Hard Light Productions Forums

Community Projects => The FreeSpace Wiki Project => Topic started by: Destiny on June 08, 2011, 11:29:49 am

Title: Ship turret image guide
Post by: Destiny on June 08, 2011, 11:29:49 am
I've been directed here by Androgeos, so I'll go straight to the point: something like this for ships in the wiki (http://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww286/TSADestiny/Something.jpg). Yes, it's badly made. I'm only giving an example image, a properly/professionally-made one wouldn't look like this. I guess this is a discussion if it could be useful to the community and modding. Originated from the IRC, the arguments are as follows:

MatthTheGeek: Using PCS2 to open up the model and cycling through the turrets and observe the data provided is the same as using the image guide. Requires downloading PCS2, VP opening program, extraction of .pof from the .VP and opening it with PCS2. "2 min job" to emphasize the ease, which is...true I guess, once you've got all of the programs. "if you feel it can be useful to others, then by all means, go ahead", on the subject of the ship turret image guide.

SDM: "Actually, that sounds like a good idea given our influx of new players recently."

Hades: "not wanting to open the model just to see which turret is which is a fair point"

Shade: "I agree. Having such pics on the wiki is a good idea to help new players" "But the MS paint job needs to be better than your example :P"


My opinion is that it would be simpler and faster to simply load up an image of the ship's turrets with all of them already named, for new players who may not have known of PCS2 and stuff. It would certainly be good to use the image for 'at a glance' situations without having to launch a program and cycle through the turrets to get to the one you need. Naturally I'm not expecting anyone to make them, but just see their opinions if image guides such as these would fit in the wiki.


I hope my choice of wording doesn't make me look like a fool or misinterpret my will or something, but...well (Not much of any experience making threads...I'm actually wondering if I should have made this thread in the first place).
Title: Re: Ship turret image guide
Post by: Snail on June 08, 2011, 11:34:20 am
Another thing I would like in a similar vein to this is to change the armament list on the ship articles so that they actually list the turrets and the corresponding weapons instead of just how many of each type of weapon there are. But that would be a horrible dull task and I reaalllly don't have the resolve to do that.
Title: Re: Ship turret image guide
Post by: Shade on June 08, 2011, 11:35:20 am
I approve of this. But I'll add that it should probably only list 'important' turrets. Heavy beams, AAA beams, and Flak. Otherwise the images risk getting very confusing for ships with a large number of turrets, half of which are simple blob turrets.
Title: Re: Ship turret image guide
Post by: Lester on June 08, 2011, 02:28:14 pm
Actually, listing all turrets would be an invaluable resource to newbie FREDers. Rather than naming turrets by the weapons that are assigned to them, a better way would be to simply name them according to the tables, and have the text coloured appropriately according to the type of weapon that is assigned to the turret. You could have a key at the bottom of the pic explaining what colour stands for what weapon.

Example:

turret01 - AAA
turret02 - BGreen
turret03 - Flak
turret04 - blob
Title: Re: Ship turret image guide
Post by: Mongoose on June 08, 2011, 04:04:54 pm
This would be an awesome resource.  It's maybe not as true for me now as it was in the past, but I used to have a devil of a time finding specific turrets on certain ship classes, and there was no external guide that said something like, "That big bad TerSlash turret that keeps ruining your day is on the dorsal aft starboard of the ship."
Title: Re: Ship turret image guide
Post by: Nohiki on June 08, 2011, 06:28:38 pm
While we're at this, how does targeting turrets work ingame anyway? I did fer tests with K and SHIFT-K and it seems to go absolutely random, not through the table order, not by distance, no nothing  :confused:
Title: Re: Ship turret image guide
Post by: Mongoose on June 08, 2011, 07:26:38 pm
It always seems to start with the same turret no matter where you are in relation to the ship, or at least that's been my experience.  It's generally much more useful to use V to target the specific turret you're looking at.
Title: Re: Ship turret image guide
Post by: Shivan Hunter on June 08, 2011, 08:29:00 pm
you can target turrets in FRED using k and shift+k. It displays a box around the turret's bounding box and displays the name (turret01 etc., not "laser turret") next to it

I used to open them all up and make lists until I found this
Title: Re: Ship turret image guide
Post by: X3N0-Life-Form on June 09, 2011, 05:15:06 am
I think this is a great idea. My poor man's method to tell where which turret was was to set subsystem HP% = turret number in FRED and look at the ship ingame. (too lazy to open the vps and launch PCS2)
Title: Re: Ship turret image guide
Post by: Fury on June 09, 2011, 05:44:44 am
Usefulness of this is limited by the fact that weapon loadout can be different in different missions, especially in mods.
Title: Re: Ship turret image guide
Post by: Snail on June 09, 2011, 06:37:36 am
Usefulness of this is limited by the fact that weapon loadout can be different in different missions, especially in mods.
Which is why I support listing the turret number as well as the weapons equipped.
Title: Re: Ship turret image guide
Post by: General Battuta on June 09, 2011, 08:58:05 am
I think this is a great idea. My poor man's method to tell where which turret was was to set subsystem HP% = turret number in FRED and look at the ship ingame. (too lazy to open the vps and launch PCS2)

what the

Why didn't you just highlight the ship in FRED and press K a few times?
Title: Re: Ship turret image guide
Post by: Snail on June 09, 2011, 11:22:04 am
(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/2456/efgy.jpg)
Title: Re: Ship turret image guide
Post by: X3N0-Life-Form on June 09, 2011, 03:20:58 pm
Why didn't you just highlight the ship in FRED and press K a few times?

Because I didn't know you could do that, obviously. Thanks for the tip. I still think it wouldn't hurt to have turret+weapon info available on the wiki.
Title: Re: Ship turret image guide
Post by: ZeroCooL on June 13, 2011, 02:21:09 pm
Great Idea! .. but you need a lot of work,

It would also be interesting to see that kind of scheme in the ships made ​​by users, would save the hassle of downloading the model to understand how the weapons are ready xD