Railgun Projectiles? (Solved)

[ArsonBurger]

I'm creating a railgun-type weapon in Slade 3. I've taken care of the weapon info and sprites, and all that's left is to make the beam that fires out. At the moment, the weapon is hitscan, but I'd like to make it fire a laser beam that the player can see instead. How would I do this? I've heard of custom missiles, but I can't find a tutorial for them anywhere so I haven't tried it out. Any help would be appreciated!

 

If it helps, here is my fire script so far:

fire:
		RAGF A 0 a_playsound("RAILGFIRE",2)
		RAGF A 30 A_firebullets(0,0,1,75,"BulletPuff", 1) 
		RAGF B 5
		RAGF C 10
		RAGF D 5
		RAGG A 5
		RAGG A 0 A_refire
	goto ready

 

Edited March 15, 2020 by ArsonBurger

[Alper002]

There's this page on the zdoom wiki that describes a function that does the attack AND the beam itself at the same time. Might be a good idea to consider using that action.

[ArsonBurger]

19 hours ago, Alper002 said:

There's this page on the zdoom wiki that describes a function that does the attack AND the beam itself at the same time. Might be a good idea to consider using that action.

Thanks! I tried it out, and it's definitely something I'm going to use in the future. However, it isn't exactly what I was visualizing.

What I'm imagining is a big string of orange plasma balls that form a line that ends with an explosion. 

[Alper002]

5 minutes ago, ArsonBurger said:

Thanks! I tried it out, and it's definitely something I'm going to use in the future. However, it isn't exactly what I was visualizing.

What I'm imagining is a big string of orange plasma balls that form a line that ends with an explosion.  

Maybe fastprojectiles could work instead?

It'd be particularly useful with regards to the "ends with an explosion" part, as a death state can be defined for when it hits a wall.

[ArsonBurger]

39 minutes ago, Alper002 said:

Maybe fastprojectiles could work instead?

It'd be particularly useful with regards to the "ends with an explosion" part, as a death state can be defined for when it hits a wall.

Here's what I have so far-

actor BallistaTrail : FastProjectile
{
	height 5
	radius 5
	damage 0
	speed 200 
 
	renderstyle Add
	alpha 1
  
	seesound ""
	deathsound ""
  
	PROJECTILE
  
	states
	{
		Spawn:
			BALT A 1 
			loop
		Death:
			BALT B 1
			BALT C 1
			BALT D 1
			stop
  }
}

Does this look alright? And how would I spawn these in during the weapon's attack state?

[Alper002]

From what I gather, actors inherited fastprojectile acts like a fast projectile(duh), and the trails from the fastprojectile don't need to be inherited from anything.

As the fastprojectile page states, you need to use the missiletype property to make a fastprojectile spawn trails.
You seem to be making a fastprojectile without trails, as-is.

 

To use the trails, you need to shoot the projectile, and make it go REALLY fast!

[ArsonBurger]

Sounds good! I tried it out and I think I did it right:

actor BallistaBolt : FastProjectile
{
	height 10
	radius 12
	damage 0
	speed 250
 
	renderstyle Add
	alpha 1
  
	seesound ""
	deathsound ""
  
	MISSILETYPE "BallistaTrail"
	+FORCEPAIN
	+NOBLOCKMAP
	+NOGRAVITY
	+NOTELEPORT
	+CANNOTPUSH
  
	states
	{
		Spawn:
			BALT A 1 
			loop
		Death:
			BALT B 1
			BALT C 1
			BALT D 1
			BALT E 1
			stop
  }
}
ACTOR BallistaTrail
{
  +NOBLOCKMAP
  +NOGRAVITY
  +NOTELEPORT
  +CANNOTPUSH
  
  RenderStyle Translucent
  Alpha 0.6
 
	States
	{
	Spawn:
		BALT A 50
		Stop
	}
}

Still might need some tweaking though

 

Now, how would I make this fire out of the weapon? I'm assuming it's something similar to a_firebullets or a_custommissile

[Alper002]

Doesn't look like the decorate has any major issues except for the trails not becoming invisible.

Yeah, you just shoot the fastprojectile with A_custommissile.