Turning a projectile into an ability

[Wonderlarr]

I currently have an throwable explosive projectile in my mod, thrown by holding it in your hand and clicking where you want to throw it. I want to move it to pressing a key to throw it, but I don't know how I could do that. Is there some way I could spawn the item as already thrown, and have it be thrown towards the cursor?

[Yakuzashi]

c_spawn "throwable_explosive"  --it will spawn your item on the cursor's location,

Napsack in DST works like grenade, its prefab name is "sleepbomb", maybe there you will find workaround of classic throw action.

You can definitely remove item from your hand and spawn it on desired location, but the step between previous two will be tricky part. I don't even know where to start. You need to play throw animation, but to cursor's location, sheeeeit my brain has melted down.

I recon the best method would be copying throw action and make it triggered by a keyboard button. This shouldn't be hard, but I don't know how to do the magic stuff inside modmain to make it happen.

Edited November 28, 2020 by Yakuzashi

[Wonderlarr]

13 minutes ago, Yakuzashi said:

c_spawn "throwable_explosive"  --it will spawn your item on the cursor's location,

Napsack in DST works like grenade, its prefab name is "sleepbomb", maybe there you will find workaround of classic throw action.

You can definitely remove item from your hand and spawn it on desired location, but the step between previous two will be tricky part. I don't even know where to start. You need to play throw animation, but to cursor's location, sheeeeit my brain has melted down.

I recon the best method would be copying throw action and make it triggered by a keyboard button. This shouldn't be hard, but I don't know how to do the magic stuff inside modmain to make it happen.

The problem is, the way I want it to flow would involve the player not stopping to do a throw animation, and ideally I would want the explosive to exist outside of the inventory, as the ability is infinite and just on a cool down.

[Yakuzashi]

I'll check this out later. Need to study for a bit, its 12:35 here (GMT+1), around midnight I will try to crack this.

Edit:
@Ziro2k made it clear

Edited November 28, 2020 by Yakuzashi

[Wonderlarr]

Thanks! I should probably try to get some sleep speaking of time, It's almost 4 AM for me.

[Ziro2k]

Yes, you can do this. Assuming you are using the toss action (or any action at all), all you need to do is create a buffered action and then push it to the player to perform it. When you send your RPC, you'll want to get the world position of the mouse from TheInput and pass the x and z coordinates as extra variables (individually, as last time I checked you could not pass tables through an RPC). You can pass the y coordinate as well, but it doesn't really make a difference (just references height). Then on the server, use this position data to create a BufferedAction object of the TOSS action and have the player perform it, like so:

local buffaction = BufferedAction(player, nil, ACTIONS.TOSS, invobject, pos)
player.components.playercontroller:DoAction(buffaction)

I'm skipping some steps but the principle is there.

Edited November 28, 2020 by Ziro2k

[Wonderlarr]

Oh wow! I didn't know BufferedAction was a thing at all, I'm gonna take your suggestions here, and also do some research into BufferedAction. I think I need to start studying the components scripts, I bet I'd learn a lot.

[Wonderlarr]

On 11/28/2020 at 7:23 AM, Ziro2k said:

Yes, you can do this. Assuming you are using the toss action (or any action at all), all you need to do is create a buffered action and then push it to the player to perform it. When you send your RPC, you'll want to get the world position of the mouse from TheInput and pass the x and z coordinates as extra variables (individually, as last time I checked you could not pass tables through an RPC). You can pass the y coordinate as well, but it doesn't really make a difference (just references height). Then on the server, use this position data to create a BufferedAction object of the TOSS action and have the player perform it, like so:

local buffaction = BufferedAction(player, nil, ACTIONS.TOSS, invobject, pos)
player.components.playercontroller:DoAction(buffaction)

I'm skipping some steps but the principle is there.

I did some research by searching through every mod and script I could find, and I couldn't help myself all that well. I got it to a point where I'm passing the position of my mouse to the buffered action, but every time I try to execute the TOSS my character says "I can't do that", seemingly a Wilson fallback line of some sort indicating a failure. I'm not sure why this happens, but I suspect I'm not defining my inventory object correctly. I would post what I've done but I'm not able to at the moment. Should invobject be the slot to take from or the name of the prefab I want to use? Ideally I would want it to just spawn the prefab directly, as the item it's throwing won't actually exist in the inventory.

[Ziro2k]

5 hours ago, TheSkylarr said:

I did some research by searching through every mod and script I could find, and I couldn't help myself all that well. I got it to a point where I'm passing the position of my mouse to the buffered action, but every time I try to execute the TOSS my character says "I can't do that", seemingly a Wilson fallback line of some sort indicating a failure. I'm not sure why this happens, but I suspect I'm not defining my inventory object correctly. I would post what I've done but I'm not able to at the moment. Should invobject be the slot to take from or the name of the prefab I want to use? Ideally I would want it to just spawn the prefab directly, as the item it's throwing won't actually exist in the inventory.

