zabing12 has some ideas.

[zabing12]

Hello everyone! I have mod ideas, questions, and more!
Number One:
I have always wanted to play as the pirate ships of FTL, but I have not figured out how to turn the ships sideways without making them shorter in GIMP 2. If you could give me a way to make the ships horizontal, that would be great.
Number Two:
How does someone make an event? I don't know how, and part of my mod idea would be events.
Number Three:
How does someone make weapons?
Number four:
drop box is too complicated, and I have no clue where to put my ships up for people to download. Please recommend.
My mod Idea is to turn all A and B ships into a crystal ships. As soon as I can get an answer to number one and four, I can can make the crystal hunter and crystal bomber.
Thanks!

[NarnKar]

1. I don't really understand what you mean by this question. How does simply rotating the image "shorten" it?

4. Mediafire's pretty reliable for me. Just make an account and upload files, and the links should be easy to access.

3. Custom weapons require their own sprite sheets and glow sheets. I'm not the best person to ask about this, to be honest...
What I did is, I used the FTL .Dat unpacker to unpack the FTL resources, and looked at the blueprints.xml and some of the weapon spritesheets, to see if I could just sort of figure it out myself. That failed horrendously.

What YOU should do is, you should read this thread.

[KloAl]

Rotating images is very easy, I'm going with NarnKar here and saying I don't really get what you mean.

Making events is tricky imo, because getting the game to load is the first part, and testing them is another as they are randomly generated with the beacons... try to find a tutorial or ask a experience modder.

As far as making weapons goes tutorials or looking at the xml files will serve you well, however if you want to experiment in a different way the program in my signature currently makes weapons based on user specified input.

Going with NarnKar again Mediafire is very straightforward.

[NarnKar]

Actually, KloAl. TaxiService's Mod Testing Environment comes with a Custom Content Patch.
Basically, you plug your event details in there, and the Mod Testing Environment will load the event based on your choice. It makes things way easier to test, since you can pull up your events at will, rather than have them randomly summoned.

[KloAl]

Actually, KloAl. TaxiService's Mod Testing Environment comes with a Custom Content Patch.
Basically, you plug your event details in there, and the Mod Testing Environment will load the event based on your choice. It makes things way easier to test, since you can pull up your events at will, rather than have them randomly summoned.

Very Cool, and should make it way easier for modders to make events.

[zabing12]

Never mind about the ship hull getting cut, I fixed it.

Thanks for the tip about media fire.

I tried my hand at weapon creating, but I can't seem to get it working.
Here is the animations.xml.append and the blueprints.xml.append.
animations

Code: Select all

<animSheet name="Hyperion_Laser" w="192" h="60" fw="16" fh="60">weapons/Hyperion_Laser_strip3.png</animSheet>
<weaponAnim name="Hyperion_Laser">
   <sheet>Hyperion_Laser</sheet>
   <desc length="12" x="0" y="0"/>
   <chargedFrame>2</chargedFrame>
   <fireFrame>3</fireFrame>
   <firePoint  x="10" y="16"/>
   <mountPoint x="2" y="44"/>
</weaponAnim>
blueprints
[code]<weaponBlueprint name="HYPERION_LASER">
   <type>LASER</type>       
   <title>Hyperion laser</title>         
   <short>Hyperion Laser</short>                         
   <desc>A sheild peircing laser.</desc>                         
   <tooltip>Only one shot, one damage per shot.</tooltip>         
   <damage>1</damage>
   <shots>1</shots>                 
   <sp>0</sp>                           
   <fireChance>1</fireChance>
   <breachChance>0</breachChance>
   <cooldown>10</cooldown>                     
   <power>1</power>                                   
   <cost>20</cost>                                   
   <bp>2</bp>
   <rarity>1</rarity>                                     
   <image>Hyperion_Laser</image>                       
   <launchSounds>                                         
     <launchSounds>                                         
      <sound>lightLaser1</sound>
      <sound>lightLaser2</sound>
      <sound>lightLaser3</sound>
   </launchSounds>
   <hitShipSounds>                                   
      <sound>hitHull2</sound>
      <sound>hitHull3</sound>
   </hitShipSounds>
   <hitShieldSounds>                                 
      <sound>hitShield1</sound>
      <sound>hitShield2</sound>
      <sound>hitShield3</sound>
   </hitShieldSounds>
   <missSounds>                                       
      <sound>miss</sound>
   </missSounds>
   <weaponArt>Hyperion_Laser</weaponArt>     
</weaponBlueprint>     
</weaponBlueprint>

<!-- THE KESTREL -->
<!-- LAYOUT = DEFAULT -->
<!-- SHIP ID = 0 -->   
      <weapon name="MISSILES_2_PLAYER"/>
      <weapon name="HYPERION_LASER"/>
   </weaponList>

If you could point out the problems, that would be great.
Oh, I am trying to make it work on SMM, if that is any information that is needed

[NarnKar]

If your weapon is not working at all:
There is a problem in your weapon blueprint.

If your weapon works, but its art does not show up:
There is a problem in your animations.

As far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong with either of those.

If your weapon is working and its art shows up, but it doesn't pierce shields:
The <sp> object defines the shield piercing of your weapon.
Set <sp>0</sp> to 5 and it should pierce shields.

In the future, please be a little bit more specific when you say something's "not working", so I can tell what exactly the problem is.

[zabing12]

OK, I tried putting it on thew kestrel, and it isn't showing up.

[OneShot17]

For your weapons, check out my PhaserMaker for Mac/Linux. Even if you don't have a mac or linux machine, you can look at the source code. It will create a fully functional blueprints.xml.append file. You'll need to do the animations yourself (I haven't worked on that yet) but it does take care of the blueprints. Give it a try

[NarnKar]

OK, I tried putting it on thew kestrel, and it isn't showing up.

Again, some specificness would help here. Does the Kestrel come with its starting weaponry, 1 BL2 and 1 Artemis? If so, you haven't actually added the weapon onto the Kestrel, and you should revise your Kestrel blueprint.

If the Kestrel has a weapon where you specified your Hyperion Laser, but it uses the Basic Laser image, costs 0 power, has 0 cooldown, and doesn't fire, that's a debug thing. When that happens, it means you're calling a weapon that doesn't exist, and FTL panics and puts a dummy weapon in its place. If you've done that, then your blueprint for the Hyperion Laser hasn't been added correctly.

If the Kestrel has a weapon where you specified your Hyperion Laser, and the Hyperion fires correctly, but uses the Basic Laser image, that's a problem with your animations. Specific code would help here.

If I had to wager a guess (and if you were more specific, I wouldn't need to guess), this is your problem: you loaded your modded Kestrel, but you failed to load the weapon mod, meaning that it calls data that doesn't really exist. Then FTL panics and puts the debug weapon there.

As one last note, you may want to look into TaxiService's Custom Content Patch for the Mod Testing Environment. Modifying the Kestrel's blueprint is fine and all, but it's annoying if you have a weapon that costs five power, since the Kestrel only starts with four power...and other considerations like that, like "what if you get blown up while testing your stuff". The CCP comes with a Testrel blueprint to modify--it's a Kestrel with maxed systems, meaning no power considerations for custom weapons. Admittedly, modifying it is like modifying the vanilla Kestrel, but it's a heck of a lot more awesome, because TESTING.