Projectiles with Area of Effect part

[argent77]

I’m currently working on a new AoE spell which also uses custom spell animations.

 

The spell and its associated BAM and VVC files are already done, but I have trouble creating a working projectile file. I am unable to specify my own animation to the AoE part, all I can do is select one of the pre-defined animations: See here (The 'Use VVC' checkbox below just adds a single animation without changing the actual AoE visuals.)

 

I think the FIREBALL.IDS is somehow involved but I have no idea what else must be changed or added to get it working. Just adding a new IDS entry crashes the game.

 

Does anyone know more about it?

[Ardanis]

Afaiu set off animations are hardcoded. Just like many other bits in this game.

What you can probably do is to set it to none (0xff) and make a custom VVC, that will act as visuals for your spell. Apparently, depending on curcumstances, it might be very time consuming to accomplish.

[argent77]

I see.

 

Is it possible to change the colors of the animation (the Storm of Vengeance animation in my case)? There is a color selector in the projectile dialog but it doesn’t change anything for me.

[Ardanis]

I would assume that SoW is yet another hardcoded thing. And indeed, it uses too complex graphics compared to other set offs.

[argent77]

Well, I can change the animation by replacing the files SPSTRMVA.BAM and SPSTRMVB.BAM with my own versions but it also changes the visuals of the original Storm of Vengeance, of course. See here

 

Is there a set off animation which isn’t used in the game? Maybe I could use it instead.

[devSin]

There isn't an animation you can replace, and you're mostly stuck with the predefined clouds (you could conceivably create some invisible cres and have them periodically fire off visuals, but it's almost certainly not worth it if you could get it to work right at all).

 

There's a purple 3D fireball slot that never got used, but it's not quite correct and it's a palette swap instead of a separate animation (it's the normal 3D fireball BAM but with the external palette).

[Avenger]

AoE projectiles are possible, but AoE visual effects are hardcoded to the list of fireball.ids. (FIREBALL.IDS is hardcoded).

You can do try some tricks by chaining projectiles together that might look like a new area of effect visual.

(There are some rarely used fields in .pro that could be used to spawn a child projectile).

[argent77]

Thanks for all your suggestions. I’ll try the custom VVC first and see if it works.