"Halo" Missile Launcher problems

Fri Aug 31, 2007 2:31 pm by 0blivion

By the title some people may be thinking that I'm asking about making the missile launcher from Halo: Combat Evolved, and just to put it up front, I'm not.

What I am trying to do is make a missile launcher that, when fired once, fires several missiles in succession, not unlike the Terran Valkyrie's weapon from Starcraft: Brood War if any of you have ever played that. I have been focusing on getting different missiles to come out and working with their corresponding motors to get them to move seperately, but I've only been able to get 6 identical missiles to come out by adding multiple HpFire hardpoints. I have also tried putting code like the following under the [Gun block: <pre><font size=1 face=Courier>projectile_archetype = halo_missile_ammo_a
projectile_archetype = halo_missile_ammo_b
projectile_archetype = halo_missile_ammo_c
projectile_archetype = halo_missile_ammo_d
projectile_archetype = halo_missile_ammo_e
projectile_archetype = halo_missile_ammo_f</font></pre>but the game ignores all the entries but the last one on the list. I have searched all over TLR for another method, but could not find one. I have also tried code like this under the [Gun block:<pre><font size=1 face=Courier>projectile_archetype = halo_missile_ammo_a, halo_missile_ammo_b, ... halo_missile_ammo_f</font></pre>but it recognized the entire list as one long nickname and crashed the game. Then I have tried having 6 different [Gun entries, all with the same nickname, to try to trick the computer into having 6 weapons on the same hardpoint. That didn't work, the computer took either the first or the last entry, I don't remember which, but I think it was the last. Tried the same with the [Munition entries, same thing happened.

Those were the only methods I could think of, besides somehow managing to successfully mount several weapons on the same hardpoint, but I have no clue how to make that work without having it appear as 6 different units under the weapons list, having hardpoints that appear to be empty but are really full, or having the missiles appear in the middle of the ship instead of at the weapon tip (I'm not even sure I can get that last part to work).

Any help would be greatly appreciated and if someone wants to see all of the code I have I would be happy to supply it via email.

Edited by - 0blivion on 8/31/2007 3:48:09 PM

Sat Sep 01, 2007 6:52 am by Ogu

If you look at some gun CMP models in HardCMP, you'll notice that some have more than one HpFire hardpoint. Maybe you could try spacing those out or adding more to see if it works for missiles. I know it works for guns as that's how cruiser/battleship turrets fire the "double" projectile.

Sat Sep 01, 2007 8:27 am by 0blivion

Yes, I was hoping this would work in combination with multiple projectile_archetype entries, but it fired 6 of the last missile on the list instead of one of each missile. I guess I didn't say in my first post that I tried multiple projectile_archetypes at the same time as multiple HpFire hardpoints. Oh well.

I'm going to try putting multiple HpWeapon0x hardpoints in the same spot and putting 6 different missile launchers on them. To get only one launcher to show up under the inventory I'm not going to add a goods file for 5 of the launchers, but as for how to only have one hardpoint come up and still have it work is a mystery to me...

Edit:

That didn't work either. I also tried mounting missile launchers on the main missile launcher, but it didn't work at all...grr. Any ideas will be considered and most likely tested.

Edited by - 0blivion on 9/1/2007 6:46:17 PM

Sat Sep 01, 2007 4:14 pm by H.Q. Victor

Other than muti weps, you could increase the refire rate to .0125 and shoot multi missles, that look like hellfire wep system.

Sat Sep 01, 2007 5:43 pm by 0blivion

True, I could do that. Do you know how to remove the delay after pressing the button before it registers again? You know, where you hold it down and it shoots once, then pauses for like a second, then shoots very quickly forevermore after that so long as you hold down the key?

But I'm wondering mainly if there's any way possible to get several shots of different types to come out of the same weapon, or have several shots with a delay between the shots after firing it once.

Edited by - 0blivion on 9/1/2007 6:57:12 PM

Sat Sep 01, 2007 10:49 pm by F!R

I fooled with that stuff 4 a while.

To get the optical effect of more than one missiles i did edit the HpFire and turned them a small bit out of the straigh line - which did only partly work.

If you add

dispersion_angle = 0.500000

this will do the job. The projektiles will spread away and you ll see,
that there are more.
If the dispersion_angle is bigger, the projektils are likely to hit anything but the target.

Sun Sep 02, 2007 9:19 am by Ogu

@Oblivion: I'm pretty sure there's no way to get more than one projectile (munition) to fire from the same gun. You should be able to get several of the same type however. I'll give this a shot sometime.

As for the delay, I think that's determined by the type of weapon - if it's a gun, it'll work. If it's a torpedo, it won't. Maybe there's an exe hack you can do for this, but you'd have to find it from scratch as I don't know anyone who's got this working.

Sun Sep 02, 2007 1:12 pm by 0blivion

Curses...I had a reply completely typed out then my internet crashed and I lost it...darn technology...anyways

@F!R

That wasn't exactly the information I was looking for, but I tested out the dispersion_angle and it'll work excellently. I heard of that before but couldn't find it, so thanks for mentioning that. By the way --

If the dispersion_angle is bigger, the projektils are likely to hit anything but the target.

I'm using a dispersion angle of around 10 for my halo missile series, and the missiles lock on and head straight for the target. I don't know what happened when you were testing, but it sure works great for me

@Ogu

I'd have to agree with you that there probably isn't a way to get several different munitions to come out of the same gun without some pretty fancy hacking. Too bad, it would have opened up a lot of new stuff for modding. Oh well.

In the file DATA\INTERFACE\keymap.ini where it has all of the input commands (a lot of them, anyway) and there is a line called state = <entry> with entries like keydown, repeat, keyup and a bunch of others. I experimented with this to try to eliminate the delay, but to no success. However, this subject seemed oddly familiar to me, and after a quick check I discovered (or should I say remembered) that the delay is actually how Windows interprets the data from the keyboard. You can reduce the repeat delay and change the repeat speed by going to Control Panel, Keyboard (if you don't see this look on the left and click "Classic View" ) and a window should come up with those settings. Unfortunately, you can't completely remove the delay, but you can reduce it significantly. It takes some time to get used to, though

Edited by - 0blivion on 9/2/2007 2:17:00 PM

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