wingman weapon turrets

[mrtwosheds]

I have been rebuilding and re-skining my Daleks, one issue that I cannot see a simple solution to is the weapon turret on scouts and tanks, this class of unit does not support turrets like assault classes do, gun vertical rotation occurs at the hp_gun or hp_cannon etc. Because I have weapon models this looks a bit odd, A dalek has a gun mounted on a ball joint, but on scouts and tanks the gun does not move, the shot direction is rotated at the hp_gun, which is at the end of the barrel. I could build the unit so that the gun dock was parented under the hp_gun, but then the shot would appear in the middle of the ball joint, and probably cause problems with rendering the flash and shot...
Can anyone think of a way to have the center of rotation at the ball joint and have the gun fire from the end of the barrel?

[Zero Angel]

Have you tried parenting the HP_gun to the visual hardpoint and then moving the sub-frame hp_gun_x to the front of the frame where you expect the barrel to be?

[mrtwosheds]

do you mean having an hp_gun/hp_dock/hp_gun_1 sort of setup?
subframe?
No I have not yet.

[bigbadbogie]

i dont think that is possible

[Steeveeo]

X-Mod had a turreted hovertank, wonder what class it was...

[OvermindDL1]

Turreted hovertanks (sorry if I am giving anything away, don't remember if it is in pb3 or pb4) are supported in 1.3.

[Commando]

Public Beta 3 supports true hovering assault tanks.  Earlier versions of bz2 do not.  I know the ZE MOD used a treaded assault tank that only looked like it hovered.  In reality it didn't.

[bigbadbogie]

there is a turreted hovertank in qf mod - not long now till release

[Avatar]

Specifically, use the hoverassault class of tank for all of your Daleks that need the eye-stalk type cannon setup.

Prior to 1.3 I used plain old assault tank class with invisible treads, but 1.3 supports hovering assault tank style units with true turrets.

-Av-

[Zero Angel]

do you mean having an hp_gun/hp_dock/hp_gun_1 sort of setup?
subframe?
No I have not yet.

Yeah, something like
Other model stuff -> Gun_dock -> hp_dock_1 -> hp_gun_1

I havent whether the dock rotation just does the model or rotates everything attached to it, but it may be worth a try (now that I think about it, i've done docks before but i'm not even sure if they rotate the model, its been so long!).

The other option that I can see is moving the center axis of the muzzle flash model outside of the flash so that it actually appears ahead of where the shot originates from, and lines up with the barrel. Its kind of an ugly hack though...

[mrtwosheds]

I have assaulthover units allready, I was specificaly trying to get wingman class units to rotate gun model on turret_x only, I think assault units will always do turret_y rotation first and then turret_x rotation, so you cannot have turret_x rotation without turret_y rotation.

It seems that the turret_x is hard coded onto hp_gun/cannon/etc for the wingman class.
Experimenting.

[Nielk1]

I wonder how mutch work it would take for Ken or GHS to get a piece of the mesh to pivot on its center instead of just the HPs if they have the right lables. It would need an ODF toggle since many 3ds without turrets (ISDF Sabre) still have the lables for them.

I would love to see the attached guns change angle slightly instead of just the laser, like guns in FreeLancer. This has actuly been holding me back in making FreeLancer style ships and weapons.

[Avatar]

Use Hoverassault class with a dummy object specified for the turretName1.  This should be a block parented to the base mesh, but nothing else.  This gives you a dummy turret y that nobody can see move, an eyepoint that points straight forward, and whatever turretX you want that angles up and down only.

turretCount = 2
turretName1 = "dummyturret_y"
turretName2 = "turret_x"

-Av-

[bigbadbogie]

does that work - like can somebody test it??

[General BlackDragon]

does what work? naming a turret something other then turret_x /turret_y? sure...as long as u specify it in odf it could be named bluberry_muffin