[FlareBaffled]

This might be lurking somewhere in the 20+ page thread...but I couldn't find it!

The turret naming configuration in the WIKI doesn't seem to work for me. I set up a turreted ship and converted it...and ended up with the parts as sub-models...but NOT as turrets. When I compared it to the example Max model in the plugin zip, I noticed the naming convention was different. when I changed the names to that format...it worked and the turrets showed as turrets!

That was interesting.....

Then...I discovered that I couldn't make a model with a low detail set of turrets. I attached a low detail set of both parts to the detail-1 model, with identical pivots and structure. I named the high level parts gunturret-0a and the low detail gunturret-0b, with barrel named to match ( barrel-0a and barrel-0b). This now crashes the plugin.

I know the parts themselves don't cause the crash, since the exporter converted them fine when they were not turrets, so I know it has to relate to the naming or hierarchy. Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong? In the meantime....I have the ship working, but there is no low detail mesh for the guns.


EDIT:
It seems I can't make ANY kind of turret that works at the moment! I am assuming that the ship.tbl file just needs a sub-system adding which has the name of the turret ( the same as the submodel of the base ofbject??? ) Karajorma's turret tutorial seems quite straightforward for Truespace... but doesn't translate into Max very well. It also doesn't give the info on what the table file should have in it. I am totally stuck

[FlareBaffled]

OK...perseverance wins the day!

I finally found out what was missing.... I had not put the FOV data into the subobject rotational properties....

Mind you....I STILL don't seem to be able to make the turrets act like they are meant to. I want the turret guns to face forward, and have an arc of fire around 30 degrees in all directions from straight ahead. Right now, though, they seem to swing wherever the hell they want to go!

Bobbau made a build that allowed turrets to be stuck at any angle... but I seem to be getting lots of errors when I try to run it

[Vengence]

About that swinging thing, as far as I know turrets will always be able to do 360s unless a build is released that implements turret rotational limitations. Turrets on top of a ship are always facing forward with the barrels facing straight up while underside turrets are the opposite, backwards and down. The FOV is more or less a cone with 90 degrees being a cone and 180 degrees being a hemisphere while 360 is a sphere. Multi part turrets will look extremely wierd if set above 180 unless made specifically to do that. And yes, the FOV data is absolutely necessary to get a turret working in the rotational properties, that once happend to me but was fixed fast.

[FlareBaffled]

So...what values should I use to get a cone of fire from a turret placed on top ( well...actually on an arm sticking out the side....but the principal is the same ) with an angle of fire centred straight ahead, but able to cover 30 degrees left, right up and down?

Are you saying that I can't do this with a multi-part turret? If so, I can make the guns fixed, and have the actual barrels as a 'blister' turret with it's FOV constrained like that. It would give me the effect I want without the random behaviour!!!

Mins you... I am going to have to sort out why Bobboau's turret on any angle build isn't working... I need to have turrets on the side of some of my ships!

[Nuke]

look closely at the sobj properties of the models that came with bobs build.

as much as i like it that max pluggin pisses me off some times. cant do any heirarchy, cept for turrets, it loves to crash max (and dont tell youy why), and cant even do a shield right.

[FlareBaffled]

So far, having a mesh with no UV ( but with a texture ) crashes, as does too many levels of hierarchy...mistakes in hierarchy, and even, today, accidentally having 2 reset transforms on a bit of mesh seemed to choke it! Even with that, though, from what I can see of Truespace, I would rather put up with this than try to learn TSxxx with it's rather bizarre approach to modelling! It also lets you put a lot of bits in the right places, and as long as you save EVERY time before you convert, it's easy enough to pin down the offending part.

The zipfile I downloaded with Bobbaou's build in it came with just an exe file .... no models at all.

[Vengence]

So...what values should I use to get a cone of fire from a turret placed on top ( well...actually on an arm sticking out the side....but the principal is the same ) with an angle of fire centred straight ahead, but able to cover 30 degrees left, right up and down?

Are you saying that I can't do this with a multi-part turret? If so, I can make the guns fixed, and have the actual barrels as a 'blister' turret with it's FOV constrained like that. It would give me the effect I want without the random behaviour!!!

Mins you... I am going to have to sort out why Bobboau's turret on any angle build isn't working... I need to have turrets on the side of some of my ships!

Meh, as far as I know I can't do that as I don't use that build at all. If you use a standard up or down turret it will never do that because the FOV sphere is always facing up meaingin the only way you can get that range of motion will involve letting the turret turing in all directions. Button turrets are different as they can be placed at any angle and use normals to designate where the cone will be shaped.

[FlareBaffled]

I think I understand this a bit better now. What I want to do...in a standard build anyway... is impossible. The FS2 engine will only work for turrets on top of or underneath the ship. The 'normal' is assumed to point straight up or down, and any FOV is based around that normal. I can't have a normal pointing forward.

I can do it with the button turret type of thing. These ( as I understand it ) are fixed objects with a normal pointing whichever way you want them to point. FOV then gets calculated from that. The turret will not move.... but I can control where it will shoot. For my Defender craft...this will work OK. I just make the gun-pod the 'button' turret, and accept the fact that it won't move.

If I can geet Bobb's build to work .... then I CAN have my turrets working. The only real drawback there is that this is not 'official' code, and may have issues. It throws up a load of 'debug' stuff when it starts ... so some things are perhaps not 100% there... but it WILL be in sometime , hopefully for the next release! This will be essential for the Assault Frigates... these need to have turrets on the side.