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

[NarnKar]

There's not really a tutorial on Artillery Weapons, since the Artillery system is basically just a tiny bit of code wrapped around a weapon.

But the artillery system basically works like this: you stick it on a ship somewhere, and specify in the system tag which weapon it has as a...weapon. 1 power bar is 1.25x the cooldown listed on the weapon's blueprint, 2 power bars is 1, 3 power bars is .75x, 4 power bars is .5x, 5 power bars (impossible without modding) is .25x, and 6 power bars is instant fire.

[WhiteWeasel]

As for sound editing, what do I do if my custom weapon sound is too loud/quiet? EDIT: Resolved with the amplify function in audacity.

EDIT2: So just change this like I would any other weapon?

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<weaponBlueprint name="ARTILLERY_FED">
   <type>BEAM</type>
   <title>Artillery Beam</title>
   <short>Artillery</short>
   <desc>Powers a slow, high-powered beam that pierces all shields and does one damage per room hit. More power means faster cooldown.</desc>
   <tooltip>Artillery: Beam that automatically fires a 1 damage beam that pierces all shields</tooltip>
   <damage>1</damage>
   <sp>5</sp>
   <fireChance>1</fireChance>
   <breachChance>0</breachChance>
   <speed>13</speed>
   <cooldown>40</cooldown>
   <power>1</power>
   <cost>0</cost>
   <bp>5</bp>
   <rarity>0</rarity>
   <image>beam_contact</image>
   <length>500</length>
   <launchSounds>
      <sound>beam1</sound>
      <sound>beam1_2</sound>
   </launchSounds>
   <weaponArt>artillery_fed</weaponArt>
</weaponBlueprint>

EDIT3: So is the artillery weapon limited to one projectile? I wanted to make one that fires a large volley of missiles.
EDIT4: Awwww Damn, it's true. I put the same blueprint as a regular weapon and it did what I wanted it to.

[redstonetorches]

I'm trying to make some custom weapons for a mod and I've finished the code and stuff, but when i try to patch it SMM gives me this:

Patching failed: org.jdom2.JDOMException: While processing "Engi Weapons.ftl:data/animations.xml.append (wrapped)", strict parsing failed, then sloppy parsing failed: Error on line 2: At line 2, column 1: Strange attributes.

Here's my animations.xml:

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<animSheet name="ENGI_ACCEL" w="1254" h="59" fw="22" fh="59">weapons/Engi_Accelerator.png</animSheet>
<animSheet name="ENGI_DISRUPT" w="161" h="33" fw="23" fh"33">weapons/Engi_Disruptor.png</animSheet>

<weaponAnim name="ENGI_ACCEL">
   <sheet>ENGI_ACCEL</sheet>
   <desc length="57" x="0" y="0"/>
   <chargedFrame>51</chargedFrame>
   <fireFrame>54</fireFrame>
   <firePoint  x="12" y="10"/>
   <mountPoint x="3" y="44"/>
</weaponAnim>

<weaponAnim name="ENGI_DISRUPT">
   <sheet>ENGI_DISRUPT</sheet>
   <desc length="7" x="0" y="0"/>
   <chargedFrame>1</chargedFrame>
   <fireFrame>2</fireFrame>
   <firePoint  x="16" y="8"/>
   <mountPoint x="5" y="26"/>
</weaponAnim>

I'm not too great at finding errors in code, and I'm not sure where line 2, column 1 is... (It might be how big the accelerator strip is)

[kartoFlane]

Line and column refer to the position of the offending character(s) in the specified file. Though sometimes it points slightly wrong, as is the case here.

Your problem is that in the second <animSheet> tag, there's no equals character ( = ) between fh and "33".

[NarnKar]

<animSheet name="ENGI_DISRUPT" w="161" h="33" fw="23" fh="33">weapons/Engi_Disruptor.png</animSheet>

Somehow the = sign went missing, and that's the only reason your mod failed to load.

