User:Korrin/Pyro Guide

Most of what I have written here comes from Helpmaboab's Guides from Tale 2 and Tale 3. I never would have understood Pyro without them!

EFFECTS

Feel free to add your own effects, or ask for an explanation of a particular effect. Maybe someone will show you how they did it.

The Simple Hovering Platform

Often the first effect you will want to learn. The easiest way is to start at Stage 0 at some velocity (not thrust) mulitple of 33. Give the stage a duration of (the multiple in seconds). Base Stage 1 off of Stage 0, going forward (IE: UP), with an initial velocity of 0 and a Thrust Forward of 33.

The more complex hovering platform

• You can give Stage 0 any velocity and any thrust, and still get a hovering platform. Simply calculate where it stops, give it that duration, and base Stage 1 off of it as before. Where it stops is:

• • 0 (units/second) = Initial Velocity + (thrust forward - gravity) x Time

or the value you want...

• • time = velocity / (thrust forward - gravity)

• It may be easier just to play around with it and get something close, then to try to work out the math.

How to hide stars - so they come from out of nowhere

• Use Poppers. They are nigh invisible against the night sky

• Use the Earth. Just because it looks solid, it doesn't mean it will stop a star in motion. Aim down if you like, make sure that it curves back up, and there you have it: a star appearing from the Earth. You might want to practice the effect from a high-level hovering star, to make sure your "surprises" are actually going to come back to light.

Floating Stars

• Just like you can counter gravity and have a star hover, you can have a star remain at much the same altitude, if you send it out parallel to the ground, and use "Thrust pitch up" to counter gravity. How do you get it parallel to the ground? Easy. From a shell going straight up, use a ring. (The ring is always at 90 degrees to the angle of travel.)

Guide to making a good shell

Please feel free to edit, add to or correct gross inaccuracies on this page

• Camera views - remember you can change your camera view to get a different look at your firework. The F7 view is probably the best one, but try a few out,

Step 1: Making a mortar.

• You will need: 10 firebricks
• Click on your avatar, select projects --> pyrotechnics --> build a mortar.
• A new fireworks mortar will appear, which will be your friend.

Step 2: The interface - a step-by-step guide

The pyrotechnics interface can be a little daunting at first, but its really not that bad once you play a little. First, the simple part - click on the mortar and a series of options appear, most of which are self-evident

• Arm the Shell: Transfers stars, gunpowder and papyrus paper from your inventory into the mortar. Only those ingredients needed for the current design will be transferred. If you don't have enough of an ingredient, a pop-up window will appear which lists the total quantities required.

• Check Launch Costs: Tells you how much of each star, gunpowder and papyrus paper the current design requires

• Disarm (remove any armed materials): Does exactly what it says on the tin. Removes all materials from the mortar and returns them to your inventory.

• Edit Design: Where the fun begins! We'll come back to this shortly :)

• Fire the Shell: DO NOT USE THIS!!! This will fire the mortar, giving the neighbours a nice surprise and using up all your materials. Seriously. Don't do it. And don't give your mortar to a new player to play with without telling them this either! This option should only be used to fire the mortar at a contest. If you want to see how your design is progressing, use the 'Test Fire' option instead

• Pick up the Fireworks Mortar: You can probably work this one out yourself

• Test Fire: The business end - you'll be using this A LOT. Allows you to see what your mortar does, which is probably not what you thought it would do :)

Designing a Firework

or, what all that pitch and yaw stuff actually does

So, rather than talk about this, lets just do it.

You will need:

• 10 firebricks for a mortar (or reuse an old one)
• 2 firework stars
• 1 papyrus paper
• some gunpowder

First lets send a firework rocketing majestically to the sky. Drop your mortar to the ground (don't worry, it'll lie there till doomsday or until you pick it up), click on it, select 'Edit Design' and enter the following:

Stage	0
Flight Time	3 sec
Rockets	1
Direction	Forward
Launch Speed	99 ft/s
Launch Roll	0 deg
Thrust Forward	0
Thrust Pitch Up	0
Thrust Yaw Right	0
Launch Reps	0
Launch Offset	0
Star	Flying Frog

Pretty much any star will do, Flying Frog is quite cheap and is available at any U Art.

Now click 'Test Fire'. You should see your firework streaking into the sky. You didn't? Most common reason is that you forgot to select a star (if thats the case, selecting 'Check launch cost' will show 'Placeholder star' rather than a real star name.

