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Ive made this discussion because we were discussing a theory I had for a work around on WASP. Problem is, it was not WASP related and I felt it was clogging up attention that needed to be directed toward WASP mod and not a theory.

So this thread would be for theory we may have for work arounds in FPSC. Any theory should be welcome and open to discuss. Please keep in mind because someone points out a fult or flaw in your thoery does not make it impossiable. It just means you need to declear or better state how your theory should work in practice.

This is not a debate form please. So if you have a theory please share but also test your theory and provide results in a timely fashion. An please post accurate results. If your theory failed don't lie just come clean and say it failed. But state why it failed and the results. Sometimes your results may spark new theories or ideas for others.


Flak Work around Theory:

Using EAI's spell system, Ive been able to get alot of successful results. The major theory I have about using his spells system is a FLAK work around as discussed in WASP mod. The question a person asked was is it possiable to make a FLAK work on multi player. The answer is clearly no unless you mod the crap out of the core FPSC engine. However, I have a theory about a work around to use a simulated FLAK system.

To a player a FLAK is nothing more then a object being ejected from a weapon etc. Like a grenade or something. The nade explodes on impact of what ever it hits or has a delay before explosion. Here is the work around theory. Using EAI's Ive noticed his spells have simular result when fired. When they hit something, it makes a animated explosion.

So that solves part one of simulated FLAK. The next part is the simulation of a object being shot out toward the target. I read a post were someone had creaed a "Tracer" bullet system. Nice idea, it also could be used to act like a object being thrown etc. Now the more we think about this, we could make a simple decal to simulate a stright line matching up with the crosshair.

So when the Decal runs, it looks like a flashing stright line emurging out toward the crosshair. To the player, it would look like you threw something. In reailty you did not it just appears that way. So know one knows its not a True FLAK. Just looks like it.

Now the next part is the muzzle flash. A muzzle flash is very simple to simulate. Make a animated muzzle flash simulateing a hand throwing the object super fast. If it don't look right, a another work around could be your weapon's Hud. Use a regular muffle flash and use the decal to simulate the object moving out of the weapon. This of course is if you cant get your muzzle flash to look realistic.

All of this above has been tested and works so no longer theory. An it all works in multi player currently. An it did not require mass coding to achive it. Just simple manipulation of art and decals etc. So we did not have to change any thing engine wise. Now the hard part is giving the weapon a area damage.

Nades do a area effect damage. So your simulated Flak weapons need to as well in theory. Of course in the end it up to you how they damage the pllayer. Anyway, to simulate a area damage, I thought very hard about this work around.

Something we maybe able to do is messaure segments or something in a weapons code. Bullet does x amount of damage in x amount of segments. So Id set mine to about 5 amount of damager in 2 segements rage. This is all theory of course (this section).

This should work. Instead of assinging the object to do x amount of damage in area, we have assigned the weapon to determine how much damage based on segments in the area. That should also be a easy calulation for the machine or engine to solve. So FPS should not be affected heavily if you mass nade a area. Unlike other games I wont mention names, when I use a nade or shot gun for example. I lag to death and then I curse at the game and the dev's etc. Cause they suck and the games crap.

So yeah this theory should reduce "angering" your players and not make them feel like the person using the nade etc is cheating. Because it should not affect the FPI to much.

Closeing Statements:
This is my FLAK theory. I plan to fully test it completly soon and have all the results soon. Problem will be, because I used EAI's weapons, I can't upload the full code etc. EAI asked I not share his part of the work in another thread. So to keep it simple. I'd rather not share anyof it. An let you guys read the result and discover it for your selves as well.

Most of the coding part will be very simple. the art part will be the hardest. Making a custom decal will be very difficult. Good luck to those who try the theory out. Feel free to post your results or your theory as well.

You know, you could remove the flak and the other part of the grenade that flags its explosiveness to fpsc, and just add the exploding decal. You don't need to use 2d when you have 3d

Also, this would be so much easier if we could use .gif animations so I think if support for those was to be added (which would also allow for many, many more possibilities) I think we just might be able to do this with a bit more ease.

I agree giff support would make live so much easier. We so need giff support. Imaging with giff support omg man we could animate walls for some super creepy effects lol

Muzzle flashes are stale images which simply get rotated to give the player an illusion there's an animation/variety.



Seems a bit pointless to me and it wont look good at all.


And how exactly are you going to do that...The only scriptable weapons I'm aware of are in PB and I don't even know if it's available in MP.


Use bond1's animated shader (forgot the exact name)...



Not at all.

An Idea if this is to be incorporated into MP is to mess around in setuplevel.fpi and add conditions if x weapon is held,to show decal or something else of the "dev's" choice.The problem I see is the limitation with the states,because you have to be careful not to trigger something and not be able to go back into game menu/game.

I might give this some thought and see what I can come up with.

@ Gencheff

Allready have everything working and looking good except the weapon script part. An what I ment was add it into the weapons script so it don't relie on a mod. I had this idea working allready with out use of Project Blue or WASP. It was not really hard to make it work. Just took alot of time making the decals.

The idea came about one night when I read some posts prier to WASP post. So I started playing with EAI's spells and honestly stummbed upon the finding by playing around with the GunSpec txt file. Orginaly I think I was trying to make a custom decal for a new spell. The texture I made when I stumbled upon the idea did not look right. It literly looked like I was throwing something. Then the little lightbuld when off in my head lol

Moving on, so your saying using the Dark Shader system we can use gifs?

Leave it to Gencheff to attempt to make this work Also is it really necessary to have that a weapon such as a grenade do damage to an area? Make it more bouncy and make it so if it hits you it does like 50 damage. just to make life easier you know?

No, you can use an animated texture and project it on an element using bond1's shader.Sort of like a decal,but with a blending mode set to overlay and it's technically moveable,if you understand what I mean.

Here's the topic - http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=170127&b=24

Thanks ill take a look at it. Thanks for sharing.

I think a very useful idea would be to incorporate flak with decal, so it would be possible to make dynamite, molotovs or sparkler bombs but that may require a fair bit of db code editing.

Bit of a bump... but hey this thread isn't that old. Anyways... shadow workaround! (not tested)

Very simple concept, so It should work.
Take your model, knowing which direction you want the shadow. Take a screenshot of the model in the aprox. apearance you want your shadow, as in what you want the shadow to look like. Go into your 2d texturing application, and edit the screeshot so it looks like a shadow. Be sure your shadow is not true black. Now make the rest of the image true black. Make a plane under your model and extending out in the direction you want your shadow. Add your shadow image as a texture onto the plane. You may need to adjust the location of the plane or image. Re-save your model as a new entity, and add it into your game. It should appear to have a shadow now. Now, for you programmers... fake character shadows. Do the same process above... but only save the shadow plane. Now add your plane under the character in the editor. Then add a script that will have the plane position itself under the character, follow it, and face one direction. Let me know if this works!

Ok old_school the bullet tracer was flak and was crap since the bulletswould explode so that would not work