RELEASED Avali (Triage) 1.11.0

Good idea, makes me wonder why nobody’s thought of an Avali rocket launcher before now. Or maybe they did and it was dismissed because it didn’t fit with the Avali’s developmental lore. Well, whatever, it’s like when I argued before on the case of the Tech Bow, just because it isn’t natively developed Avali tech doesn’t mean they can’t reverse engineer their own version from other species.

Anyway, appearance-wise, seems to me you got the colors down, it just needs to look a little more exotic. More black technical bits, with the white more a carapace casing, maybe with aerogel fins on the back or side.

Kinda like this:

(Just a rough doodle of my idea, not to be to be taken seriously)

As for a projectile, you could try up-sizing the bullets used in the Avali pistol and assault rifle as rockets.

 

Yeah, I wasn't really sure what to make here, so that "doodle" is quite helpful lol.

I seriously cannot fking figure out the code for the "active item" version. I simply do not have enough resource material to go on here, and I cannot find documentation for far too many functions and variables...

The weirdest thing is that I got the "alt fire" ability working, but not the normal firing... I am like, 100% out of ideas to try at this point as well: beats me... :L

Just in case someone stumbles by and can point out where I went wrong, here is the code I have currently for the .activeitem:

Code:

{
  "itemName" : "avalitier6rpg",
  "price" : 750,
  "inventoryIcon" : "avalirocketlauncher.png",
  "maxStack" : 1,
  "rarity" : "Legendary",
  "description" : "A standard Avali military-issue RPG. Not to be used on squirrels!",
  "shortdescription" : "^#A35CFF;RL6 Plasmastorm",
  "level" : 6,
  "tooltipKind" : "gun",
  "weaponType" : "Rocket Launcher",
  "itemTags" : ["weapon","ranged","rocketlauncher"],
  "twoHanded" : true,

  "animation" : "/items/active/weapons/ranged/gun.animation",
  "animationParts" : {
    "butt" : "",
    "middle" : "avalirocketlauncher.png",
    "barrel" : "",
    "muzzleFlash" : "/animations/muzzleflash/rifle/riflemuzzle.png"
  },
  "animationCustom" : {
    "sounds" : {
      "fire" : [ "/sfx/gun/rocket_electric1.ogg" ]
    }
  },

  "baseOffset" : [-0.6, 0.375],
  "muzzleOffset" : [0.0, 0.125],
    
  "scripts" : ["/items/active/weapons/ranged/gun.lua"],
  "elementalType" : "electric",
  "primaryAttack" : {
    "fireTime" : 1.0,
    "baseDps" : 250,
    "energyUsage" : 45,
    "projectileCount" : 1,
    "inaccuracy" : 0.01,

    "projectileType" : "electricplasmarocketstatus",
    "projectileParameters" : {
      "knockback" : 40
    }
  },
  "stances" : {
    "idle" : {
      "armRotation" : 0,
      "weaponRotation" : 0,
      "weaponOffset" : [0, 0],
      "twoHanded" : true,

      "allowRotate" : true,
      "allowFlip" : true
    },
    "fire" : {
      "duration" : 0,
      "armRotation" : 0,
      "weaponRotation" : 0,
      "weaponOffset" : [-0.2, 0],
      "twoHanded" : true,

      "allowRotate" : false,
      "allowFlip" : false
    },
    "cooldown" : {
      "duration" : 0.5,
      "armRotation" : 0,
      "weaponRotation" : 0,
      "weaponOffset" : [-0.2, 0],
      "twoHanded" : true,

      "allowRotate" : false,
      "allowFlip" : false
    }
  },
  "altAbilitySource" : "/items/active/weapons/ranged/altabilities/guidedrocket/guidedrocket.altability",
  "builder" : "/items/buildscripts/buildunrandweapon.lua"
}

My only other issue at the moment is that the rocket for the alt ability is appearing waaay too far along up in the tube, and I have no clue what variable controls this either... I tried fiddling with "muzzleOffset", but that's not it. :/

 

Ok, I drew a basic mockup in to-scale pixel art before I went to bed:


*Image scaled 300% for viewing purposes.

It still needs a lot of work obviously, but I really did like your doodle (clearly lol)! :]
I want to extend the front end of the barrel a bit. Hard to work on such a small scale, though. I really cannot scale up the image size any more than this without the item itself being too large... >_<

The handle is far too big though - I can squeeze a significant amount of extra space for the front by shrinking it and moving it towards the back slightly, and a bunch some more by shrinking the butt. I'll work on it more tomorrow lol.

---

Oh, and as for the projectile - RyuujinZERO had some quite a few "test files" made up that include a missile-like projectile that never ended up being used, so I can just use that. It's found in "Avali\items\guns\testairburstgrenade":


*Image scaled 500% for viewing purposes (500% was probably WAY too much lol - getting very sleeping, and I know better than to try and do artwork when I'm so lol).

 

Item ID feroziumrocket . Seems pretty vanilla to me.

 

Unfortunately, it's a .gun and not a .activeitem (it has no right click special effect), and these are VASTLY different.
All the "vanilla" .activeitem's are "randomly generated", and thus they have their JSON files written using different functions designed to use a RNG to randomly pick between a large number of different variable choices.

