Add support for missiles that can passthrough immutables.

[PM]

Add something that, if used, lets missiles with (high) passthrough pass through immutable objects like shockwaves do. This would be useful for objects that are spawned as missiles because it is most expendient if spawned as missiles rather than as ships or stations; for example, some types of drones/options from various shm'ups. It would also be useful for those who want to add overpowered custom weapon effects, such as cutter waves from various shm'ups.

[TVR]

Interestingly enough, missiles post-1.1 with passthrough=100 were impossible to destroy or intercept and would cleanly penetrate any spaceObject, regardless of damage or other factors. This behavior changed with one of the 1.2 betas, though.

[Song]

Might be nice to have a whole bunch of criteria for what a missile can/cannot pass through. That'd let a modder do things like have a weapon that shoots through ships and asteroids, but gets stopped by planets, stargates and stations. Or something like that.

[george moromisato]

I'll look at this for the next dev release.

[george moromisato]

Add something that, if used, lets missiles with (high) passthrough pass through immutable objects like shockwaves do. This would be useful for objects that are spawned as missiles because it is most expendient if spawned as missiles rather than as ships or stations; for example, some types of drones/options from various shm'ups. It would also be useful for those who want to add overpowered custom weapon effects, such as cutter waves from various shm'ups.

The easiest thing to do would be to add an additional parameter:

passthroughImmutable="..."

This would allow you to set a different value for immutable passthrough (though, of course, you could set it to the same value).

Does this handle the case that you're interested in?

[PM]

I think so. Say, if a missile has passthroughImmutable="100", it can pass through immutables? If so, that would make spawning pseudo-autons as missiles viable.

[george moromisato]

I think so. Say, if a missile has passthroughImmutable="100", it can pass through immutables? If so, that would make spawning pseudo-autons as missiles viable.

Got it--now I get what you're trying to do.

Would it be better/possible to just create real ships? You can, for example, create a ship from inside an OnFireWeapon event. The advantage is that they then behave like real ship (e.g., can be targeted, register for purposes of the "Enemy ships detected" warning, scoring, etc.).

The only disadvantage is that they don't collide--but we could add that to ships.

[Atarlost]

Ships have AI. There is no ramming AI.

Either there needs to be both a ramming AI and ship to ship collision detection or projectiles able to pass immutables the way ships do to satisfy PM's needs. The former would require two engine changes, the latter only one. The latter is also easier to use as the whole system can be in one item tag rather than being split between an item tag and a ship tag.

[PM]

I also like to be able to make completely overpowered weapons that shoot missiles that pass through immutables like shockwaves too, without being limited to shockwaves only, but this is low priority. Spawning missiles that can emulate ships when it is easier than spawning a ship is more useful.

Satellites that behave like Gradius options, the big R-Type force pod, and Chmmr Zapsats do not need AI. They simply orbit or follow the player precisely (Transcendence ship AI has movement quirks that cannot replicate this). Some options also block shots and kill mooks that collide with the option, something ships cannot do but missiles can in Transcendence.

Atarlost has explained it is a more succinct way too.

[george moromisato]

In that case, the easiest thing for me would be to have a single boolean on a weapon types that causes it to ignore immutables. Unlike passthrough, it would never attempt to damage an immutable--it would just ignore them, like ships to.

I suspect we'll need other options as well. For instance, you might need an option to have a missile orbit its source.

[PM]

It would nice if there is a chance for immutable passthrough for custom weapons that emulate shockwave passthrough. Even shockwaves do not always passthrough planets.

Orbiting support would be cleaner and more efficient than <Event> shenanigans. (I already have a device in Items912 called MASS that spawns options that orbit the playership and smack things around for minor damage, in addition to the device giving +30% to low level shields.)