How to create working AoE Weapons

[Cronos988]

Dear modding community,

I am currently experimenting with new weapon designs, especially weapons making use of the various special effects X has to offer.

Making a weapon an Area effect weapon has many interesting side effects, such as creating weapons that only work for specific target sizes. However, all my weapons currently use the Flame Thrower projectile, since I cannot get other projectiles to work.

Here is what I know:
- Checking the "area" flag in Tbullets disables normal bullet collision, making the projectile pierce targets and deal damage per second as long as it is in contact

- In order for the projectile to hit anything, the projectile needs some kind of collision model that normal bullets do not have. This collision model is set somewhere in the "body" files

- The Plasma Burst Generator (or Flamethrower) projectile has an entry in the BodyData.pck, giving it a "collision body" with the id 256 (default is -2, which I assume means no collision).

Replicating that entry for other projectiles does nothing. So either that entry is not really what causes the collsision, or the "collision body" 256 needs to be set to a different value.

Does anybody know how to create new area of effect weapons and where to put the entries to enable collision?

[TonyEvans]

I'm interested in knowing as well. I wouldn't mind even having a type of "shotgun" cannon.

[Cronos988]

Some Testing revealed that it is indeed the TBodyData entry that needs to be set.

However, you apparently cannot append new entries to the File. Maybe the entry's Index needs to be between existing ones.

Edit: No, that's not it. I can only modify the two existing entries, but not make a new one. I can make the flamethrower a Point Singularity projector with area, but I cannot make a new one.