newbie help for making a plugin.

hi all!

so i decided to start making plugins, ok? and i thought, 'wow, wouldn't it be interesting to do upgraded versions of weapons?' so i did that. or am trying. and failing...

(fyi, totally new to making plugins. no experience whatsoever.)

so a few days ago, i started trying to make a better ion cannon. i copied and pasted all the relevant information, changed the numbers around, and tried to work it. failed. didn't work the next few times i tried it, either.
i don't know what's wrong, can someone help me? i will put the plug in up in this post or the next.

thanks,

R_F

Simplest is most likely: did you copy both weap and outf?
Please clarify what you mean by "fail."
Did you check that you used valid IDs?

Yes, please post. Most likely reasons: you have a resource hooked up to something that doesn't exist. Check the outfit, and make sure it's going to the right weapon. All that jazz.

yes i did.
valid id's? do you mean the originals, or new ones?
fail meaning it doesn't work.

i'll try to upload it, but i'm having problems doing that.

Make sure you're hitting the little upload button next to the spot where you choose the file, and make sure it's zipped. Fail as in, does it just do something weird in game, like display random weapon graphics (I have experience with that), does it crash and bring up an error log on startup, or does it crash at some point when you try to access a weapon or something? Valid ID's as in is it directing to legal ID numbers. Each resource type has a minimum and a maximum ID number. The minimum is always 128, but the maximum varies. Look here.

the first time i tried to make it, it showed an antimatter reactor pic. i don't know why.

the only time evn really crashed when i tried to mod it was when i unknowingly changed a plugin while it was running. but other than that, it is not making my computer fail.

Attached File(s)

• Modified_Ion_Cannon.zip (880bytes)
  Number of downloads: 4

It appears to work just fine, except: you haven't inlcluded an outfitter PICT (6316) or filled out the naming fields in the outfit.
Oh, I see: the weapon doesn't work. Hmm...
Got it: the weapon was using a ridiculous quantity of energy - you have an extra '0' that, when removed, allows the weapon to fire.

View PostJacaByte, on Jul 16 2008, 03:46 PM, said:

Try lowering the amount of fuel it consumes per frame and unchecking that flag.

The flag was ignored by the engine.

This post has been edited by Nonconventionally Creative : 16 July 2008 - 06:02 PM

At first glance, I see several things wrong with it; the first is that it has no outfitter's PICT, the second is that it draws 900.5 units of energy per shot (which equates to per frame) and the third is that it has the "detonate at end of life" flag checked, but since it's a beam weapon, it can't detonate. Try lowering the amount of fuel it consumes per frame and unchecking that flag.