[SUBMISSION] Trident Tri-Launcher

It's been a while since I made a weapon for Doom, but I've been inspired to make something since seeing all these new awesome submissions recently.

This one is a fairly standard rocket launcher type weapon, but it has the option to fire three rockets at once, and some extra special effects.

Code: Captain Toenail
GLDefs: GZDoom (lights.pk3)
Sounds: simon13666, Mozfoo, 18hiltc
Sprites: TimeSplitters (HUD weapon), Eriance (rocket), Doom
Sprite Edit: Captain Toenail
Idea Base: The rocket launcher from TimeSplitters


Name: Trident Tri-Launcher
Class: 5
Type: Projectile
Palette: Doom
Summon: TripleLauncher
Ammo Type: TripleRocketAmmo, TripleRocketBox
Altfire: Yes
Powered Mode: No
Brightmaps: No
Actor modification: No
ACS: No


Description:
The Trident Tri-Launcher is rumoured to be an offshoot of the shoulder
cannon from the UAC's classified Revenant program.

While it may be less powerful than the conventional rocket launcher, it can
fire a spread of three erratic missiles at once to devastating effect.

Dodge that!

Pretty cool weapon! Great visual FX and I love the "weave" effect.

I have two suggestions. The explosion sounds kinda lack the oomph of the vanilla explosion. Maybe pitch them up a little, like 20% or so, and put a limiter/compressor on them so they sound louder.

And, due to the fact that the rockets are much weaker than vanilla ones, it might be a good idea to increase the MaxAmount and BackpackMaxAmount values to 75 and 150 respectively, or even to 100 and 200.

I also noticed that when there is only 1 or 2 rockets left and you try to use Alt-Fire, the weapon lowers and rises again. Not sure if that's intended or not. Doesn't bother me, just wanted to point it out.

Those are some good suggestions DeVloek, I'll see what I can do.

The AltFire behaviour isn't intended - good catch. I'll see about putting in an ammo check there.

Ok the file has been updated.

- AltFire will now launch whatever ammo is left. If player has two or one rockets it will just shoot those instead.
- The explosion sounds have been boosted and pitched up.
- Added flag to tell bots it is an explosive weapon.
- Removed a transparent shadow from the sprites that I missed - a leftover from editing.
- Increased ammo limit to 75/150

Interesting use of 3D models and flat sprites for the rocket, but this has the downside of looking weird when shooting vertically:

Even if this could be fixed, it would make the flare look weirdly positioned in software renderer.
Also the hud sprites can disappear for a couple of frames in the firing sequence because you misspelled TS1R as TSIR.

Yes it's frustrating. I'm close to solving this issue by making the flare a second 3D model and attaching it to the model as part of a multipart model. Almost got it working - some weird rendering issues at the moment.

Edit: Here's what I've got so far. With renderstyle translucent, it renders correctly from the back. From the front, the flare renders through through the missile. Bah!
https://imgur.com/UpMI148

With renderstyle solid, the translucent information in the flare is lost. Looks rubbish.
https://imgur.com/9POymvB

A hacky solution I can think of would be to make the flare a separate missile, and launch it with the exact same trajectory as the rocket. Not ideal.

The fins of the rocket aren't rendered properly either

I have a working solution in my head, where the flare is spawned as a second actor as before, and then the pitch/velocity(?) are transferred from the rocket to the flare so they match. I suspect zscript will be required for that. I'm happy for this one to be left on hold for now till I figure out a working solution.

The flare now follows the rocket exactly at every angle in gl mode, and the pitch matches too!
I also fixed the incorrectly labelled frames.

Updated link in the first post.

I found a weird bug: If you shoot a rocket at exactly 90° pitch, rockets come out upside down: