[Wanderer]

I was fooling around with the table files and noted that i could get rid of the 'standard' swarms' random direction flight (that they have for the few first moments) by using the corkscrew flag with radius and twist set to zero.

However when used the same entry that from fighters secondary bank launched a corkscrew swarm of 6 warheads (with radius of 10 and twist of 7) on a turret it fired only a single warhead. However it did do the corkscrew thing, alone... Swarming from turrets works fine. It didn't matter if the turret was a singlepart (or non-fuctional multipart like old Aeolus) or functional multipart turret as it matters in primary swarm/burst case. So is it possible to get it working even with turrets?

And fix the swarm problem with singlepart turrets (firing along the their normals) as multiparts seem to work just fine with burst / pulse / primary swarm / whateveryouliketocallit option (AI even aims with every shot!)?

And does the older $SwarmWait: function work? If it does how should i use (rather where)?
I only got a handfull of debugging errors with it being placed right after the $Swarm: entry.

And i'm using 20/09 build.

[Wanderer]

Sorry for this:

Why won't 'corkscrew' flag work properly with any turrets but 'swarm' flag does in multipart turrets?

And is there SwarmWait: option in weapons table?

Or are all of these problems directly related to how turrets are handled in the FSOpen...

EDIT: The option was +SwarmWait after the $Swarm, not $SwarmWait:.

[StratComm]

Could it by any chance be limiting to the number of firepoints available?  (Even if it's not, all the missiles may be launching from the same firepoint, and since corkscrew weapons launch in such close time with one another you may be mistaking the entire swarm for one).  The corkscrew flag is strange at best when not used exactly as its intended, so I'm really not sure what to tell you.

[Wanderer]

No i don't think so. I used the corkscrew option on missiles fired from one of the HTLd Aeolus' top turrets (has two firepoints) and only one missile was launched. And also i could make out two missiles fired with swarm option from different singlepart turret so do not think that i could have missed the other 5 missiles missing from the 'corkscrew turret'.

EDIT: I do think i'll miss any of these options too much anyhow. Just stumbled to it and wondered if it is possible to fix. I have some uses from swarmwait or other such option but nothing that i can not live without....

[deep_eyes]

if u thought thats something..... i use to fire 8 to 12 Helios torpedos like they were Tornadoes... they had taht corkscrew velocity so the AAA beans and turrets almost more than often MISSED! and it was homing to lol

[Wanderer]

This is sort of connected to this thread so:

Are there any other than visual function for the turret rotation speed option in the turret subsystem entry in table files? I took these screenshots:

 

As you propably can see the turret in the left fires quite oddly. As soon as target is within its range it start to shoot despite having barrels pointing at different direction. Also when turrets change their target they fire off from their 'barrel line', until the barrels catch up with the shooting direction.

BTW I think i can partially solve this by using '+weapon range:' but it won't fix the problem itself. Or if the turret rotation is for the visual effects only then there is nothing to be fixed.

[Prophet]

Originally posted by Wanderer
As you propably can see the turret in the left fires quite oddly. As soon as target is within its range it start to shoot despite having barrels pointing at different direction. Also when turrets change their target they fire off from their 'barrel line', until the barrels catch up with the shooting direction.

Has been a problem ever since first day FS2 hit the stores...
Why haven't anyone brought this up for the SCP to fix? Damn.

[Raptor]

It can be sort of fixed by putting 'Swarm:#' in the weapons table.  Then each bolt flies along the weapons normals at the time of firing.  (I've done this with all my mutli-part turrets.  Requires extra table entries to cover all versions though, Ie single, twin, triple, and quad mounts)

Of course, this means the first shot (or few shots, depending on  the weapons ROF) will always go off into deep space far away from the target...

And why have the SCP not done anything about this?  Because they spend all their time messing with fancy 'oh la la' graphics, and won't touch the turret code, the one section that REALLY needs to be reworked, with a 24 foot pike.  Even while wearing a hazmat suit.

But that's just my opinon:nervous:

[Wanderer]

Thanks for the tip! I'll try that... As the multipart turrets are otherwise purely cosmetic that might just do the trick. , just realized that i'll then need different table entries even for single and multipart turrets (+different entries for different multipart turrets) as swarm didn't really function with singlepart turrets.

I also put something about this to Mantis. Mostly just a remainder for the coders to take notice. I guess they will complain about how difficult the AI or turret code is and then leave it at that... But even that it is better than nothing.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by Raptor
And why have the SCP not done anything about this?  Because they spend all their time messing with fancy 'oh la la' graphics, and won't touch the turret code, the one section that REALLY needs to be reworked, with a 24 foot pike.  Even while wearing a hazmat suit.

Graphics are only the most visible feature.  A lot more has been done under the hood.

And for your information, WMCoolmon has spent a great deal of time reworking the turret code.  So please get your information straight before you post.