Now since these damn things are not easy to set up (and also modding of this game clearly took a nosedive after the last update - not surprising to me given the mass removal of functions and people getting sick of waiting for the promised "1.0" update), I couldn't find more than a SINGLE mod that had .activeitem "launchers" to look at.
The only one I found to look at was "RenTek-ProjectArmoury", and these guys are SO "pro" that it's not the best thing to use as an example, since they added custom... *everything* lol.

Still, it was only by using one of their launchers as a base that I even managed to get the alt-fire working... I still have no idea what is wrong (been over it so many times...).

 

Ok... I spent FAR too many *hours* on the tiny details (I tend to get lost in the weeds lol), buuut:


*Image scaled 300% for viewing purposes.

I'm not gonna touch it anymore lmfao (damn my perfectionism lol).

 

Nice.

As for the coding, Hm. Well, you could try starting a thread in the modding section of the forum asking for ideas on how to code a custom 2-function gun, or maybe Reni and Dilrax might be willing to detail how they did it in their mod's discussion thread. If no other mods have weapon code to reverse-engineer I can't think of much else.

 

Ok I lied - I had to make some small edits to avoid some clipping issues with the arms, and so that it did not cover the eyes.
FINAL version (for real this time lol):




I also had TONS of fun playing "guess the value" when lining up the offset! n.nU

*Damage, stats, and name subject to future change.

As to the code issue, I may have to make a help request thread.
I mean, copied what that one mod did above precisely and it doesn't work (even though theirs does...).

EDIT: I did end up posting a help request - I am truly out of ideas lol... >_<
http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/need-help-creating-custom-rocket-launcher-activeitem.114255

 

I did manage to figure out my issue with the Rocket Launcher with some help:



I'll probably change the projectile later, though.

 

The normal projectile looks good (though I've always though of blue as the Avali's energy discharge color). The seeker projectile... well, it's wider than the launcher.

 

Both are vanilla sprites atm - I believe in order to fix it I'd need to make a copy of the ability file and make edits to that. Considering that the type of projectile it uses and the effects it plays are dictated by the elemental type (I have it set to "electrical" so that it at least puts some blue into it lol), this may or may not be difficult.

For the record, ALL of the vanilla randomly generated rocket launcher elemental projectiles are FAR too large for their tube size lol, even the non ability ones! n.nU

I would prefer the standard Avali light blue as well, though, and there's still a custom Avali explosion animation that RyuujinZERO originally made that I don't think is actually used anywhere! n.nU

 

Maybe a custom projectile would be in order as well? Looking at other Avali guns and tech, it seems to me that an Avali rocket would be very thin, more like a rocket-propelled dart or needle, and energy weapons like plasma don’t seem to be their style at all.

 

Agreed. Aside from the necessities of FTL space travel, Avali have kind of a 20 minutes into the future thing going on. Railguns and Gauss weapons. A thin, dartlike rocket would fit perfectly.

 

I did say that the above projectile was more of a "placeholder" in several places lol.
I was a lot more focused on getting the damn thing to work properly! n.nU

I was planning on using the projectile I found in one of the old "WIP" Avali folders (posed above):



That projectile has been included since back before RyuujinZERO stopped updating the mod - it's in one of the (many) folders containing unfinished/unused assets! :]

EDIT: I'm actually not 100% sure that isn't just a copy of the vanilla rocket projectile now that I look at it closely... >_<
Well whatever - there are quite a few more unused projectiles from the original mod, or I could always make a new custom one myself if I have to.

 

That's what I was thinking myself. I'm almost certain I've seen that projectile spawn in some of the randomly generated launchers. Maybe RyuujinZERO had originally planned on making a launcher at some point and just copied the vanilla projectile for the same reason you did, just to make it work, and when he quit the mod he must've left the copy in the files without ever having gotten around to a launcher to use it in.

 

Y'know what, recolor the grey into whitish grey and the red into orange, and add three dots in triangle pattern near the back - boom, Avali-like rocket shell.

 

This has inspired me to throw together some Avali rockets... mind you, I know very little about making sprites, so they're probably formatted all wrong, but...


I imagine they'd be pretty nasty, what with the aerogel shattering on impact.

 

Only thing "wrong" about the formatting for animated sprite frames is that they go from left-to-right (so as they are they'd end up shooting down the tune and into your face!). A simple one-click in GIMP could flip the image and solve that problem though lol.

Hmm, that and all animated sprite frames need to be the same dimensions. Your sprites are perfectly fine being different sizes, though - they just need to be spaced evenly apart so you can define a length and width for each "frame" (think evenly sized square/rectangle boxes).

---
May I use these for me rocket launcher? I'll be sure to cite my source! :]

 

You certainly may. Glad to be of assistance!

Though I now notice that I forgot to give the "needle" missiles any kind of flare animation.

 

Nice work, I whipped up some of my own using yours as a base if that's okay. Two could the primary and secondary, while the others could be weapon mods like the regular Avali guns have.

From to top bottom: Normal, Incendiary, Guided, Armor-piercing (fast, higher damage, small explosion)