Turrets

[fluffyfreak]

jaj22 has done a turrets branch with some interesting stuff on it, sadly it's over 6 months old and there's been some major changes since which meant that pulling it in and resolving stuff is a nightmare.

So, Robn suggested the following:

JJ doesn't really do PRs, but that's ok - when he's working on stuff we end up talking about it a lot in IRC, so it usually gets plenty of coverage. As I said, it didn't go forward because I wasn't happy with the target selection (and it never had a full review, because there wasn't much point when it wasn't finished).

Have a go if you like,. I think the best way is to do it in stages. First decouple guns from ships, then introduce manually-controlled turrets (separate mountpoints, cameras and controllers), and finally work on the AI. I'm really keen to avoid any more spaghetti, and this is going to touch a lot of stuff. A big drop isn't the right way for this, I think.

Which seems manageable, just on top of everything else! :)

[fluffyfreak]

Also commented on it in this thread on the forums

[fluffyfreak]

Another thing that would help is to make the gun mounts be defined in the model like other named locators instead of in the definition file.

[fluffyfreak]

Work in progress is on gunmounts branch. Straight port of jaj22's code so far.

@Luomu posted the following on my Google+ when I asked him about it:

Kimmo Kotajärvi I'm not doing anything at this very moment, but I do think weapons need to be rewritten. I can write my thoughts about it when I'm not at work. What do you think of the gunmounts approach so far? In SSP I have a proof of concept auto aiming enabled, try it! It's just not done in a nice extensible way.

Right. So guns. There isn't really that much to say about the mounts code, I haven't ever touched it and if you want to continue with it go ahead. Mainly I'd like to know which of the two approaches is best for Pioneer. 1) put aiming logic in the hardpoints (aka gunmounts) and make it possible to mount any weapon on a point. 2) put the aiming logic in the Weapon, and implement separate primary/turret weapon types - I was on my way doing this couple of months ago but then heard JJ had done (and abandoned) the turret thing, and I also got demotivated because it would likely conflict with Laarmen's Lua equipment (also not exactly moving forward). Problem number 1 with the pioneer weapon system is that it doesn't allow for variety, and missiles aren't even weapons but small kamikaze ships spawned using a special action. WTF. Ideally we'd have three types of weapons: bolts, beams and missiles (dumb or guided). Weapons should be visibly mounted models on the ship and some would have limited ammo (missiles obv.). Maybe you'd have to configure the weapon and shot characteristics separately -- I wish the data files were not lua... Even if pioneer is not a combat sim the current system is too simple. Auto-aiming projectiles so far does not feel overpowered at all. You are not guaranteed hits if the target is changing course and evading. I think primary weapons also don't need any tracking delay like turrets, just an aiming cone where lock on is instant.