Advent Pulsed Laser Cannon

from Sins Forums

I'm relatively new to the modding scene, but I've been working on a mod for my own use. It's mostly a pet peeve mod, really. I hate the Advent's 'laser cannons.' I work around real lasers on a daily basis, and the misnomer irritates me. As a result I'm in the process of changing the laser cannon over to either a pulsed Beam emitter (a BEAM type weapon that has a duration of 0.075000, a burst count of 6 and a burst delay of 0.100000) or the Psionic Surge (just the normal SPIRITBLADE weapon type) depending on what I think is more appropriate for the ship in question. Heavier ships get Psionic Surge and lighter ships get the pulsed Beam weapons. This might have a small effect on game balance, but I don't really think it will be noticeable. Additionally, I've been able to change the laser cannon research to affect Psionic Surges instead to maintain game balance. 

The result so far looks pretty damn cool, if I do say so myself, but I have a couple of questions before I continue with the modding.

  • What is the Advent "POINTDEFENSELASER"? I can't seem to find it anywhere other than on the Advent Titans and Corvettes. If I change this weapon type to "BEAM" and modify all the appropriate values will it cause any major problems?
  • How do you write new technologies/delete old ones?
  • How do you change the names/descriptions of research?
  • Where do you find the actual effects of the abilities? Files with the Ability tag only seem to set out parameters such as allowable targets, range, visual effects, level required, antimatter cost, and the cooldown time. I haven't been able to find values for things like damage or antimatter drained or what have you.
  • What is PointStaggerDelay? I'm assuming it's the variation on the point of impact, but I'm not sure.
  • How do you create/modify weapon types? I can't find a BEAM file anywhere, so I don't know if it's really possible, but it would be interesting.
  • Can I change what color the beam is by changing this parameter? beamGlowColor ffffffff I'm assuming that's a color tag of some sort, but I haven't gone through the trouble to find out. 

 

Eventually I plan to do this for all the races. I would eliminate the Wave cannon for the Vasari and replace it with the Desintigrator Cannon, and do the same thing for the Techs, but we'll see how far I get. 

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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Didn't know you could have a burst with a BEAM weapon, might try that. Does it just look like the regular beams but flashing rapidly?

POINTDEFENSELASER is a weapon class type and is basically used by upgrades. So the Advent laser upgrades affect the LASERPSI weapon type for example. You don't need to change this if you're only wanting to change the visuals. Only a handful of values actually effect gameplay - those being DamagePerBank:FRONT/BACK/LEFT/RIGHT, PreBuffCooldownTime, Range, CanFireAtFighter, and the values under damageEnums. None of the WeaponEffects values affect gameplay only visuals.

Adding research items requires a few different steps. You create an .entity file for it (see the existing RESEARCHSUBJECT_* files in the GameInfo folder). Then you need to add it to the list of research subjects in the faction's .entity file (e.g. in PlayerPsiRebel.entity for Advent Rebels). Then you need to add name and description strings to String/English.str, add button graphics (in Textures) and brushes (in Window, basically files to refer to specific segments of the image files and give them a reference name), and make sure these are referenced in the .entity file. There's probably a guide somewhere on the forums.

The effects for the abilities are in the Particle folder. The files can be edited in a text editor if they're converted from BIN to TXT, or you can use Particle Forge.

PointStaggerDelay is the delay between the hardpoints firing. E.g. if a ship has two hardpoints set for weapon number 1, it will fire one particle from each hardpoint. If the PointStaggerDelay is zero, the particles will appear simultaneously, otherwise it's the delay between them in seconds.

You can change the colour of the beam using beamGlowColor only if the texture is greyscale. If it's coloured (as most of them are), then it'll become an odd mixture. So if you try to make it red but the texture is yellow, it'll probably come out orange.

Hope that helps!

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah, you can have short duration beams with bursts.

I'm doing that in my freelancer mod and it looks awesome. The beams flash rapidly at the target and it's pretty cool.

I also hate weapons being called lasers when the effect looks more like a plasma or particle bolt. Lasers as beams ftw I say.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Wintercross, reply 2
I also hate weapons being called lasers when the effect looks more like a plasma or particle bolt.
End of Wintercross's quote

Blame Star Wars.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Can I change what color the beam is by changing this parameter? beamGlowColor ffffffff I'm assuming that's a color tag of some sort, but I haven't gone through the trouble to find out.
End of quote

I'm not a modder, so take all of this with a grain of salt.  YMMV.

The color tag looks like it could be a standard hexidecimal color value, except those have only six digits.  Try #00FF00.  If what results is lime green, then that's what you are working with.

If it really has 9 digits, then the first letter is probably "c" (for color, but it should then be preceded by a vertical bar), plus a two digit transparency (or alpha) code (from 00 for fully transparent to ff for fully opaque).

If what you are looking at is different than all of the above, then good luck!

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

I've been thinking of changing the advent planetary bombardment weapon to a long range laser beam. I'm curious to see how that might work.

Suddenly FOOM LAZOR BEAM.

 

If Rebellion were to start working, I'd change to to a planet killer equivalent to the Vasari "eat planet" ability using their battleship's beam as the imagery, but no resource gain. Of course, I'd have to change a lot more for it to make sense. I have yet to see the Advent culture bombardment actually WORK.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting HLT, reply 4


Can I change what color the beam is by changing this parameter? beamGlowColor ffffffff I'm assuming that's a color tag of some sort, but I haven't gone through the trouble to find out.

I'm not a modder, so take all of this with a grain of salt.  YMMV.

The color tag looks like it could be a standard hexidecimal color value, except those have only six digits.  Try #00FF00.  If what results is lime green, then that's what you are working with.

If it really has 9 digits, then the first letter is probably "c" (for color, but it should then be preceded by a vertical bar), plus a two digit transparency (or alpha) code (from 00 for fully transparent to ff for fully opaque).

If what you are looking at is different than all of the above, then good luck!
End of HLT's quote

 

From memory I believe the first two are alpha transparency.