Lightning-ish lightning tiles

[Bloax]

Yes, I've been working on this the entire day today (starting in the middle of night)

But I'm kind of stumbled on whether the stuff I have now can actually be used.


If someone's curious, I guess it'd look somewhat like this in action or something:

Spoiler: show

Perhaps making it blow up (fireball-like) at the end of it would kind of increase the cool factor.

But yeah, is this stuff even usable?
Here's a somewhat organized .psd of the tiles, in case you'd like a look.

Edit: Got the trajectory of them lightnings mapped. Do note that those are just wacky as all hell (note the one to the right going down and then up), so heh.

[galehar]

It does look pretty cool, but it's hard to tell how usable it would be without a grid background. It seems like it's too twisted. Also, it's weird that it's aimed at a corner of a tile. I suggest you put it on a screenshot of someone targeting a lightning bolt. That way you can see if the tiles actually follow the beam.

[Bloax]

This is technically Shock, but I think it still illustrates it well:


The one concern I have is that I'm me, and thus I have absolute freedom to place every piece as I like. (Of course I attempted to align them in all the tests I've done.)

Do note however that I'm using a special case here, the third move (which goes in towards the wall) should only appear (though what should I know) if it hits something by moving one tile forward and one diagonally towards the side it's fired in.
tl;dr This might get painful to implement. (Though if these are usable, I'll most likely make some minor variations of the tiles and get attempt some other tiles that could use fancy stuff like this.)

And yes, that second step is a diagonal tile. (Which takes up two, but the front one is purely decorational.)

[galehar]

I think it needs to leave a tile either at the middle of a side or by the corner. Look how kraken tentacles are implemented.

[Bloax]

The problem is that I can't really understand how they work, other than being very complicated.

Unless you're talking about it leaving a tip going off at the edge of it.

As for the aim-towards-edge stuff, it kind of depends on the angle;

Those are a bit outdated, but they're mostly the same still. (Though as I said, I can't really judge because it's all artificially pasted over.)

[dd]

I think one problem with it is that the lightning crosses over to tiles that are not on the path of the beam, which could be confusing to players, making them think they're hitting something when they're not...

[galehar]

Sorry, but I don't see how this can be implemented without being overly complicated.

[twelwe]

Also throwing in a no vote. The lightning looks too much like it extends (and, thus, should affect) squares outside of its actual path. The current beam is fine. Besides, targeting was fixed enough that it is very simple to use lightning spells.

[Bloax]

That's a shame, really. I'd try myself to cook something up, but I'm afraid my coding experiences are equal to zero.
If a less limited array of tiles could help (currently it's 90 degrees, diagonal and bounce/hit case, can't really blame you), I can probably make them. But I'd need some more graphical hints as for what's needed.

Also:

I think one problem with it is that the lightning crosses over to tiles that are not on the path of the beam, which could be confusing to players, making them think they're hitting something when they're not...

Well first of all you should probably be aiming along the yellow path, which is much more informative (at least for shock) in 0.11 than before.

And secondly, it wouldn't look as good if I did a sharp turn so as to avoid being fancy with the diagonal ones:


Edit:

The current beam is fine.

It's probably me playing 0.12, but the current beam is this:
And no, it's not connected like this painful, painful tileset.

Update: Say, does any of you guys actually know how kraken tentacles are? Because if you could build me one long, stretched tentacle of all the tiles you need, I'd gladly turn it into a fatter lightning "tentacle". (Drawing is the easiest part.)

[XuaXua]

A problem I do have with the latest lightning/shock tiles (in Trunk) is sometimes I shoot horizontally, but the angle tile is used, or it traverses multiple tiles and bounces, but the same tile is being used.
Obviously that's a visual glitch that can be solved through programming that isn't in place at the moment, but just pointing it out if not yet known.
Didn't check the bug database.

[galehar]

Update: Say, does any of you guys actually know how kraken tentacles are? Because if you could build me one long, stretched tentacle of all the tiles you need, I'd gladly turn it into a fatter lightning "tentacle". (Drawing is the easiest part.)

Just create one in wizmode and see for yourself. There's also eldritch tentacle which works the same way (from malign gateway).

[roctavian]

Is that small electric tile being used for both shock and lightning bolt? I submitted it intending that lightning bolt keep the old, larger tile. Oh well.

[edlothiol]

No, it's just used for shock.

[Bloax]

No no, what I mean is that I'd much appreciate if someone took the effort to paste together all the tiles needed for the "tentacle" lightning.
Because I don't think I could just go ahead and summon a Kraken and have it do something so specific.

[danr]

Are the Kraken tentacle tiles procedurally generated? I assume they are in a bitmap somewhere in the source files and you could just work from those.

[roctavian]

The confusing part if tentacle tiles is that they curve around many more ways than you need to worry about for angled/connected bolts. But if you use them for a guide, and stay within the dimensions and connect in the right places (respectively the red box and green lines in the following example image) it should do exactly what you want.

You scale from bright white to blue to basically a navy color, and I'd advise against that last part. This will make the lightning look good one some tiles but not others. Instead, replace the darker areas with semi-transparency, it'll achieve the same effect with all possible backgrounds.

The tiles are found in player.png in the crawl/dat/tiles folder.