[WMCoolmon]

It's actually something of a sore point to me, as I tried to set things up so that turrets would fire more than one mounted weapon and then noone seemed to care. Right now they'll only pick the first weapon to aim, but if other weapons will be in the area they should fire those as well.

This seems a little beyond me but I can take a guess as to how it might happen based on what I remember of the code...turrets don't seem to start firing once they're exactly lined up. Instead, they do something with a dot product to figure out whether they're in the immediate area.

If the turret is figuring that it's inside the dot product area, so it starts firing, but is using the desired vector, I might be able to fix that. But vectors + matrices aren't something that I totally understand, despite reading a website or three with an 'intro' to them...

[Wanderer]

Do not meddle in the affairs of coders, for they are soggy and hard to light... er ...subtle and quick to anger...

Sorry, i just couldn't help myself .

And i'm sorry if i offended anyone with the above postings. You (the whole SCP lot) are doing awesome job with the code. As the turret code currently causes some odd happenings i decided to take at least some sort of action and gained what i hoped to get (at least some sort of solution to the problem). I really hope you can figure out the turret code but i also realize that it might not be on top of the priority list.

[Wanderer]

I'm not sure how it really works and what are the limitations within the code but if it uses vectors and the dot product would it then be possible to convert the code to use cos(a,b)=dot(a,b)/(|a||b|) and use the cos to determine if the turret fires.

dot(a,b)/(|a||b|) = (ax bx + ay by + az bz ) / (sqrt( ax^2 + ay^2 + az^2 ) sqrt( bx^2 + by^2 + bz^2 ))
x, y and z are coordinates in above and a is vector from turret to target and b is turrets barrels alignment vector.

Dot product area? I must be out of my league, i though dot product is a thing used mainly to check angles between two vectors.

[StratComm]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
It's actually something of a sore point to me, as I tried to set things up so that turrets would fire more than one mounted weapon and then noone seemed to care. Right now they'll only pick the first weapon to aim, but if other weapons will be in the area they should fire those as well.

This seems a little beyond me but I can take a guess as to how it might happen based on what I remember of the code...turrets don't seem to start firing once they're exactly lined up. Instead, they do something with a dot product to figure out whether they're in the immediate area.

If the turret is figuring that it's inside the dot product area, so it starts firing, but is using the desired vector, I might be able to fix that. But vectors + matrices aren't something that I totally understand, despite reading a website or three with an 'intro' to them...

Changing that is definitely going to change the way the Fenris works.  Probably the Aeolus and Hecate as well (flak).  Not that it shouldn't be done, but the side effects need to be fully evaluated.

Dot product is being used as a measure of the closeness of the angles, yes.  WMC is refering to the limit at which the turret considers its target inside it's firing cone.  It's fairly analogous to the way FOV works for a stationary turret AFAIK.

[Nuclear1]

http://koti.mbnet.fi/vekkup/FS2/Pics/screen0016.jpg

Slightly off-topic: is there some new texturing for the Hyperion and Chimera that Stratt released that's different from that on his website, or are those different textures?

[Wanderer]

Those are from Stratcomm's Fleetpack. Raynor, Chimera, Bellerephon, Hyperion and Sparta all in high poly versions (that tend to crash my ModelView). From what i remember those are similar to models found on his webpage but with higher polies, new textures and everything...

And in my package some of the debris have bad geometry (fly through stuff) and Raynor's missile batteries have a bit off-placed firingpoints.

[StratComm]

Originally posted by Wanderer
Those are from Stratcomm's Fleetpack. Raynor, Chimera, Bellerephon, Hyperion and Sparta all in high poly versions (that tend to crash my ModelView). From what i remember those are similar to models found on his webpage but with higher polies, new textures and everything...

And in my package some of the debris have bad geometry (fly through stuff) and Raynor's missile batteries have a bit off-placed firingpoints.

Since search is borked, I'll post a link to the original thread.

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,31128.0.html

If you can ID the bad objects I can take another look at the models and try to fix it.  I can't promise much, but I'd be willing to take another look.

[Ransom]

Speaking of which, is there any chance the Titan might be released some time soon?

[StratComm]

Ah yes, I'd completely forgotten that I hadn't released it.  I'm not 100% satisfied with the fighterbay openings, but it's as ready for release as it'll probably be for a while.  It should use materials also included in the fleet pack, but if there's something missing let me know.

titan.zip

[Raptor]

Originally posted by Goober5000
Graphics are only the most visible feature.  A lot more has been done under the hood.

And for your information, WMCoolmon has spent a great deal of time reworking the turret code.  So please get your information straight before you post.

Sorry. I found it hard to keep up with you guys when I was visiting everyday. Now it's only once twice a week...

I don't know what you guys have been up to lately.  Nearly everything in the SCP Thread goes right over my head.

Plus I'm kind of stuck with version 3.6.6 IIRC.  Anything newer just refuses to run.

So again, sorry, but I've found it hard to follow you guys.  Maybe when 3.7 comes, you'll put a simply worded txt document in with it, explaining all the changes in plain english?