However, I think it's good practice to name your weapons Engi_Disruptor_stripX, where X is the number of frames. That's how FTL does it. I'm not sure if it has any effect or not, but you should try it, just to be safe.

EDIT: Ah, damn, kartoFlane beat me to the punch while I wasn't looking. :U

[WhiteWeasel]

I have made a custom artillery weapon that does not use the standard 40 second cooldown. Because of this, the charge bar is too big. The problem is only cosmetic, but it bugs me. Can you change it? Also that artillery beam fires "off" my ship, is there a way to move it?

[NarnKar]

Yes, the charge bar is changeable. It's somewhere in the image archives--I can't remember where it is, and I'm away from my workbench at the moment, so I don't have its exact location (although I'll edit this post if I do remember).

The artillery works based on the fifth+ mount on your ship. I say fifth+ because on a typical ship, with four or less weapon slots, artillery takes up the fifth mount. But for a weapon with more than four mounts, the artillery is the next mount over--five weapon slots means the sixth mount is artillery, so on. A ship can only have up to eight weapon mounts, however, so keep that in mind.

So yes, you can move this weapon mount like it's a regular mount. I typically use Superluminal for my ship modding, to be honest; in that tool there's a graphical way to see where your mount is located and move it accordingly. But you can also manually adjust shipname.xml (or perhaps shipname_layout.xml) in your mod file; there should be a section like

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code I don't remember
<weaponMounts>
<mount x="XXX" y="XXX" />
</weaponMounts>

I'm not sure if I even remembered this code correctly but you should be looking for something like that.

[WhiteWeasel]

Yes, the charge bar is changeable. It's somewhere in the image archives--I can't remember where it is, and I'm away from my workbench at the moment, so I don't have its exact location (although I'll edit this post if I do remember).

The artillery works based on the fifth+ mount on your ship. I say fifth+ because on a typical ship, with four or less weapon slots, artillery takes up the fifth mount. But for a weapon with more than four mounts, the artillery is the next mount over--five weapon slots means the sixth mount is artillery, so on. A ship can only have up to eight weapon mounts, however, so keep that in mind.

So yes, you can move this weapon mount like it's a regular mount. I typically use Superluminal for my ship modding, to be honest; in that tool there's a graphical way to see where your mount is located and move it accordingly. But you can also manually adjust shipname.xml (or perhaps shipname_layout.xml) in your mod file; there should be a section like

Code: Select all

code I don't remember
<weaponMounts>
<mount x="XXX" y="XXX" />
</weaponMounts>

I'm not sure if I even remembered this code correctly but you should be looking for something like that.

yeah I actually built that ship in superliminal, it's a stealth C with a gemini artillery. EDIT: How do I change the defailt program my xml files open into because it keeps trying to open them in internet explore and it's so bad, it won't run.

[NarnKar]

Do offensive drones and weapons with the <burst> tag work? IIRC drones could fire only 1 shot at a time, no matter what the <shots> rating was of it's weapon.

This one never got answered and I'm curious to see the answer.

[WhiteWeasel]

How would one do the animation code for a charge weapon like this one?



EDIT3: BELOW IS RESOLVED I bumped back the charge/fire frames and it works. Still need help with above.
EDIT: Also I have issues with the animation of my standard rail gun. It keeps turning green before it's able to fire and does not shoot a projectile.

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<animSheet name="railgun_small" w="245" h="51" fw="35" fh="51">weapons/Railgun_small_strip7.png</animSheet>
<weaponAnim name="railgun_small">
   <sheet>railgun_small</sheet>
   <desc length="7" x="0" y="0"/>
   <chargedFrame>6</chargedFrame>
   <fireFrame>7</fireFrame>
   <firePoint  x="10" y="25"/>
   <mountPoint x="2" y="34"/>
</weaponAnim>

EDIT2: I changed the desc length to 8 and it fixed the firing issue, but my weapon still goes green before it's ready to fire.