BeamLaser issues.

[Argh]

1. Tolerance.

They don't seem to obey it, currently. They often fire when the point is nearly 45 degrees off of true tolerance value / aiming point. Looks stupid, and if it was some hack-around, it should be deprecated, tolerance should work correctly on all weapons that use a collision-detection ray-test.

Should be fixed. Easy to test it, just use a unit with a slow turret, and watch it in slo-mo. 'Nuff said.

2. BeamTime.

While firing a shot with a BeamTime greater than one frame, AimWeapon should not be trying to slew the weapon to new targets unless sweepFire is true. It's really lame, to watch BeamLasers not only open fire long before they should, but then watch their turrets scrolling around like drunken fools, which also screws up the visual effect.

3. TileLength.

Should be pixels, not some arbitrary length, imo. The effect's moving the texture coordinates along a bitmap... it should use pixels, that's our frame of reference when we're designing the effect.

[lurker]

3. I think using elmos for anything that moves is the best way, but if it's currently something other than elmos that's not good.

1. So tolerance, you're saying that once a unit has aimed properly once shots after tend to just go off without reaiming, as if it had massive tolerance?

2. Quite.

[Argh]

1. So tolerance, you're saying that once a unit has aimed properly once shots after tend to just go off without reaiming, as if it had massive tolerance?

No, I'm saying that it doesn't even aim properly before it starts firing. I've literally seen shots fired at 45 degrees of the true point of aim.

At first I thought it was just a tolerance problem(I have a special weapon that I gave a fairly high tolerance to and was playing with the effects) but then I tested, and sure enough, any BeamLaser can exhibit bizarre behavior in terms of not meeting tolerance requirements.

I think (not quite sure yet) that this has something to do with custom fire arcs. I also observed a bug with the Assault Shell (that wheel-like thing that has guns on both sides) where it couldn't target Neutral stuff, even though the weapon allowed it, until I removed the custom fire-arcs and hacked it back together with COB instead (which works, because it won't let the weapon return TRUE).

IDK whether these two things are related, but it might be worth a quick look, I have this sneaking suspicion that the two issues might be related. I've seen similarly-bizarre behavior with other stuff using custom fire-arcs, come to think of it- iirc, anything with a burst may not actually be obeying it properly (I've seen the HeavyMech's plasma spam shooting nearly sideways a few times).

None of this stops the weapon from being functional... it just looks bad.

[lurker]

That would mean it's not waiting for the aim script at all, if it does it for the first shot ever. (that or the aim script has a bug)

[Argh]

It's not the aim scripts, they're all locked down with signal-masks and wait-for-turn.

[smoth]

it ignores aim. I agree with arghs points.

[Forboding Angel]

I agree wholeheartedly. Lurker for an example, you remember what the terra lighttanks used to do when I had them fitted with a beamlaser? Used to piss me off so much. The would fire, the the turret for whatever reason would move but the weapon sould still be firing so all of a sudden you have this barrel with a laser firing 90degrees out of the left of it. I mean it was just retarded.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Yeah, I have to agree there, I had to make our snipers, which used a very short lived beam weapon use a normal laser type weapon because they became the ultimate in anti-air weaponry...

[yuritch]

I've had this beamlaser super-tolarance on a non-firearced weapon, so it's probably not related to fire arcs. Lasers firing 90 degrees (not sure it was exactly 90, but surely far more than 45) from where their turret points atm look weird. The turret continues to aim while this happens btw, so in the end it points in the right direction (looks like the weapon doesn't wait for the aim script to finish for some reason, while non-beamlasers with the exact same script work fine).