[LAW ENFORCER]

Id there any special thing to paths?
I tried them for all turrets and subsystems on the Executor but they don't seem to work? any ideas?


My site is coming along nicly, expect to see a slightly improved version soon....

[Bobboau]

what are all the things you did, what was the result, and what were you expecting to hapen.

[LAW ENFORCER]

I made gun points in a line to all of the turrrets etc. Then i made four point pathas for each set of four guns (biggest first).
I then tried to do somehting with the turret part in PCS but nothing worked. started up game ships fly into ship while attacking stuff (I told them to) and it was about a Km off target too.....

[DTP]

My bet is that your paths are way off.

Here is a useful trick.

Make your ships.tbl file, with the model with no paths.

In FRED2, go to menu, View & enable show paths. All the red lines u might see are the actual paths, but for your no path model, there should be none. You can also View dock points and fighter bay paths by enabling View Dock points.

Now place your Model at coordinate 0.0.0 and don’t rotate it: (Note: you right click on your model, select orientation and position, and make a manual typed position at 0.0.0 as it will be hard to place it there with mouse.

In FRED2: Now save the Mission under some name but don’t close FRED2. This will come in handy later.

In FRED2: Select you model, zoom, and now press k to find for example Turret01, in fact this example requires it to be Turret01.

Open PCS open your model “FROM” the fs2/data/models directory

In FRED2 place two waypoints, and place them as they where the start and the end of the path for Turret01:

In PCS->paths: ADD path and name it $path01( or whatever number), and give the path the parent Turret01

In PCS->paths: ADD TWO VERTEXES ( and only two, FS2 will only look for two)

In FRED2 Note the coordinates of the waypoint closest to Turret01

In PCS->paths: put these coordinates into Vertex01 (FS2 will look for this as the Vertex Nearest         Target Subsystem)

In FRED2 note the coordinates of the waypoint farthest away from Turret01

In PCS->paths put these coordinates into Vertex00

In PCS->Regarding Radius for the two vertex’s, open another instance of PCS and open any original POF file from Volition, but similar to your model, and simply copy those values, from this instance of PCS to your models Instance of PCS.

In FRED2 now save your mission, and your models paths should magically appear, as FRED2 is Reading all models in the mission, each time you save the mission.

You might not see it, because it is being covered by the waypoints, but it should be there, just remove the waypoints and you can tell,  or rotate around the model, and the red path should flicker through the purple  waypoint. This way you can tell in a moment if the path is typed in Wrong in PCS, like if you forget to put “minus” in front of a number or something similar.

A good piece of advise is to Keep good notes on which $pathXX`s leads to Which Turret, as you might assign to wrong turret to a path. And once you do that a couple a times, well then it is hard to keep track of what $path belongs to What turret as FRED2 don’t tell path names.

[DTP]

Originally posted by LAW ENFORCER
I made gun points in a line to all of the turrrets etc. Then i made four point pathas for each set of four guns (biggest first).
I then tried to do somehting with the turret part in PCS but nothing worked. started up game ships fly into ship while attacking stuff (I told them to) and it was about a Km off target too.....

You dont use gun points, you need paths read my above post to do it right.

[LAW ENFORCER]

look 900 posts! im not that thinK!! errr.. thick! ummmm......

Yeah I meant I use gun points to get the cords....
much faster and more acurate than Fred2

I can't assign paths to a turret... PCS doesn't let me do anything with that part!

[DTP]

You can’t assign turrets to paths with PCS?
   
Hmm, are you talking about the indexing in the bottom of the path section?

I have tried to figure out what that does, but so far with no success.

But every time I look at original models from Volition, I find that paths have an index to a turret that the path supposedly has nothing to do with. I think that it is mere information for Volitions POF creator plug in for 3d max to highlight a turret when the path is selected in max. But since paths lead to the Parent turret anyway, none or few of the Modelers used it.

I also had an idea that this indexing was to the game some information about that this path was to be guarded by the turret in the index. But I ruled that out as some turrets in the index is located on the model in such a way that the Turret in question cannot possibly guard the path or their weapon it is carrying simply does not have the range to be effective.

So my guess is that the indexing does nothing. But I would be happy if anybody could clarify this to me.

By the way FRED2 is accurate to the spot. It provides the game with coordinates for every ship at mission start and thus the paths coordinates takes there offset from that coordinate. You simply do not need the accuracy of 6 decimals. 1 decimal is accurate enough, since the unit 0.1 is very small in FS2.

Proof: Simply open a model like the Arcadia in PCS. Open FRED2 and put in that very model at coordinate 0,0,0

Go to the paths section in PCS and read the coordinates of VERTEX00 of the path named $bay01
And take those coordinates and give them to the waypoint in FRED2

Now you fill find that the Waypoint is situated at the end of the fighter bay path named $bay01, and it is on the spot.

But let me have a look at the model , and tell you what you are doing wrong. Send it to [email protected]