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Using Outfits to Change Ship Appearance
Hey all. Is there any way you can come up with to use outfits to change the appearance. For example, I want to make a ship to appear to be carrying a cargo pod when the "cargo pod" outfit is owned by the player, but appear empty when it's not.
So you're wanting the actual sprite to be changed according to what you have equipped?
Shakes head somewhat
I don't know if that's possible. I suppose it's worth a shot, but you'd have to ask some of the more well-versed people around here.
@flavius, on Jan 13 2007, 12:18 AM, said in Non Weapon Animations:
I can think of a couple of ways to do this.
Firstly, you can use the KeyCarried field. However, not many people have mastered that field - it's not used in Nova itself. It's not very well understood (by me at least!).
Secondly, you could have buying the item trigger a control bit expression which changes the player's ship to one which is identical, except that its sprite appears to be carrying this item.
For both methods you need to know for sure which ship the player will be flying when he gets this item, of course.
To be honest though, neither of these are 'normal' things to have the engine do - you are certain to run into problems. I would suggest doing everything but this graphics trick for your plug, and then maybe a solution will come along, or maybe it won't. Don't let something like this log-jam the whole process.
This post has been edited by pac : 12 January 2007 - 07:43 PM
KeyCarried would be soo much more useful if it was KeyOutfit. It would function identically but work for any outfit at all instead of just carried ships.
To make it work with KeyCarried you need to set up a new weapon and outfit for a carried ship which is in all ways invisible to the player. When you buy the pod it grants the carried ship and removes it when you sell. Of course using KeyCarried means only one alternative appearance for each ship.
This post has been edited by Guy : 12 January 2007 - 08:01 PM
@guy, on Jan 13 2007, 12:58 AM, said in Non Weapon Animations:
Well, you can essentially do this, I think. If you make the outfit weapon ammunition (and the weapon a fighter bay with the right ID, etc), but don't make a weapon outfit to go with the ammo (so there is no bay). (And make sure MaxAmmo, or anything else which would stop you from buying the 'fighter', isn't set.) (Edit: To be clear, this outfit isn't a fighter: it's the cargo pod. It's just a 'fighter' for the purposes of the KeyCarried field, but the rest of its effects can be those of a normal outfit, so you don't need to grant/remove items on purchase/sale.)
Then you can use the rest of the ModType/Val fields to make the outfit whatever you want it to be. It's a 'fighter' for the purposes of KeyCarried only - it can never be launched.
(All this assumes that there is no problem using ModType/Val 2-4 with ammo. I don't think there is - though I haven't tested. It's just that the assumption has always been that you shouldn't, since ammo will be expended.)
Edit: Tested and confirmed that ModType/Val2 (at least) do work with ammo. I set up the specific situation, in fact: an outfit which is ammo for a fighter bay, and also has a secondary effect; the weapon pointing to a ship; and no outfit which is the weapon which actually launches the ammo. And the secondary effect (adding 1000 to my freighter's top speed! :D) worked fine. (The only thing I didn't have was the KeyCarried effect, of course.)
This post has been edited by pac : 12 January 2007 - 08:23 PM
Yeah but you have to set up a weapon for every outfit you want like that. Not cool. Plus it won't work if the outfit is a weapon (ie, some huge-ass turret you want to make visible on your ship) - you'd need to have an additional outfit in that case.
@guy, on Jan 13 2007, 02:59 AM, said in Non Weapon Animations:
Yeah but you have to set up a weapon for every outfit you want like that. Not cool.
Well, you have 256 (?) weaps to play with, so I don't see that as a very big problem. If you had that many actual weapons , the player would just be overwhelmed by choice.
Quote
Plus it won't work if the outfit is a weapon (ie, some huge-ass turret you want to make visible on your ship) - you'd need to have an additional outfit in that case.
That much is true, yes.