[karajorma]

Well I got the ship in mission but now it's being really strange. Turret01 is the one which was glued (as child) to the hull. Turret01 is fine. Turret02 to turret05 fire from the right place but FS2 places their subsytem somewhere else. The point where my hud tells me to shoot at turret05 isn`t even on the ship! It's about 50m behind it.

Now is this something I`m doing wrong in PCS or in the ships.tbl?

[EdrickV]

I think the problem may be related to the position of the lights in TS1 or the firing points. Am testing the lights right now and if that's not it I'll try moving the firing points on my model. (And I'll be able to see if my multi-part turret works. )

[EdrickV]

Well, as far as I can tell it doesn't seem to be either the lights or the firing points so I don't know what the heck is causing that. I also haven't been able to get my multi-part turret working right. (One way it seems to fire but not rotate, the other it seems to rotate very oddly but not fire. Though it could have been something else that rotated.)

[TrashMan]

I've heard several ways of making turrets in Truespace(so they can work in Freespace 2). Which is the best way to do it?
I'm a bit confused (and if you reply this, please put DETAILED instructions, I have TS 4,2).

[EdrickV]

Making turrets that fire isn't too hard. (Though it's a bit odd) What I know about it is posted above. The best one being the one where "I finally figured it out..." Don't think I've got multi-part turrets quite right, yet, though it's hard to tell. And the subsystems (the location where FS2 tells you to fire to hit the turret) likes to appear in the wrong place. Haven't figured that out yet. Anyone know of a good turret/multi-part turret tutorial?

[karajorma]

Originally posted by TrashMan

I've heard several ways of making turrets in Truespace(so they can work in Freespace 2). Which is the best way to do it?
I'm a bit confused (and if you reply this, please put DETAILED instructions, I have TS 4,2).

All the gluing stuff shouldn`t be a huge problem for you since TS4+ comes with TrueView which you can use to rearrange your geometry (I have a friend who has TS4 so in the end I popped over his house and used his version to fix my model.)

What I did was this.

Make a turret by gluing (as sibling) a light to the turret. Name this group Turretxx. Repeat this for all your turrets.
Position all your turrets in the correct positions around your ship.
Glue all your turret groups together as siblings. Select your ship's hull and then click glue as child. Select one of your turrets (I choose turret01 and I don`t know what would happen if you picked a different one).
Now click on the freespace extentions panel and load in trueview.tsx You'll probably find it in the \TSX\TRUEVIEW folder.

With trueview you can drag and drop the turrets arround until the hierarchy is correct. You want it to look something like this

Main Group
|
-Hull
+Turret01
+Turret02

etc.

And that concludes today's episode of the blind leading the blind

[TrashMan]

Thanks!
I allso heard of different ways to MAKE multi-barreld turrets.
And the instructions were...crappy.
Can someone enlighten me?

[EdrickV]

It would help to know exactly what it is you want to make. Do you want to make a two part turret where the base rotates from side to side and the barrel moves up and down? Do you want a turret (single part or two part) that can fire from multiple "barrels"  and equip multiple weapons? And what programs do you have to work with? (Modelers, POF converters and editors, etc.)

[TrashMan]

Turrets with a base that swings left-right, and multiple barrels that swing up and down!
I have TS 4.2 and cobTOpof converter and FSMM2 (trying to get my hands on PCS, but nobody is willing to help me).
What's the difference if they fire different weapons?
I'm thinkig of turrets with the same weapon, but I want to make the ones with difefrent ones ( laser+rocket or different lasers)

And how do I make turrets that swing ONLY left-right.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by TrashMan
I have TS 4.2 and cobTOpof converter and FSMM2 (trying to get my hands on PCS, but nobody is willing to help me).

Trashman what's the point in asking questions if you don`t look at the answers?

You`ve asked about PCS twice and both times I`ve told you where to get it.

[TrashMan]

I saw it, and got it (PCS).
The problem is that when I want to convert cob. to pof. it says that I have to group the objects first??
I've made a fighter (no subobjects), and made it using object union.
Every model I try - the same problem!!!

b.t.w. - you still haven't answerd my first question.
THANX

[EdrickV]

I'm assuming you're trying to convert a one object model. (No turrets yet.) PCS doesn't like them for some reason. (Though if you convert them using CobtoFS2 and then back via PCS, it'll convert them and IIRC adds another object when converting to cob.)

