Grif gave me this idea a few weeks ago. It's a weapon that shoots other weapons, which shoot people. Weird, eh?
I'm releasing this as a
Proof of Concept, since I don't feel like it's a fully finished mod. I'm starting classes again soon, so I probably won't have much time to finish it. Plus I think the Lua code is worth taking a look it. It's a good example of how to use a weapon's PresetName to store information in place of messy, complicated globals.
Here's how it works:
Walk up close to a gun laying on the ground
Shoot at the gun to "load" it into the weapon
Then point and fire that weapon at someone
I didn't program a limit to how many weapons you can load into the gun. So yeah, you can store a lot of guns into the weapon. The gif pretty much explains the rest:
Oh, the gun will shatter before hitting an obstacle, so enemies can't pick up the gun and use it against you. Be willing to sacrifice these weapons, because your not getting them back.
Biggest issue with this gun that I couldn't get around was the FireTime of some weapons. Whenever you first pull out a weapon, some of them take a few seconds to arm before they can shoot. This also applies to weapons flying through the air
. So like with a shotgun, you have to be a good distance away before you can actually get the launched shotgun to shoot someone.
On the plus side, the derbies of a gun shattering before hitting an enemy can sometimes do MASSIVE damage.
Lua Stuff:If your decent enough with Lua, check out the code. It's got some charms in it that might interest you.
The way the weapon "stores" guns inside it is by adding the loaded weapons' preset names to the end of the launcher's preset name, separated by commas. Since self.PresetName is the same for any pointer, you are able to load the gun, drop it, pick it back up, and then still shoot the loaded weapon. It doesn't use any messy globals.
There is a drawback to this however. Some weapons have the same Preset Names. Like if you load up a Coalition sniper rifle, you'll end up shooting a dummy sniper rifle. I'm sure there is a way to fix this, and I might look into it later.
I also have code that I commented out which makes the gun turn and fire at nearby opponents as it flies past them. I found that in some instances it was more convenient for the gun to fire constantly in the direction it is flying, than to wait to fly past an enemy to fire. I thought about adding in a mode selected to switch between, but never got around to it. So I simply commented it out. (It's the code between the --[[ and --]]).
