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[Arumac]

I've been tooling around with modding for a while now (Nothing released except a couple of sprites shown for feedback), and there's one thing that I keep wishing was in the game.

Weapon mounts that are rendered under the ship, that way I can have part of the gun sticking out of the bottom, therefore looking awesome.

[Modest]

This suggestion do make sense. But for some reason I do not like it and would go against it. For me in 2D game with top look on world everything that is relevant (and weapons are relevant for me) should be on top rather than at the bottom. That way I can predict where an enemy may be aiming with his guns, and if he would shoot right now, where bullet would go.

As I said - suggestion do make sense, but personally I dislike it.

[BillyRueben]

A suggestion that has been made more than a few times. The search function wasn't much help, however, since it took me a fair amount of time and effort to find this quote:

In regards to your point about how it might suck not being able to see weapons under a ship, I wasn't really thinking about having weapons just plain invisible. I was thinking about having them stick out from the edges--still visible, but somewhat obscured, and not to the point that you don't know there's a weapon there. I'd also say that in a lot of cases, you could have the turret\hardpoint rendered underneath the ship, yet could still have the weapon rendered on the normal level. While it probably wouldn't be a good idea to have all of a ship's weapons come from underneath, it might be an interesting thing to see on the occasional ship. I suppose I'm just asking you give it a second thought. Even if you don't put weapons under ships in the native game, it would still be nice for modders to have that option. I'm not a programmer, but I'm guessing it probably wouldn't be all that difficult to add in an option for weapon files that lets us set which render level the turret\hardpoint are on. On the other hand, if it would take a while, then forget it, because I'd rather see new, operational features than modders-only hackjobs.

Right, I see what you're saying. Some potential trouble there, too. For example, the missile weapons that show the actual missiles racked on the weapon sprite. When launched, those would jump from being below the ship sprite to being above it. Only a problem if the missile was partially obscured, but that depends on the weapon config as much as on the slot, so you can't guarantee that it wouldn't happen by tweaking only the slot. Not a huge deal, but leaving those types of issues unresolved definitely qualifies it as a "hackjob" in my mind.

Similarly for missile launch smoke or gun muzzle flash - or even beams - since you can't really guarantee where those come out - it's easy to picture a weapon where the beam starts out way in the back of the sprite and goes all the way through it, for example - which would be a problem if that part of it was set into the hull.

I've been thinknig about this particular idea for a while... and will still keep an eye out for a good solution.

[Arumac]

Yea, I searched around for it myself before I posted, I couldn't find anything myself, but then again, I haven't been browsing this board too long.

I'd still like to see it though, I know I happen to find the weapons under the ship appealing in some cases. But whatever, it's not game-breaking.

[Wyvern]

Actually, someone recently made some rendered-under weapons; the trick is to use fixed decorative weapons that render over them.  It's not perfect - you get some odd results with the damage decals & disabled hulls - but it's workable.  The key info is the render order on weapon sizes, which you can find here.

Haven't had much luck tracking down the post to a completed render-weapons-under example; I know there's one out there, though it just used it to put a decorative spar over some missile mounts.  Eh.  Someone may post a link if they find it; I've spent enough time looking for now.

[FlashFrozen]

Post should be here,
 

Thank you Heres the "final" sprite, with the changes I proposed earlier.
As I said, with additional vertical line - an uninitiated viewer wouldnt know better.
(otherwise.. change the shading, had a leap of logic there..)

Spoiler

[close]

Edit - ill stop advert. right here. :p


Another question rises. I had an idea of using a "glow" from weapons to appear as..
sort of a energy barrier (for carrier hangars for example..)

However.. it doesnt show up in game, so my question is - is it possible to just use
"glow" from decorative weapons at all?

[Arumac]

I thought about doing that, but that seems like a patch-job for something that I figured would be standard in a game like this. Whatever, I'll just keep chugging along little by little