[SUBMISSION] Flak Cannon

Information:
Name: Flak Cannon
Class: 5
Type: Hitscan/Projectile
Palette: Doom
Summon: FlakCannon
Ammo Type: Custom type - FlakAmmo
Powered Mode: No
Added States: No (but uses SSG damage type if you want to use it with Brutal)

Credits:
Submitted: DavidN
Decorate: DavidN
GLDefs: DavidN
Sounds: id Software, DavidN
Sprites: DavidN, PillowBlaster
Idea Base: Unreal Tournament's Flak Cannon
ACS: None

Description:
An Unreal Tournament-inspired flak cannon. It fires a hitscan attack similar to the super shotgun, with an additional random spread of rebounding flak projectiles. With some skill, this allows you to damage enemies around corners!

Sprites





Video
https://youtu.be/9VYaEcq8vTs

Download
http://www.teamouse.net/games/doom/FlakCannon.wad

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Originally made for my first Doom experiment-turned-episode Vulkan. After I released the mod, Mr. Guncaster himself spontaneously offered a redraw of the sprite, and this is the version in the WAD! Both black-glove and Doom-glove variants are included - to use black fingerless gloves, move the six FKGN sprites in XTRASTRT/XTRAEND between the SS markers and delete the six frames that they duplicate.

I approve of this! The only "issue" I see is that some of the sounds aren't in OGG/FLAC.

Something about the description: it should get to the point directly without providing history or references to other things. For instance, not everybody knows or might know what "Vulkan" is. You can elaborate in your post if you want. It's fine. But it should be kept separated from the description.

Thanks, sounds good - updated the description and converted all the sounds to OGG. Link in the first post should now have the updated version.

I'm...kind of in love. Why no autoaim, though? Does that "break" the scatter effect?

Also, both glove variant sets are in between the same markers, and the black ones have precedence. I'd put the alternate gloves in between a couple of extra markers by themselves, and put a note in DECORATE indicating the extra sprites are alternates.

one of the greatest submissions i've ever seen!

The NOAUTOAIM flag was... basically just there because it was on whatever weapon I copy and pasted as a template and I never removed it - I took it out and nothing terrible happened, so I've updated the WAD again. I've also done as you suggested, moved the brown-glove frames to be the default and included the six black-glove ones between two markers XTRASTRT and XTRAEND, with notes in the DECORATE on how to use them.

Thanks for all the great comments

Autoaim is still disabled for the projectile part of the attack. Unfortunately, if this is fixed, the projectiles don't spread vertically.

Has there ever been a feature request to allow pitch to be applied to autoaimed attacks? It seems as though pitch and autoaim shouldn't be mutually exclusive.

In the meanwhile, can the projectiles be fired without a pitch, and use A_SetPitch to set their individual pitches randomly immediately after being fired? Something like:

TNT1 A 0 A_SetPitch(random(pitch+5), (pitch-5))

I've experimented around, and I feel like I'm going mad but A_SetPitch doesn't seem to make a difference when applied to the projectiles. Even with +RANDOMIZE off so the first frame definitely gets run, TNT1 AAAAAAAA 0 A_SetPitch(frandom(pitch+5.0, pitch-5.0)) - or even just absolute values like A_SetPitch(18.0) - don't make a difference to the trajectory, whether there's anything to autoaim at or not. Using an anonymous function {pitch = pitch + frandom(-5.0, 5.0);} doesn't work either.

I was going to try it by modifying the Z position randomly, but I can't find a way to do it! Is there really no way to just set the Z-coordinate up or down a bit from DECORATE?

One other possibility that comes to mind is spawning a temporary actor with the A_FireCustomMissile, then get that actor to fire the actual FlakShards with another A_CustomMissile call... but it's been a long day and it feels like a bit much

Admittedly, trying A_SetPitch was just a guess...maybe projectiles can't be affected in that way. Or perhaps it's more complicated than that. It's not the end of the world either way, but if the autoaim could be made to work along with the spray, that would be brilliant.

Oh, and RANDOMIZE doesn't affect whether the first frame gets run; just the duration of the first frame. Normally functions called on the first frame never get run unless you add the state label "NoDelay" to it. In this case it seems not to make any difference, though.