[Getter Robo G]

Ok, you may be wondering what this is.

This is the "Secret Project" I had mentioned months ago. I am forced to come forward due to reaching the limit of my skills at this point.

This is NOT a table edit, what this is are new models of Bases, Arms, and Barrels both assembled and in pieces to mix and match like Mr potato head!

What this does is exponentially increase the amount of new combinations for better looking turrets for FS2 ships.

How often does someone release a great ship only to have it's quality lowered a bit by using the same old "Boxes of Doom" (TM)


Now this project is two-fold.

First to get help in taking the models I have in my possession (Thanks to Axel of HW2 Modding) and making them game ready. (in particular the area I suck at the MOST, axis...)

Second to generate interest in getting modelers to donate their custom turrets for use both whole and in pieces (as a Base, Arm, or Barrel) thus ever increasing the amount of variety better quality turrets people can put on their ships.

So even though I am not finished with the files I have now, say I have 10 bases, 9 barrels, and 5 joints = 450 different possible turrets...

The goal is to use these low poly pieces to make turrets 200-400 polys each.

Now for render purposes if you go all out and use entirely high poly pieces you can easily make turrets 1100+ polys

Here is a LP example (226 polys) for a reasonable turret, note that all three pieces can be switched out...




Like I said the models are gathered, some need to be reduced slightly but mainly I just need to texture them (no big) but the critical part are the axis. If they are not done right you get off center barrels in combat that slide off the ship or turret.

Anyway... If someone is interested in helping out this effort (which surely would be front page news once released due to its importance?) OR willing to donate their own turrets to be dissected for incorporation into the project, PLEASE let me know!

I've been working off and on for months on this project as things get done slowly.

[Nuke]

hold that thought, im working on scripted modular turrets

[Getter Robo G]

Does this mean my efforts have been redundant???

(if you need to keep some aspects quiet PM me)

I am still finishing up the sorting phase on parts.

[Nuke]

well the idea is to run turrets entirely off of the sripting system. youl still need turret models, but they need not be compiled into the model. instead they will be their own pofs. somehow il need to define hardpoints of the ship. il probibly tag it onto the ship name. like  gtf herc#thp-0-10-4. i can look for the #thp, and convert the numbers to a vector object. i already got script to override turret operations. i dont intend it as a replacement for your regular turrets, but rather as a supplement.

[Getter Robo G]

oh ok, I understood some of that

Will I still have to have axis defined on the turret arms?

[Nuke]

does a door need a hinge?

[brandx0]

Not if it's a sliding door..

[Getter Robo G]

"Vorlon you two are not..." 

[Nuke]

my point was a turret is a mechanical device and theres always a center of rotation. two actually. i see many instances where people fail to set up their subobject centers then wonder why they dont rotate properly.

anyway my system will require a regular turret, set up same as if you were doing it for a ship, complete with filled in turret chunks. will require a ship table, most can be left blank but youl need a subsystem for the turret. hell you can give em shields too if you want shielded turrets. you can make a sub-base, or just use an invisible object for your hull. il be using mn.createShip() to spawn them.

[bizzybody]

Hmmm, an alien race with organic ships that respawn turrets until you take out the turret spawning subsystem... That would be nasty to play against.

[Einstine909]

so, in theory, one could have a system where the weapon that is chosen in Fred could change the turret model to one corresponding to that weapon? 

[Nuke]

now im talking about a system where you can install and swap turrets on the fly

anyway ive had good luck with storing variables for script in the name string on weapons. when you use the # sign in a weapon name, it blanks out everything past it, so you can have things like cyclops#short. so what if i want to add special features to a weapon i can tag a variable like #var15, and with some basic string manip, i can get the number from that. i can even chain vars in there and get 3 or 4 numbers out of the line.

with ships i can store and retrieve vars in the short name field, for example. as far as i know its only used in fred and that makes it a perfect place to store vars, such as where turrets may be placed. so at least in theory what im thinking is possible. if i can figure out how to run a little interface within the loadout screen, i can create a turret list from which you may pick a turret to mount.

[Flipside]

Interesting, kind of similar to using the weapon models on ships, it could work very well if you could build up a central repository of turrets. Maybe the coders could be talked into changing the subsystem part of the table so that the weapons could be added in the same style as player-ship weapons are?

What would be ideal, in my opinion, would be to be able to place only a single polygon called, for example 'turret01' on the ship model when you make it, and it modifies the turret (the model being specified in the table) normals using the normal of that polygon. That would, however, not only take a change to the model file, but would also need some way to auto-compute the turret alignment code once it gets commited rather than doing it manually using scripts.

I may have some interesting turrets available soon. Now I just need to figure out whether you can get a 2-barrel gatling gun turret mount to rotate each cluster of barrels individually....

[Getter Robo G]

Cool

I'll keep trudging along then as I was (although a **** ton of RT stuff just came my way I'm back into)..

[Nuke]

if you can find one of the nukemod dumps, not sure where i uploaded em too, there are a number of textured and untextured turrets.

[Getter Robo G]

Awesome! I'll raid it later... I got a filing system for parts that includes 3 letters of the artist who made them. So for nuke a turet's pieces would be like: nukbarrel1 nukjoint1 nukbase1

The readme contains a complete list of who the acronyms belong to.

axl = Axel and this first "pack" will be made up entirely of his turrets and then in expansion packs content from others will be included just like I posted for set up that way there is never any overwriting no matter how you combine things and everyone is credited appropriately! (So you can combine pieces from 3 diff authors and we all KNOW who made them!)

[Harbinger of DOOM]

Does this mean that Trashman's upgunned ships won't work?!

[Getter Robo G]

This is a resource I am putting together for the community, so when they make New Ship Models (or pof to cob old ones and remove the old style "low poly box turrets") They can arm it with slightly better looking custom turrets like a mr potato head, but for cap ship guns! (or bombers)...

Understand? 

This is something I've wanted not only for myself, but for everyone else since like 2003.

[Snail]

Hmmm, an alien race with organic ships that respawn turrets until you take out the turret spawning subsystem... That would be nasty to play against.

What a Nightmare.

Okay, lame joke.

[aldo_14]

Respawning turrets would be perfect for the Nightmares.......