Third DDF question... Fanatic?

I'm trying to add in edge support for Underworld. (I'm trying to make it branch off onto all the ports with slightly different versions for all the ports.) I've made a new weapon, anyone who has played Underworld knows the Pentegram weapon. Now, I've followed the tutorial on the Uzi to get a feel of how to make a weapon like that, but the problem is that I don't know how to set the durations on frames. This makes it go very fast. I want to slow it down, so that is my question. How do I slow it down?

PART TWO:
I've got everything set with the Pentagram weapon. There is only one thing missing, the sparks that drop from the ball it shoots. If you've played Underworld or D2XGold you know what I'm talking about. It is like a smoke trail that looks different and falls to the ground. How do I add this in?

PART THREE
I'm making a second attack. Everything is working fine, but I want the second attack to be just like the one in the Doom64 mod on the immortal conduct page. How do I make multiple shots appear at once making that "laser" effect?

Laser, try taking a look at the firing frames for the original chaingun for Doom2.

It should look something like this (from EDGE's original Weapons.ddf)

GGGG:F:T:SS:SS

"G" Is the graphic used for this particular frame.
"F" Is the indexed graphic to use for every frame in that attack
(I.E: Each graphic begins with CHGG in the chaingun frame, that
is suffixed with a letter, A-(whatever) to indicate which
graphic in that series to use)
"T" Is the amount of time (tics) that this frame is in use.
"S" Is the special flags, all flags must be seperated by a colon.

For example, the Chaingun's firing frames look like this:

STATES(ATTACK)=CHGG:A:4:NORMAL:SHOOT,
CHGG:B:4:NORMAL:SHOOT,
CHGG:B:0:NORMAL:REFIRE;

Perhaps you should try to use THOSE durations (Tics) for your UZI
firing frame, it should shoot at the same rate as the chaingun. I'm not the expert on making/modifying new weapons, I modify them slightly to add some more effect, but if you're looking for some real professional advice, you should talk to Marc (Fanatic), since he's the DDF God :P

Also, remember to always close off a statement when you're done with one particular state (Last entry ends with a semicolon [;], not a comma), if you don't, EDGE will crash immediately by giving you a Bad States error. I messed up a good amount of times on that when I started playin' around with it.

Most of this, ya probably knew anyways, but I thought I'd just throw it in for future reference anyways :)

-Andy-

Thanks, I'm going to fix it right now...

Try putting this special flag in your attacks.ddf for the "Pentagram weapon"

In the SPECIAL section, include this: SMOKING_TRACER

It may not be what you want, it's the same smoke tracer that trails Revenant fireballs that track you. I'm not completely sure though, if it is for TRACE ONLY weapons. Maybe you should ask Marc about it, I'm not completely sure right now.

I think I've tried that before. Hopefully Marc will stumble opon this topic...

Two things to make something smoke in ATTACKS.DDF

1. add in your attack entry you want to smoke:

PUFF=THING_NAME;

(change THING_NAME to the thing in THINS.DDF you want to use as the puff, it can be PUFF, BLOOD, or anything ou create youself).

2. in the STATES(SPAWN), add as the code pointer SMOKING, and the duration sets how fast it smokes.

ex. (for the QDOOM rocket attack):

STATES(SPAWN)=QROK:A:1:BRIGHT:SMOKING;

The 3rd bit is the duration (being 1), which is a lot of smoke. 2 is a reasonable amount.

Thanks....