visibly rotating turrets

If anyones made a plug of this type with graphics, Could I possibly have a copy to look at? I'd like to see how well it works before attempting it myself.

I rarely post in the Dev Corner, but I'd just like to say that's genious. Bravo to you, Edwards.

Now random people are going to ask you if they can have your baby.

fchsjv4, on Jan 21 2005, 01:40 PM, said:

I rarely post in the Dev Corner, but I'd just like to say that's genious. Bravo to you, Edwards.

Now random people are going to ask you if they can have your baby.
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Maybe not quite that but hes gonna get spamed with PMs asking for the plug-in. :laugh:

That too.

Excellent idea!!!!!!! I've thought about this one before but never figured out how to do it, man i can't wait to try it out!

^_^

Someone should systematically lock all old threads (like over a year old).
I am becomming quite the crumudgeon.

Yeah, but if old threads are gonna get dug up, at least this one's a beaut. Truly a classic of virtuostic plug-making.

Dr. Trowel, on Mar 13 2006, 09:45 AM, said:

Truly a classic of virtuostic plug-making.
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I agree. This thread was awesome.

Question about the original subject matter: wouldn't you not show the "turrets" at all unless the fire button was held down? Not such a big deal for AI ships, since they'll always fire if you're in range; just ensure that the weapon's range is at least as big as the screen so disappearing turrets are never seen. But what about for the player?

Wow, I'm personally very glad this thread was bumped. It was born and died while I was on hiatus from the forums, so I never saw it. I guess I should read through the Cool Nova Hacks thread more thoroughly. Good job Edwards.

Derakon: the ship's sprite has a visible turret pointing forward. The tracking turret image weapon is exactly superimposed over it, blocking that part of the ship and "replacing" it with the turret pointing toward the target. The only "problem" with this, besides the difficulty in making it and making it work, is that the turret can jump from direction to direction instantly. As in, when you switch targets it'll go from one direction on one frame to a different direction on the next. And when you start or stop firing the turret will jump instantly between forward (the null position) and pointing at the target.

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 13 March 2006 - 02:45 PM

I know the Pirate Starbridge has a vectored thrust graphic built into the sprite.

No idea if that helps, but try looking in its graphic files for a hint. maybe.

Has anyone ever made a working proof-of-concept plug-in example? I think a plug-in, or at least screenshots, would be nice to see.

"Hostile WAters" used it to some effect IIRc.

But the water evaporated...

Wait what?

Hostile Waters: An upcoming A now-vaporware TC which based its plot on the French Revolution or something, at least around that era. All "ships" are water vehicles (there were some design of airplanes too, I think). How Nova's engine would be able to support water-based physics was a real challenge they faced, and eventually it got the better of them. Their concept ideas were interesting, though — "fishing" replacing asteroid mining, with schools of fish visible on the surface, and a few other things. Nuku (ASW member) was on the TC, but the team leader was Expeditious Expedition, who can be reached at ev-nova.net.

EDIT: Which. Who.

This post has been edited by kitkut : 14 March 2006 - 07:45 PM

I know how to make the spďns for this. They shall be posted, so that ye all shall have no excuses.

The rlëDs

Pics:
turret_ship_sprites.png
turret_ship_sprites_mask.png
turret_weap_sprites.png
turret_weap_sprites_mask.png

After looking at these, I realize that there'll be a slight circular border visible when the turret fires. This could be corrected easily by putting the turret_weap_sprites on a gray background, but hey, this demonstrates the basic idea.

Now someone make a plug!

All right, here's a quick demo of how to make a Visibly Tracking Turret (VTT), using the sprites provided by Hamster. This plug-in should be used with the default version of Nova.

It changes the basic Shuttle's sprites to Hamster's new sprites, and gives it a Fusion Pulse Turret and a weapon to create a turret sprite. To try it out, simply start a new pilot, target a ship, and open fire.

The only problems I have noticed in this plug are:
A) That the turret appears several pixels offset in the direction it is firing. This is caused by the turret sprite weapon having velocity, and it should be possible to fix it by shifting the turret sprites backwards along the direction the turret is pointing (i.e. for the "turret pointing up" frame, shift the turret down a few pixels).

B) That there is a large grey circle with a black outline visible around the turret when it is firing. This is the problem Hamster was talking about, and it should be easy to avoid by spending a bit more time on the sprites (also, the weapon sprites do not need to be as large as the entire ship, nor do they necessarily need to be centered).

C) If an AI ship uses a VTT, the turret will appear on top of everything, including ships passing over the firing ship. This is caused by a feature of the game engine, and I can't think of any way around it. You could make the turret capable of hitting other ships, so it would vanish when a ship passes over the firing ship, but then it would also vanish when a ship passes under the firing ship.

----------

@Derakon: I've used the "no turrets show when not firing" for some special-purpose ships, where I wanted a long-barrelled turret, but didn't want to have to try to cover up a long barrel pointing in the wrong direction when firing. However, this was a ship that was intended to always be firing when the player was on-screen, so that helped.
Note that if you want to have a turret visible when the ship is not firing, it will need to be in a large empty area, such as in Hamster's sprites. If it is in a more detailed area, or on an edge of the ship, you will probably have trouble hiding the pre-existing gun sprite in such a way as to not make things look bad.
Alternatively, you could set up a one-frame firing animation for the ship that removed its visible guns while the tracking turret took over, although that might cause some problems if any secondary weapons trigger the firing animation.

Edwards

Attached File(s)

• Rot_Tur_Demo.bin.zip (74.02K)
  Number of downloads: 59

I'm very impressed by Edward's implementation. Bravo! I'm working on a cleaner graphics set now that should compensate for offset, and blend better into the ship. Basically, there is a way to mask right over the 'pointing forward' sprite... I'm gonna draw a diagram here to show you what I mean.

Let's assume that your ship plating is blue (the blue in the illustration would be your ship plating. Details would probably require pixel-level nudging to get just right though. It would be best to keep the area right in front of the turret relatively clean). Here's what your slimmed down turret sprite would look like:

You would track a mask of the turret around, so the upwards-pointing mask would always be covering up the default upwards-pointing turret.

This, of course, would require considerable work with a fine tooth comb to get just right, so I think I'll determine what the pixel offset has to be first with my previous method.

EDIT: If the ship was stationary, I just thought of an awesome idea that would negate the complications of perfecting offset: You provide the turret base on the ship sprite, and the turret sprite itself is merely the barrel, but it has unfolding graphics, so you can make the barrel slide out before it begins tracking and shooting you. I assume this wouldn't work on a moving ship, due to the time it would take the barrel to 'slide out.' Would this work?

This post has been edited by Hamster : 20 March 2006 - 12:25 AM