Firing Arc Dead Zones

[Dragonlead]

Mr. DiCamillo, et al.,

Greetings. Let me say first that you have an awesome game and I am eagerly anticipating its retail release.

Second, I am new to the modding realm, but the discussions I have been reading in these forums have helped a great deal.

This leads to my real question. How can I get a turret to have a dead zone or blind spot that it cannot fire through? An example would be like on old WWII bombers, where the gunner could not fire at certain angles because important things like wings were in the way.

I look forward to your answer.
V/R
Dragonlead

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Generally, you just adjust the elevation and azimuth maximums for each weapon in the relevant ship .DEF file.

aim_az_max: 1.285,
aim_el_max: 0.485,

Note that they are defined in radians.

I'm really not sure here if those will work in a Ship DEF file, I lifted those from a Weapon DEF file. But I believe so.

[John DiCamillo]

To answer the original question, you can't have a dead zone in the middle of any firing arc. But dont' worry because ships cannot shoot themselves down no matter where the weapons are placed.

Also, to further amplify Shoe's comment, all angles in all def files are expected in radians by default. However, you can use the tag degrees: true near the beginning of a def file to indicate that all subsequent angles should be interpreted as degrees instead of radians.

Finally, thanks! I'm glad you are enjoying the game.

[Dragonlead]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'll have to reposition some of my PD turrets, if no dead zone can be included. I wasn't worried about shooting myself down, it was just that it looks really odd to have a pd turret on your main hull firing through one of your wings to target a bad guy...purely a visual issue.

I'll go with the degrees: true line as it is easier for me to think in those terms. However, this creates follow-on questions. If a right-side turret has a 180 degree firing arc on the azimuth, what value do I input? And on the opposite side, do I use a negative value or does the programming recognize a 360? Also, if a top turret needs a 10 degree azimuth limitation from 175 to 185 (so as not to shoot through the bridge)[;)], what value do I give the def file?

I've gone through the MOD SDK and several very helpful tutorials that some of the older heads for this game have put out (thank you very much! [&o]) and this issue isn't addressed (that I can find.)

If I knew how, I would include the Magic file, or a shot from Starshatter to show you better what I'm talking about.
Thanks.

V/R
Dragonlead

[John DiCamillo]

You can either use negative angles or angles greater than 180 degrees. The game engine does the math either way. It is often easier to use negative angles if your ship is symetric about the long axis. That way, port and starboard side weapons use the same numbers, with one side just adding a minus sign in front of the azimuths.

[Kuokkanen]

ORIGINAL: Dragonlead

If I knew how, I would include the Magic file, or a shot from Starshatter to show you better what I'm talking about.

See the toolbar on top of the text editor area? There is button 'image'. Hit it once and it gives you tags. Between tags type or copy-paste URL of the image file. You just need get image on-line first. If you have own WWW-site, you should know how to do it. Or if not, you can hit link 'Click here to upload!' at bottom of the text editor area.

[Dragonlead]

Copy all. I can see the image and upload buttons. My problem is more basic. How do I get an image in the first place? Do I use the 'print-screen' button on my keyboard? While we're on the topic of images. How do I get Magic, or Starshatter, to give me an image I can turn into a PCX file for the "beauty" and "map#" pics?

Any help for this newbie modder would be much appreciated.

V/R
Dragonlead

[John DiCamillo]

While playing Starshatter, press F12 to take a screenshot in PCX format. Screenshots are saved to the game root directory in sequentially numbered files. If you are using Magic, you can just press Alt+Print Screen to save an image of the application window in the Windows clipboard. That won't create a file though.

Once you take some screenshots, you will need an image editing program such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, or possibly The GIMP to crop your ship and remove the background.

[Deadmannumberone]

ORIGINAL: John DiCamillo

Once you take some screenshots, you will need an image editing program such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, or possibly The GIMP to crop your ship and remove the background.

Or Paint, if you're really cheap and lazy.

[Dragonlead]

Thanks Milo.[:)] It is truly a pleasure to have a game developer so in tune with his customer base and so willing to help them out.

V/R
Dragonlead