Expanded Archery Mod

[darktoes]

Yeah but having portals and such open up is beyond what you can do in JSON. I can basically go as far as making it spawn somewhere or drop from an enemy.

Ideally I’d like it to spawn where other artifacts do, but I’m not sure that’s possible, and then you run the risk of finding like 10 of the things, which is why I’m thinking of making it craftable.

[Aabbcc]

Wait, you can’t make the regular portals appear on json? As in, using a json map, making a portal?

[darktoes]

I could do that. I could probably make a special campground or sports store that’s all messed up and damaged, then have a portal in the middle with a bow sitting next to it. That could be fun. Maybe a hunting blind?

[NotaRobotcat]

I like the specialised area idea, you could have an enemy spawn there and wield it against you with a 100% drop rate for the bow. As for what it could be, maybe you’d be able to feed it arrows and it could act like a ammo magazine.

[Bl4nk]

I like the idea… Perhaps some sort of extradimensional “archer”.

[darktoes]

Yeah that could be fun. Perhaps a random but low chance spawn in mines or strange temples? A wraithey thing with a big bow, then you get to keep the bow once it drops it.

I can’t decide whether it should use charges and regenerate them, use normal arrows, or not need ammo at all and just fire. Also not sure how powerful it should be. Obviously if it doesn’t use ammo it won’t be ridiculously OP, but maybe giving it stats a bit lower than the compound bow but giving it flaming shots or something would be fun.

[Bl4nk]

That sounds nice. And for ammo isn’t there any way to make the bow draw its arrows out of the player’s HP? It looks great to me for the wraith or ghastly apparition idea.

[darktoes]

I THINK I can make it use charges as ammunition and just use the HP deterioration artifact recharge method. That way it should use a charge each time it fires and regenerate them over time, but you’d get like 1 charge every 10 minutes. I could give it a pretty big capacity so you basically just regenerate 30 charges each night and can use them over the course of the next day, but then I’d have to fiddle with things to make it take a reasonable amount of time to fire rather than just “PEWPEWPEW”

Or I could just have it not use ammo but make you hungrier while it’s carried.

EDIT: Checking again, the HP recharge method is every 1 minute, so I could reasonably use that and give it a capacity of like 5 charges.

Nother big ole EDIT: I could even have a second light-themed bow that recharges in sunlight and is weaker, but has different effects like stealth or light.

[Bl4nk]

True. It would be a little OP if the bow haved a high fire rate. And the ammo idea, i think its also good, because then you would rationate your ammo for needful occasions, like a zombie hulk if you aren’t melee related.

-Then the hunger idea, also sounds good but it would be a little pain to haul around, if it makes you hungier all the time you carry it with you.

-And the hp recharge method sounds nice to me because, you could use it when you really need it instead of all the time, and make sure you don’t get hurt too much so you can use it but if you use too much it won’t be beneficial, because the longer you rely on it the frailer you are. Hmm sound pretty good.

-Lastly, i also thought of a sun-based bow too but i’m not sure. xP

[NotaRobotcat]

Just wondering but are crossbow repeaters a feasible concept? or is using bolt clips too much like a rifle?

As for the artefacts, they both sound pretty cool, maybe there could also be one that adds a fire/blind effect in day time and a ice(slow debuff)/glow effect at night.

[darktoes]

It’s feasible, but it would either be extremely weak or you’d need to provide a powered way to draw the string back quickly. The first already exists ingame as the repeating crossbow, the second sort of exists as the Bolter SMG in my mod, but that’s actually pneumatic.

I have been thinking of powered bows/crossbows, but it would require some fiddly modding. Certainly doable, but I’m not sure how effective it would be when you could just switch to more effective pneumatic weapons.

Unfortunately I don’t think I can make the bow change depending on the time, although that would be completely awesome.

[NotaRobotcat]

Is there no way to define an active effect in between two time variables or is that not an option within the code of cdda?

[Aabbcc]

Code? Yes, Json? No. Lua? maybe.
As this is a mod, it can’t change code unless whatever pieces it needs are mainlined. Lua might be able to accomplish it, but the Lua support the game has is scattered and rather spotty, with the intention being to take it out rather than expand on it.

[darktoes]

It would be possible to do something like set a timer on the item that made it transform into the other item after however many seconds are in 12 hours, but unless you come across the item at 6am exactly, the transformation would just occur at an utterly random time. There’s some creative things I could do, but I can’t think of a way to do exactly what I want.

[NotaRobotcat]

You could make it change in different light levels with a system similar to solar panels. I have no experience with programming so I can only suggest the things that sound doable but probably aren’t.

[darktoes]

Yeah vehicle solar panels and normal items are totally unrelated. So that’s not possible.

That said, I could use the sunlight charge generation, then make it turn into the shadow version as soon as it ran out of charges. I don’t think there’s a way to transform it back without having the player activate it though. I could put it on a timer and it would revert back after an hour, say, but then it would turn back into the sun variant for a minute every so often. Probably best to just make it player activated, unless someone knows a way to make something automatically transform when it has charges in it.

[Mantar]

Perhaps some sort of extradimensional “archer”.

This made me think of “Jack and the Three Blind Archers” from Samurai Jack.

[darktoes]

If anyone’s interested, I’m currently in the process of PRing this into the main game. With a bit of luck most or all of the changes/content in this mod will be mainlined before too long.

[NotaRobotcat]

That sounds awesome I hope it works out!

[darktoes]

Thus far the existing bows/crossbow have been rebalanced along with their bolts/arrows. The basic attachments (excluding the performance mods) have been added as well.

My basic plan is to leave this mod on here as-is for people playing old versions, but PR everything that still fits with the game. Once that’s done I’ll take all the slightly weird new content (the Bolter, any artifact bows I come up with, stuff like that) and either make a new thread so people can use them or (preferably) mainline it so it comes with the base game.