OK, all things going well, you should see your firework flying up in the sky and fading out after 3 seconds (because that is the flight time you set). So far so good, but you're not going to win any contests with it.

Edit your design, and change the launch speed from 99 ft/sec to 66ft/sec. Test fire - what happens? You should see your star climb upwards, then fall straight down again. Gravity slows a firework down by 33ft/sec every second. So with this recipe, we fired the shell at a speed of 66 ft/s, after 1 second it was travelling upwards at 33 ft/s (=66-33), after 2 seconds it was stationary (33-33 = 0 ft/s), and after 3 seconds it was travelling downwards at 33 ft/s. Make sense? Lets try a two stage design then.

Your design should be like this now:

Stage	0
Flight Time	3 sec
Rockets	1
Direction	Forward
Launch Speed	66 ft/s
Launch Roll	0 deg
Thrust Forward	0
Thrust Pitch Up	0
Thrust Yaw Right	0
Launch Reps	0
Launch Offset	0
Star	Flying Frog

We're going to edit Stage 0 - change the flight time to 2 sec, leave everything else the same. This will give us a shell that fires straight up and stops after 2 seconds. Now click on 'Add Stage', and enter the following for Stage 1.

Stage	1
Launch From	0
Flight Time	2 sec
Rockets	4
Direction	Ring
Launch Speed	33 ft/s
Launch Roll	0 deg
Thrust Forward	0
Thrust Pitch Up	0
Thrust Yaw Right	0
Launch Reps	0
Launch Offset	0
Star	Flying Frog

Test fire and stand back! You should see the first star firing up, and four stars firing off of it and falling down to earth. The 'Ring' option sends stars shooting at 90 degrees to the direction of the first rocket - in this case, horizontally. But remember that ol' devil gravity? It's pulling the shells downwards at 33 ft/s, so if we want to keep the shell travelling horizontally, we have to pitch the shells up by -33 ft/s. (I won't explain here why it's -33 and not +33; try both and see what they do. Try it out - your design should now be:

Stage	0	1
Launch From		0
Flight Time	2 sec	2 sec
Rockets	1	4
Direction	Forward	Ring
Launch Speed	66 ft/s	33 ft/s
Launch Roll	0 deg	0
Thrust Forward	0	0
Thrust Pitch Up	0	-33
Thrust Yaw Right	0	0
Launch Reps	0	0
Launch Offset	0	0
Star	Flying Frog	Flying Frog

Try changing the amount of pitch you give it, and test fire to see what the effect is. The secret in pyro is to experiment -just tweak things a bit and see what happens. If you find something you like, take a note of the recipe - you might like to incorporate it in a firework later.

It's all a bit straight though. Put the pitch up back to -33, and increase the flight time to 10 secs. Now change the yaw right to 33 and test fire. Oooh, curves! Maybe it would look better if we used a different star though. Something with a nice long tail. What if we gave it some more pitch and some yaw too? Hey, whaddya know, you're designing a firework!

To build more complex fireworks, you can add more stages - and you can set them to fire from any previous stage. Take the design above and add another stage, like this:

Stage	0	1	2
Launch From		0	1
Flight Time	2	10	10
Rockets	1	4	4
Direction	Forward	Ring	Ring
Launch Speed	66	33	33
Launch Roll	0 deg	0	0
Thrust Forward	0	0	0
Thrust Pitch Up	0	-33	-33
Thrust Yaw Right	0	33	-33
Launch Reps	0	0	0
Launch Offset	0	0	0
Star	Flying Frog	Flying Frog	Squat Canary

Part 2 - Repetitions

OK, so we can thrust and yaw like a master - but I hear you ask, what are those launch reps about? A method for sending salesmen into space? Sadly not, but they can still be useful (the launch reps, not the salesmen).

Lets set up a three stage firework. Here's the recipe I've used. Don't worry if you don't have these stars, you can try it out with any stars: (FF = Flying Frog, SC = Squat Canary, Bo = Borealis)

Stage	0	1	2
Launch From		0	1
Flight Time	1.9	5	5
Rockets	1	2	1
Direction	Forward	Ring	Forward
Launch Speed	66	10	0
Launch Roll	0	0	0
Thrust Forward	0	0	-30
Thrust Pitch Up	0	-33	-33
Thrust Yaw Right	0	33	0
Launch Reps	1	1	1
Launch Offset	0	0	0
Star	FF	SC	Bo