45° Seeker?

I'm trying to make a weapon that shoots at 45° off of either side of the ship it's mounted on. Now that isn't much of a problem but I want the weapon to follow the targeted ship. Since the 45° thing doesn't work on seekers... What can I do? Can I do anything?

You have a weapon fire at 45 degrees. Then you have it submunition into a seeker. You can even use the same graphic for both weapons.

Genius...

how do you designate in the outf which side the weap fires from?

I'm not quite sure what you're asking, but I have a few guesses: (In both cases, the answer is not in the oütf resource but rather in the wëap)

1. You're asking how you determine which exit points the weapon leaves the ship from.
   If this is the case, it's determined in the wëap resource and can be set to enter from gun, guided, turret, or beam exit points, which in turn are designated by each shän.

2. You are asking how you make a weapon track ships within a 90° ark.
   In that case, you would select the type "Front-Quadrant Turret," again in the wëap resource. However, this would make the weapon fire straight forward if the target were not in that 90° ark. If you wanted it not to fire in this case, you could select the type "Turreted (Unguided)" and check the flags for "blind spots sides" and "blind spots rear."

Actually, that makes me think of something to say to the original poster: you may want to use that second suggestion for you weapon; that is, make it type Turreted (unguided) and check blind spots sides and rear. That way, it will behave like a normal missile and not fire if you have no target. However, this would also make it not fire at all if the target is not in front of you, so it's your call.

@sp3cies, on Dec 5 2007, 12:31 PM, said in 45° Seeker?:

I'm trying to make a weapon that shoots at 45° off of either side of the ship it's mounted on.

is what i was referring to.

Simple misunderstanding, but REDCHIGH, what you're talking about is possible.

I think Edwards figured it out. Not going to try to dig up the original post, but the method is like this:

When a weapon's exit point has a non-zero x-coordinate AND the weapon is set to fire with NEGATIVE inaccuracy, it fires at EXACTLY its inaccuracy, in the direction clockwise if the x-coordinate is positive and counterclockwise if x is negative.

In other words, if you set a weapon to -45 inaccuracy and make its exit point on one side or the other of the ship, it'll always shoot exactly 45 degrees to that side.

Most common (if anything about it is "common") use for this is -90 inaccuracy to allow side-firing, and in particular side-firing with instant detonation and no damage but noticeable impact so you can use it to "strafe" your ship sideways, like an extra engine.

Interesting. I though that only worked for SubTheta.

I don't think Edwards was around when that became known.

I remember Matt himself stopping in to explain. I don't, however, remember who it was that noticed it. I also seem to recall Dave making some comments. Incidentally, using this technique allows it to be a regular guided weapon.

One caveat: the weapon will fire facing the same direction of the ship (though guided weapons will quickly right themselves), and submunitioned missiles will fire in that the direction as well. You may want to adjust the sprite accordingly, or possibly play with SubTheta.

As for negative SubTheta, that actually refers to the spacing of more than one submunition (in degrees).

This post has been edited by orcaloverbri9 : 06 December 2007 - 06:12 PM

Ok I just deleted my old missile and have made a new one. Now no matter what I do, nothing fires sideways if it's a negative inaccuracy. I am not sure what I'm doing wrong this time but I have been trying to figure it out for the past two hours and am getting quite fed up. Any tips on what might be going wrong?

oütf 138 and 139 are launcher and missile set to use weapon and ammunition 135.
wëap 135 is the missile and it is set as unguided projectile.

This post has been edited by Sp3cies : 08 December 2007 - 08:51 AM

Try using an unguided gun fired by the second trigger, with an inaccuracy of -45. Then have it submunition. See what that does.

Shlimazel is right.

Because of the way they're implemented into the game, Seekers, Freeflight Rockets, and Freefall Bomb's aren't normally compatible with negative inaccuracy.

Unguided, Turreted-Unguided, Front-Quadrant and Rear-Quadrant Turrets all work, however.

In addition, if the player has a target selected when using one of these, if it then submunitions into a seeker, that submunition will inherit the parent weapon's target. This allows a Seeker to indirectly use negative inaccuracy.

Basically, the submunition starts life with the velocity of the parent, facing "Forward" relative to the player, and then it's own guidance implementation is used.

For Freeflight Rockets, that means that it starts with its Parent's velocity, but then "Accelerates" forwards.
It changes its velocity to match its direction.

For Seekers, the game implementation always expected the Seeker to be moving in the direction its facing, but able to turn at a given rate.
It ignores its Parent's velocity, for the sake of its Parent's direction.
If the Seeker has the "Fire at Nearest Target" flag, then it will also ignore its Parent's direction.

This post has been edited by Eugene Chin : 08 December 2007 - 01:46 PM

I have it set to unguided... Like I already said. So far the projectile will only fire forwards. Is there anything else that might be botching it up?

Yes, exit points as Qaanol mentioned. When a weapon has negative inaccuracy, it will fire forward from exit points in the center of the ship, left from exit points to the left of the ship, or right from exit points to the right of the ship. So your exit points must be at least one pixel either side for it to work.

@eugene-chin, on Dec 8 2007, 01:09 PM, said in 45° Seeker?:

Because of the way they're implemented into the game, Seekers, Freeflight Rockets, and Freefall Bomb's aren't normally compatible with negative inaccuracy.

I got a seeker weapon at -45 to work just fine.

Yeah, rockets should work fine too. It's only bombs that won't because they don't have any speed or inaccuracy anyway. Oh and Fighters since they ignore exit points for some reason <_<

Exit points solved it. Thank you.