fantstic work, if only you were a Halo junkie instead then you could help me out...

ManSh00ter wrote:


The problem I find is animation as opposed to rendering a gun pointing in the right direction i.e. you need things like pivot points to animate object on a stationary platform to go from rest position to pointing at the target.

What is frustrating is that the game engine already does the tangent and vector calculations for rendering the travel path of weapons fire, you need the game engine to also provide the angles on turret mounted pivot points.

It wouldn't suprise me at all to find the engine can actually do it already, but with no in game examples to use as a reference it requires Developer input I fear.

I have one more idea left to try, which is to use variables from the pipeline effect/pixel shaders within the particle system. In theory you could force a particle system mesh to point at different co-ordinates if it accepts the variables.

nah no moving turrents. They couldn't get it work for some reason or another

I did some research on how to write High Level Pixel Shaders the hope being to create the illusion of turret motion.

The conclusion I reached was that I needed to input co-ordinates on relative and world positions in order to calculate the angles/tangents etc of a turret relative to the target and position on a ship mesh. With no way of knowing which varables to use from the game engine or even if it was possible I drew the conclusion that it was not possible to achieve as things stand (or it was simply beyond my skill to create).

This type of information and calculation needs to come from the game engine as far as I can see it cannot be modded or added on without developer support.

I also approached the HW2 community to understand how turret animation works in HW2 in the hope I could translate some of the code or techniques into SoaSE. What they told me was that turret animation and calculation is locked inside the game engine, which kind of re-inforced my earlier conclusion.

I am not suprised IC & SD had problems getting it working the geometry calculations involved whilst not demanding for a PC are complex to formulate, you can't just point a turret you have to animate its motion in atleast 2 planes.

The rotating hull of the Omega is very easy in comparison as it only rotates in 1 plane relative to the mesh, rotates at a linear speed and does so constantly. Consider if you wanted it to move just 90 degrees then stop and move in the opposite direction for say 120 degress and stop. Again its a simple calculation for the PC or even the particle system but you need a method of being able to input that information into the particle system and thats where it all falls down I am afraid there is no method open to modification atm.

I would encourage everyone to request animated turrets as a future update to SoaSE, the new TEC Dunov is the ideal ship model to recieve this feature.

wow...looks awesome!   

Yeah the particle system can't handel turrets.

FYI,
I am also in thr process of trying to figure this out. I am trying to get turrents and other such animations for the ships. If I am actually successful, I will post all my findings and procedures here. Great job so far TFL!

DANMAN

Remember guys that the particle system objects are considered by the game engine to be effects and not solid objects. You have to be careful not to make things too large as the probability that a solid object will pass through it and ruin the illusion becomes greater.

You can also use this technique for layering, first if you take Helioforge's experiment which has essentially stacked several meshes vertically on a station structure...

Now consider the classic Star Trek Borg cube and picture it made up from three of four cubes each one slightly larger than the last (in a kind of Russian doll arrangement). The result would be a much deeper 3D object than a single bumpmapped cube, you would be able to see a reasonable way into it.

 

Okay this is a major necro here, but since we all want turrets if possible, I'm kinda putting this out here so DANMAN actually has to say something.  Even if its just "^%&^%&^^% HARDCODES!!!!!"

For now, I advise people to just design around it. Avoid straight-out turrets, instead use things such as missile pods, coaxial guns (they run the length of the ship or are bolted into place by design) together with offensive abilities which you can constrain to fire only when the ship is facing the target, or weirdo alien spit-pods and turrets with no obvious barrels. It's not a perfect solution, but it helps with the overall believability of combat.

Sure, sure, I am working on the next batch of units and structures right now. I am working on painting textures for the new Planetary Gateway, have already finished the new and improved Anti-Fighter Drone (the old one will be relocated to the exalted position of a Construction Drone) and have the concept for the Attack Cruiser Mk II... should be up next week at the latest. And there will be plenty of weirdo alien spit pods to gawk at!

Do we know yet if animated turrets are going to appear in any of the planned expansions?

so, basically, it is currently impossible for Sins to have working animated turrets?

Wow....that kinda sucks . Bah, oh well. It will eventually be possible.....eventually.