Special thanks go to John Rychlik for the concept of the laser scope. He emailed me the basic "blueprints" on how to create it.

I'd like to start out by pointing out the fact that this scope is far more accurate than the crosshairs I put in my M-16 sprites, for example, and even more accurate than the built-in crosshairs on the new Aleph One engine. The reason for this is that the scope is a projectile, and where it hits is as accurate as where your actual round will hit. Other aiming methods don't seem to account for the fact that, when aiming up or down, your weapon-in-hand sprite shifts slightly. So does the exact area where your rounds will hit. A projectile with zero error doesn't always strike an object in the centre of the playing screen. This scope eliminates that discrepancy. To see what I'm referring to, look up and down when you're playing a Marathon game (or even this tutorial) and watch how the weapon sprite slides with the player's motion.

[Editor's Note: in the tutorial map you are given a sniper rifle and some ammo. Also set up in the room you just teleported into are targets to shoot at - gls 01/14/2001] Your secondary trigger on the sniper rifle is a laser scope. Use it to aim at the targets.

Again, we'll go step by step through Anvil, as we did with the flashlight.:

EASY EDIT

I replaced the Flamethrower with my Sniper Rifle, but used the Fusion Bolt as its primary trigger projectile. It has zero firing error, making it perfectly accurate. I also gave it the "Magnum Firing" sound, to give it the sound effect of a powerful rifle firing.

As the secondary projectile, I gave it the Flamethrower (not the "weapon", but its "projectile" type). It has as many "Rounds/magazine" as would fit in the energy bar I created for it. [Again, this is created in Fux!. If you haven't familiarized yourself with that tool, you're losing out on some cool modification creation abilities...]

The secondary trigger has no sound, firing error, or burst count.

WEAPON DEFINITION

The "Weapon Class" needs to be "Multipurpose".

There's not much else in this section of noteworthy mention, though I did slow down the Timings so as not to have a super powerful weapon that could be fired quickly. I also gave it zero "Flash Decay".

TRIGGER SETTINGS

There's not much new information in this section, either. The primary trigger settings are set to whatever you need to get the weapon to function the way you want it to.

Besides the "Projectile" type and "Rounds/magazine", which should already be set in the "Easy Edit" section, everything else for the secondary trigger is identical to the Flashlight's secondary trigger. It uses the same ammo type - batteries (which, in my scenario, replace the Magnum's ammo).

The big changes for this weapon take place in the Shots section, so we'll move on to that now.

I used the Fusion Bolt as the shot that gets fired on my primary trigger. I changed it to almost exactly the same info as the normal Pistol Bullet. I radically increased its damage, and added these tags: No Horizontal Error, No Vertical Error, Melee Projectile, Penetrates Liquids, and Penetrates Liquid Boundary. This makes for one helluva nasty projectile...

I also gave it the "Plasma Impact" contrail effect, with zero ticks between contrails, and -1 (infinite) maximum contrails. This contrail is optional - I wanted the bullet to make a swirl through the air as it speeds towards the target. I've seen this in real life on a real C-9 LMG, and thought it'd make a cool extra effect.

To perfect the swirl contrail effect, open the Shapes file and go to the "Plasma Impact" sequence. Give it 1 Tick per frame, 1 for the Scale Factor, 8 for the Transfer Mode Period, and give it "Subtle Invisibility" as the Transfer Mode. Make sure that there are no Frame sounds.

Just now, as I am typing out this page, did I finally figure out why my Sniper Rifle made a stupid Fusion sound every time it fired. Baaad oversight...

[The preceding] was devoted to the actual sniper rifle's bullet. Here's how to make the scope, which is really the intent of this part of the tutorial.

As mentioned, I replaced the Flamethrower projectile type with the Laser Scope's laser contrail, as a projectile type. So, in the Shots section, change the Flamethrower's info.

Let's backtrack a bit and first create the sprites for the laser scope. It's easy enough to do; add 2 new bitmaps, fill one with a red square 4 pixels square, and the other with a pure blue (invisible) square. Now make a new sequence for it with one view and 3 frames per view. Set the first frame to the red square, centering it on the topmost edge (I found this to be the most accurate positioning), and set the next two to the blue square.

Give it one tick per frame, transfer mode "Normal", and zero for the transfer mode period and scale factor. I gave mine a very high "Min. Light intensity" (3.0000) so it'll always be visible, regardless of how dark the room you're standing in is. That's about it for the Shapes file.

Now, back in the Shots section of the Physics file, make sure that the "Graphics Collection" and Sequence ID" point to the new scope laser sprites. The damage type should be Oxygen Drain (all aliens should be immune to it, remember), and all other fields should be set to either zero or none, except for the following:

• Speed: 2048
• Maximum Range: -1 (infinite)

When creating this effect, I somehow managed to replace the Flamethrower's contrails with the same sequence as the projectile (the new one created as the scope laser). This doesn't really make a difference. You don't need contrail effects with this scope, since the projectile itself IS the laser. I dunno what I was thinking at the time...

Here are some problems that I've noticed with the scope:

1. The contrail effect only starts at a certain distance. Otherwise, the player's view will be blocked by a large red square.
2. Also, the scope fires an invisible projectile, which will activate aliens far away. This sucks, because it eliminates the advantage of surprize, which was a lot of the point behind making the sniper rifle...

Both effects work fairly nicely, as you've seen, though there are some drawbacks and sacrifices involved. They aren't extremely difficult to create, though they can be a little confusing. Hopefully you'll be able to figure them out with the information I've given you. (Hell, trying to decipher my own work wasn't exactly a fun time - the things I do for you people...)