Weapon Variables: what do they do?

[IMSabbel]

Edit 10: SmokeTrail

Does the projectile leave a smoke trail or not. Can be set to 1 or 0.

Determines the projectile leave a smoke trail or not. Can be set to 1 or 0. This must be set to 1 for guidance to work. Will not work with LineOfSight or Ballistic weapons, but you can create a Ballistic weapon by making a Guided weapon with a TurnRate of 0 and TrajectoryHeight > 1.

If anybody has proven this wrong with 0.72b or higher, let me know, but I found that out awhile ago. Luckily, with 0.73b, we can use an invisible texture and get rid of that little problem

Has anybody, ever, actually understood how the hell smoke trail became linked to guided?

[Aun]

SJ, I assume.

[KDR_11k]

Probably since Spring's weapon code is primarily meant to accept the OTA definitions and turn them into something usable, in OTA there were no guided non-missile weapons (though I think that might have been tied to the selfprop tag instead) so Spring doesn't implement guidance for non-missile projectiles and it uses the smoketrail tag to determine what is a missile.

If you ask me that whole "what is OTA doing there" code needs to be ripped out ASAP with a weapontype tag that defines exactly what projectile type we want there replacing it. Same for ideas like placing muzzleflashes when a piece named flare is shown, those were just hacky methods to make TA content look better, they have no place in an engine that doesn't want to be a mere TA clone. Rip it out, think about ways to replace it later. The sooner it's gone the fewer mods will rely on this broken behaviour.

[Argh]

I would have to agree with that assessment. When 0.73b is released, I will probably begin doing just that.

[Caydr]

Holy snarf. I think you just invented a new kind of spam.

[FoeOfTheBee]

Smoketrail seems to override rendertype. The weapon variables situation is very wierd at the moment, in terms of the rules about what overrides what. Give smoketrails to a rendertype 4 weapon, and in acts like a rendertype 1 weapon.