This is the function that the TOSS action uses to validate the action, found in actions.lua:

ACTIONS.TOSS.fn = function(act)
    if act.invobject and act.doer then
        if act.invobject.components.complexprojectile and act.doer.components.inventory then
            local projectile = act.doer.components.inventory:DropItem(act.invobject, false)
            if projectile then
                local pos = nil
                if act.target then
                    pos = act.target:GetPosition()
                    projectile.components.complexprojectile.targetoffset = {x=0,y=1.5,z=0}
                else
                    pos = act:GetActionPoint()
                end
                projectile.components.complexprojectile:Launch(pos, act.doer)
                return true
            end
        end
    end
end

If this function doesn't return true, then you enter that failure state with the "I can't do that" line and nothing happens. Invobject needs to be the item you're throwing, not just the same prefab, and it has to be in the character's inventory (note that equipped items are still considered in the inventory). It also needs to have the complexprojectile component. I'm not sure how the item you're throwing won't exist in the player's inventory, are you generating it spontaneously, like an ability? I assumed from your first post that it's a physical object because you mentioned that you had to equip it and then throw it, unless it's similar to a "gun" and the projectiles are a sort of ammo.

[Wonderlarr]

6 hours ago, Ziro2k said:

This is the function that the TOSS action uses to validate the action, found in actions.lua:

ACTIONS.TOSS.fn = function(act)
    if act.invobject and act.doer then
        if act.invobject.components.complexprojectile and act.doer.components.inventory then
            local projectile = act.doer.components.inventory:DropItem(act.invobject, false)
            if projectile then
                local pos = nil
                if act.target then
                    pos = act.target:GetPosition()
                    projectile.components.complexprojectile.targetoffset = {x=0,y=1.5,z=0}
                else
                    pos = act:GetActionPoint()
                end
                projectile.components.complexprojectile:Launch(pos, act.doer)
                return true
            end
        end
    end
end

If this function doesn't return true, then you enter that failure state with the "I can't do that" line and nothing happens. Invobject needs to be the item you're throwing, not just the same prefab, and it has to be in the character's inventory (note that equipped items are still considered in the inventory). It also needs to have the complexprojectile component. I'm not sure how the item you're throwing won't exist in the player's inventory, are you generating it spontaneously, like an ability? I assumed from your first post that it's a physical object because you mentioned that you had to equip it and then throw it, unless it's similar to a "gun" and the projectiles are a sort of ammo.

Ah okay, I figured I could get away with having Invobject go to a function that spawns the prefab, but I suppose not. My item already has the complexprojectile component as well. The thing about it not existing in the inventory, is it IS an ability, I just had it working on an item because I had no idea how else to do it before I asked here. Is there some way I might be able to either spawn the prefab right there and make it work, or somehow have an invisible inventory slot where an infinite amount of my item exists?

One final question, does the item have to be in an equipped slot, or even be equipable? It doesn't say that in the script here.

[Ziro2k]

1 hour ago, TheSkylarr said:

Is there some way I might be able to either spawn the prefab right there and make it work, or somehow have an invisible inventory slot where an infinite amount of my item exists?

Your best bet in this case is to create your own action (with AddAction) based off of the TOSS action above. The action function for it would look pretty much identical, except that you would remove any references to act.invobject and you would change the fourth line above to:

local projectile = SpawnPrefab("yourprojectilenamehere")

thus spawning your projectile spontaneously upon use.

1 hour ago, TheSkylarr said:

One final question, does the item have to be in an equipped slot, or even be equipable? It doesn't say that in the script here.

No, that is not a requirement.

[Wonderlarr]

1 hour ago, Ziro2k said:

Your best bet in this case is to create your own action (with AddAction) based off of the TOSS action above. The action function for it would look pretty much identical, except that you would remove any references to act.invobject and you would change the fourth line above to:

local projectile = SpawnPrefab("yourprojectilenamehere")

thus spawning your projectile spontaneously upon use.

No, that is not a requirement.

Alright, I'll take a look into this! Thanks for the help so far, you're freaking amazing, kind of a teacher honestly.

[Wonderlarr]

I got stuck on this a few hours after you helped me. When I attempt to use my own actions, the server crashes with

[string "scripts/bufferedaction.lua"]:15: attempt to index local 'action' (a nil value)

This confuses me heavily, why is my action nil? I'm pretty sure it exists, as it's right above the buffered actions that's crashing the game.

I also have a second problem, it seems like my action isn't going through on the client side somehow. If I change the buffered action back to ACTIONS.TOSS, like I had it before, my character moves without any animation, and then just stands still and does nothing. I'm assuming the movement is to get into range to TOSS, but I'm not sure why my character just sits there afterwards and doesn't even TOSS.