transparency meter on your pencil or brush tool.

[WhiteWeasel]

Cloaking tutorial.

GIMP does have a hard eraser, WhiteWeasel. You need to check "hard edge" on the tool options, when the eraser is selected.

To do transparency, just adjust the transparency meter on your pencil or brush tool.

Sweet!
Also what dose this value mean?

Code: Select all

   <drone_targetable>1</drone_targetable>

[NarnKar]

droneTargetable is a tag that only applies to BURST type weaponry.

Before AE came out, the way to differentiate between whether defense drone mark 1 could target a projectile was to either declare a weapon as MISSILE or LASER type. DD1's only shoot at MISSILE type.

After AE, the new BURST type weapon didn't really have those properties, so the devs put in another tag to determine whether a BURST weapon was drone-targetable or not.

[WhiteWeasel]

droneTargetable is a tag that only applies to BURST type weaponry.

Before AE came out, the way to differentiate between whether defense drone mark 1 could target a projectile was to either declare a weapon as MISSILE or LASER type. DD1's only shoot at MISSILE type.

After AE, the new BURST type weapon didn't really have those properties, so the devs put in another tag to determine whether a BURST weapon was drone-targetable or not.

Hmmm. Is there a way to make a projectile not targetable by defense drones at all?