Hello,

And yet another request.
I'd like to have the laser weapons in UniTec to actually look a bit like... lasers. But I'd like to keep MOPixels (or MOSParticles) as their round, since I find AEmitter rounds not really effective at hitting a target without creating some sort of an explosion.

I wonder if it's possible to attach an AEmitter to a MOPixel through lua? If so, would anyone mind conjuring up a script to make this happen?

It'd take a marginally more advanced script to rotate the emissions to accommodate the velocity of the bullet, but if you emit them at zero velocity in no particular direction this should look fine.

Thanks, it works, but... after shooting around for a bit the game freezes repeatedly.
And I see why. xD The emitters keep floating about after the bullets are gone.

I tried adding this:


but that was obviously too easy of me to think that would work.

Any chance to show me a marginally more complicated script?
I've got a laser glow emitter that looks like this:

but, as you said, the mopixels do not align well with the actual shot.

What I would do is simply continuously add particles through lua and forget the emitter entirely.


Either leave off that vel line, or give the particles more airresistance than the scripted particle (which looks great for smoke trails, but for the laser you might want to just spawn it at zero vel, assuming once per lua update is a fast enough rate of spawning particles to make a continuous beam effect. If not, the AEmitter might be the better option.)

Thanks, Azukki, but no matter what I try, it just leaves a trail like this: . . . .
I'm afraid it's really necessary to use an emitter.

You were really close.

My bad for not putting it there in the first place.

No worries.
Anyway, as soon as I add a max- and minvelocity to the emitter's emision things aren't going as planned, and it's needed to make a long laserbolt.
Instead of lining up they fly off to the right. Even when shooting to the left. :S

You'd have to calculate the "Angle" of the MOPixel using trigonometry and rotate the AEmitter to fit that.

Or just have OrientsToVel = 1 on the emitter's .ini.
Might want to negative-ize the emission velocities, too, depending on whether you want the emissions in the same direction or opposite to the parent's vel.
The speed can't correlate to the parent, though, which is why I'd forget about the emission and just Lua it, but whatever, it's your mod.

That's a much simpler solution

Don't overestimate my capabilities. If you can help with that, please do.

Well, your OrientToVel tip did the trick. It needs some tinkering, but there's a glow trail present now.
I struck into a weird problem though. The game freezing returned.
When I fire the modified bullets into the ground or enemies the game freezes after a couple of shots.
I'll try to find the cause of it, but somehow I'm afraid it's lua related.

This is the script I have now:

That would be the result of the parent projectile referencing the emitter (in the update function) when the emitter is destroyed. It might be gibbing, lifetime, or settling, I have no idea, but I'm positive that the crash is happening because the parent wants to tell the emitter what to do at some point when the emitter is gone.

You could try to make sure the emitter is completely invincible, but in those occasions where even the invincible is destroyed, you'd still get a crash.

SO. Instead of telling the particle once "This is the emitter" and then continuously saying "keep it with you", continuously tell/ask the particle "Do you still have your emitter? If so, keep it with you, if you never had it, or if you lost it, here's an emitter"
(if you have a reference to an object that once was but no longer exists, the ID is 255, or at least this works for everything else I've done)

So try this. I haven't tested it because I don't feel like setting up the ini to do so, but I'm moderately confident that it's either functional or very close to functional.



I think you're overestimating the difficulty of spawning the particles in Lua. It's easier than doing the above. My script should have only needed some minor tweaks to get the spacing you want, unless it was vital that the particles not inherit velocity, but that's obviously not the case since you have emission velocities.
When you tried it before, the only problem was that the particles spawned were too far apart, yes?

How about that, with no airresistance on the particles? Too far apart still? Increase 0.9 (not to or beyond 1, though). Too close? Decrease 0.9 Too short of a trail? Increase particle lifetime. Too long? Decrease lifetime.

Thanks, your second script did it. Not perfectly, but I think I might be chasing rainbows.
The first script, I couldn't get it right, but I don't think it's the script. Probably my wonkey emitter.
I am very happy.
Cake for you!