I need to figure out how to get turrets working right myself. (Maybe gluing the lights as siblings instead of children will help, and not putting my multi-part turret on the side of my object... )

Been having too much fun with Wings3D, the FS2 source, and Dark Cloud lately.

[karajorma]

I`ve not tried multi barrelled turrets yet but when I was searching the board I did find this http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,6609.0.html

[EdrickV]

Finally! I made a working multi-part turret!!!

Here is what I did.

Start off with at least 3 objects for a ship with one or more multi-part turrets:
Hull
Turret base object
Turret barrel object. (Can look like multiple seperate barrels as many turrets do, but will rotate as one object.)

Part 1, Rotation and subsystem location:

Arrange the parts the way you want the turret to look. Now, you should make sure that the turret parts will rotate right. Select the base and hit  the axis button. Somewhere a little (or big) 3D axis thing should appear and the turret base should go orange. Move the axis to where you want the turret part's pivot point to be. Repeat for the barrel object and for any other object sets if you have more turrets.
The rotational center is, I think, used to determine where the subsystem is shown to be in game. Putting it off center can cause really odd stuff. (Imagine unattached turret parts orbiting the ship...) You might want to check the rotational center of the hull object and any other subobjects too. Now on to the familliar stuff.

Part 2, The turret objects:

Add a local light and glue it as a sibling to the barrel. (Child might work too.) The light's only purpose is so you can have multiple turrets and it shouldn't matter where it is. Glue the barrel to the base as a child object. Repeat part 2 (and if you didn't do it before part 1) for any other turrets. I wouldn't worry about naming this stuff now, you can do that in PCS/ModelView32 and if using TS1 it won't name them right anyways.

Part 3, Putting the puzzle pieces together:

Glue each combined turret to the other turrets as a sibling. (Select a combined turret object, select Glue as Sibling, then click the other combined turret objects.)
Glue the multi-turret object to the hull object and finish up anything else you want to do in TS1. (Like texturing.)

Part 4, Please Convert my Scene (PCS) time:

Save your scene file and pop up PCS. It's conversion time. Set the Options->Scaling Factor to whatever you want. The bigger it is the bigger the ship. Go to the Cob to POF convert item and in the open dialog change the "Files of Type:" drop down list box to Scene files instead of COB files. (If you want to do it by COB instead of scene you can. I use scenes unless it's a 1 object model I'm Cob2FS2ing 'cause my last used scene will auto-load in TS1 next time I run it. ) Navagate to your model file and open it. Before you save it and switch to ModelView32, which I think is better for doing turrets and stuff right now, you might want to fix any mangled texture names. (TS1 doesn't do long file names. )

Part 5, The nitty gritty:

Save and switch to ModelView32. (You could minimize PCS for now so you can work on thrusters and path stuff without having to rerun it.) Go into Edit mode and name your subobjects. Then test the rotation axis for the turret parts until you have them set right. (If one of your submodels starts orbiting you'll have to go back to TS1 and fix it's axis location.)

If everything worked right then it's time to make the actual turrets. For multi-part turrets select the turret base submodel and give it something like the following in it's properties:
$special=subsystem
$name=Gun Turret (or Missile Turret or maybe other stuff. Not sure it matters.)
$fov=180 (The range in degrees which the turret will target. If outside this range the turret won't fire.)

Go into the Turrets section and make the turret itself. For multi-part turrets the Associated Submodel is the base and the Rotational Submodel is the barrel. A turret with more then one firing point but only one weapon may still use more then one firing point. Haven't experimented with multiple firing points and multiple weapons yet.

6, The home stretch:

Do anything else the model needs, and if you go to do stuff in PCS and didn't close it, remember to save in ModelView and reopen in PCS. Then make the table file and try it in the game.

Tips and tricks:
The name of the turret base submodel is the name of the turret as used in the table file.

For single part turrets, the procedure is almost the same except you don't have to worry about rotation and have to set both associated and rotational submodels to the same thing.

Turrets on the sides of ships doesn't work. Or so I've been told. I'll have to play with it a while before I'll be sure it won't work. :>

I've been told that strange things can happen when your normals aren't pointing straight up. Another thing I'll play around with.

Boy that was big.