Users > Helpmaboab > Pyro

Beginners guide to Fireworks

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 :)

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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

Missing something? Try Ka-Pow, for all your pyro needs! (Other pyro guilds are available. Pyro Frenzy for one)

Right, first lets send a firework rocketing majestically to the sky. Drop your mortar in 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 ('cos thats 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 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
Rockets	1	4
Direction	Forward	Ring
Launch Speed	66 ft/s	33
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, like a Royal Star or a Beetle Banner maybe....or a Flaming Red Comet Tail (pricy, but nice). 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 another stage, like this

Stage	0	1	2
Launch From		0	1
Flight Time	2 sec	10	10
Rockets	1	4	4
Direction	Forward	Ring	ring
Launch Speed	66 ft/s	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	Blue Comet	Blue Comet

Part the Second - Things are getting repetitive

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, FRCT = Flaming red comet tail, RS = Royal Star)

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	0
Thrust Yaw Right	0	0	0
Launch Reps	1	1	1
Launch Offset	0	0	0
Star	FF	FRCT	RS

Quite dull, isn't it? Maybe it would look better if something more was going on. In Stage 2, change the 'Launch Reps' to 2 and test fire. Instead of firing off 1 Royal Star at the end of the FRCT's flight, we now get a Royal Star at the start and at the end of the stage 1 stars flight. If you now change the launch reps to 3, you get a Royal Star at the beginning and end of the stage 1 flight and one halfway through. See how it works?

But maybe we'd like to stop the stage 2 stars from appearing at the start of the FRCT's flight. That's where the Launch Offset comes in. In stage 2, change the Launch Offset to 2 seconds and test fire. The stage 2 Royal Stars now don't appear until the FRCT has been flying for two seconds, and the three RS's in stage 2 now show up after 3,4 and 5 seconds of the FRCT flight time.

OK, lets use this to make a nice effect which is quite popular. We'll use the same basic set-up, but put a bit of glitz into it. First, lets put some more stars in stage 2. Increase the Launch reps to 10 and change the launch offset to 0. Go on, you know you want to test fire to check what it looks like!

Now, lets make stage 1 a bit more interesting. How about we make the two arms curl upwards? Change the Thrust Pitch Up in stage 1 to 45, change the thrust forward to 30 and cut the flight time down to 2 seconds. The recipe should now look like this:

Stage	0	1	2
Launch From	-	0	1
Flight Time	1.9	2	5
Rockets	1	2	1
Direction	Forward	Ring	Forward
Launch Speed	66	10	0
Launch Roll	0	0	0
Thrust Forward	0	30	-30
Thrust Pitch Up	0	45	0
Thrust Yaw Right	0	0	0
Launch Reps	1	1	10
Launch Offset	0	0	1
Star	FF	FRCT	RS

Tip: There were quite a few parameters changed here. Try changing one at a time and see what effect it has by test firing. You'll quite often find that changing one parameter means you have to tweak some others a little to get the effect you're looking for.

We've got quite a nice necklace effect here. Lets do something more to spice up Stage 2. Change the flight time to 2, launch speed to 30, thrust forward to 0 and pitch up to 10. Finally, to give stage 2 more impact, change the launch offset to 1 and test fire tosee what you've got. That'll do for my little firework - all I have to do now is name it. You do this in the 'Edit Design' window - scroll all the way to the right, and under the 'Test Fire' button you'll see an input box with 'Unnamed' written in it. Click in this box and type in your firework's name - I'll call this 'Cathy come home'. Now get experimenting and see what weird and wonderful effects you can get by changing some of the parameters!

Final Recipe should be:

Cathy Come Home

Stage	0	1	2
Launch From	-	0	1
Flight Time	1.9	2	2
Rockets	1	2	1
Direction	Forward	Ring	Forward
Launch Speed	66	10	30
Launch Roll	0	0	0
Thrust Forward	0	30	0
Thrust Pitch Up	0	45	10
Thrust Yaw Right	0	0	0
Launch Reps	1	1	10
Launch Offset	0	0	1
Star	FF	FRCT	RS

Stage	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Launch From	-
Flight Time
Rockets
Direction
Launch Speed
Launch Roll
Thrust Forward
Thrust Pitch Up
Thrust Yaw Right
Launch Reps
Launch Offset
Star

'twas lost, but Promiscuous found it again :)

For some more recipes and half-demented ravings, try http://perl.atitd.wiki/tale2/Users/Helpmaboab/Pyro for my Tale 2 pyro page. The stars have all changed now of course, but the memories are still there......

Just translated this great guide in French, plz if you add something, let me know, thanks :) - Kaayru