Turrets and components

skymaster

Rear Admiral
Here are a few examples .obj files I put up. They don't have textures, so you can't import them into Flight Commander, but you can look at them in your 3d drawing tool and get an idea of scale and orientation. Also, make sure the center of rotation is at 0,0,0

http://flightcommander.solsector.net/examplemesh.zip

Great! What about the Midway components (Engines, Bridge, Launchers & Landing Bays) ? How are they attached do the main model ?
What type of turrets are available ? So far I only saw Laser, Maser and Plasma.
Is it possible to create new turrets or change the blaster they fire ?

Thanks
 
Look at the midway's ship.xml file, you'll see the components and turrets are attached there. Turrets can have any weapon. You can use any mesh and any blaster you like.
 
First, congratulations on a superb job. FC is fantastic.

I'm a newbee in FC, but I've got a lot of years in programming and I've played every WC game. But I'm having a hard time in understanding the XML files objects and properties. For example : some turrets have barrels, other don't. Some have joint constraints, others don't. I'm totally lost on rotation matrix.

Where can I find the complete documentation on xml files used in FC ? Lua seems very ease. Is the Lua documentation from the FC Web Site, complete ? All functions, Statements and Variables ?

The flight commander home page should have docs on most of the xml files. Also, all the XML schemas are distributed with the game. So any XML editor will tell you if your XML file is correct or not.

One other thing : how do you test your capships ? Is it necessary to create a mission and test it with the debug commands? How do you Know if the turrets are rotating correctly and are on the exact location ? Do we have to guess, test, fine tune them, and retest ? Or is there an ease way ? Do you plan on developing visual tools for ships and weapons editing, like Thomas Bruckners' ?

First welcome, feel free to ask questions here.

I've posted a new little writeup on turrets here

http://flightcommander.solsector.net/shipeddoc.htm

hopefully that helps.

But typically, when converting existing wc ships, the turret info is extract for you automatically. The rotation matrix is complicated,
it's ok to be confused. Read a computer graphics book, it will teach you about rotation matrices.

The lua docs on flight commander cover all the custom functions I've implemented. You can go to the lua home page to learn more about
the language itself.

How to test turrets? I used to have debug keys for the turrets set up. But the truth is, there's no AI for turrets yet. They never fire.
It's on my todo list to give them AI.

No I don't plan on developing a visual tool.

The trick for editing XML is to use XML spy or another XML editor they help out a lot.
If you're trying to place weapons and components on a 3d model, maybe get the locations that you want from a 3d modeling tool. Nobody has really made a custom capship just for flight commander yet, this is new territory.
 
Thanks! Very Helpful! When you say that turrets don't fire, you really mean they don't fire at all ? Once the fighter cover is destroyed, a cap ship has no means to defend itself by returning fire ?
 
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