[QUESTION] Turret or Gimballed?

Homeworld Remastered Collection Homeworld Mods and Modding
#1

Hello,

I am working on a fighter that will have a turret under its nose with a limited fire arc to about 180 degrees in front of it, thereā€™s an example photo below. My main question is, would I set the weapon to be a turret with a limited firing arc or a gimballed weapon with a limited firing arc?

As a side note, this question was borne out of myself looking through the .ship files and seeing most, if not all, weapons seem to be either gimballed or turrets (even the ion cannon frigatesā€™ beams are technically gimballed??). Are there any weapons that are truly set to ā€œfixedā€?

#2

For flexibility always use turreted weapons, but for ease of implementation gimbal.
I personally recommend using turreted weapons as much as you can, they can be better tweaked, and work much more naturally, also are much more compatible with most additional ideas that you may come in the future like simulated projectiles, barrel recoil, etc.

If there is any fixed weapons, I donā€™t recommend them, unless they are mines or something like that, mostly because a fixed weapon would require the ship to turn or align itself exactly with the weapon line of fire for it to be activated and fire, which will enable it to fire in very rare occasions, and make it almost useless.

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#3

Except for fighters, where fixed weapons are natural.

#4

Sorry, @Dom2 but not even fighters have fixed weapons, all of them are gimbal, fixed weapons are used exclusively, at least in vanilla game, by Spawn Weapon Fire Bursts, which are weapons that do damage to the area they are spawned, so they donā€™t need any direction, just volume.

#5

Ah, I think I have misunderstood gimbals then. What is a gimbal?

#6

In Homeworld, be it HW1 or HW2, the gimbal weapon only use only 1 value to tweak the weapon coverage, the firing arc, while the turret can use ranges from positive and negative values for x and y axis, and also can make use of the firing arc too at the same time.
The fixed weapons donā€™t make use any of these values as far as Iā€™m aware.

#7

Gimbaled - Looks like stationary/fixed weapon but can have several degrees of motion to aim in each direction.

Turret - If you want the gun to track and move as itā€™s finding itā€™s target.

#8

@sastrei @Krnt_13 Thank you very much! Cleared up my issue haha.

Iā€™ve got another weapon-type that Iā€™d like to run by you guys. The closest I can describe it atm, as I havenā€™t concept art-ed it out yet, is it is almost like a Tesla coil. It would have a charging chamber of sorts and would fire an arc of plasma/lightning at a nearby target. Now, as Iā€™m pretty sure it would not ā€œtrackā€ its targets in a visibly animated fashion, Iā€™m leaning towards the idea that I would create it as a gimballed weapon with a very wide firing arc. Do you think that would be right way to go?

Also, how would I go about creating the FX for said weapon? Iā€™m still not completely sure how custom FX are created. Do you create them in a separate program or do you script them somehow? The last time I created particle effects was in the Cryengine haha.

#9

As of the current moment, you have to script FX by hand.

ā€¦

There is a very old tool by Relic that you could useā€¦ But it is extremely finicky and cranky, to say the least.

According to the FX documentation, there technically is an arcing property of the Beam style FX, but I have no idea if it is functional in HW2/RM. The document was dual-purpose written for another one of Relicā€™s games (Impossible Creatures), which used the same FX engine.

#10

Well, time to learn another thing! haha

Ooooo, ya donā€™t say? Iā€™ll see if I can look into that. Anyone else know anything about that?

#11

On the topic of Gimballed/Fixed:

  • Gimballed weapons point in a certain direction, and can rotate to point at the target, up to the max angle set in the weapon script.
  • Fixed weapons always point in one direction, but have a ā€œtrigger happyā€ value that allows them to shoot when the target is within that firing cone. (Missile launchers are the prime example of this; they have a 179 degree trigger happy angle.)

Hereā€™s a (lame) picture:

image
Pasted image819Ɨ392 6.59 KB

Edit: obviously, if the target is outside the Max/Trigger-Happy angles, the weapon wonā€™t shoot.

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#12

I can see the Turanic Raiders having Trigger Happy for everything :smiley:

#13

I think that the arcing property is called noise, you can see some examples of the usage off this by some of the Progenitor units in the FX mod:


property_07 = { name = "Noise", type = "VARTYPE_ARRAY_TIMEFLOAT", value = { 0, 0, 1, 0.5, }, },
This should explain it:

[-ARRAY_TIMEFLOAT-] property_00 = { name = "string", type = "VARTYPE_ARRAY_TIMEFLOAT", value = { time, value, [time, value, ...] }, }, *time ranges from 0 to 1 (float) but value has no definite bounds (float.)
Look here for more info:
The great FX Tutorial!

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#14

No. Noise is a separate value.

[quote]Arc: Arcing is based on world orientation and allows you to arc a beam effect between two points. Can be animated.

Noise: Amount of noise added to the beam. Possible values are from 0 to 1. This setting will disperse the beam, causing it to jiggle. Can be animated.[/quote]

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#15

Are you paraphrasing this info from somewhere? If so, whereā€™d you find that?

#16

[quote=ā€œPrivateHix, post:15, topic:1231033ā€]
Are you paraphrasing this info from somewhere?
[/quote]No.

ā€¦

[quote=ā€œPrivateHix, post:15, topic:1231033ā€]
If so, whereā€™d you find that?
[/quote]The RDN FX Tool documentation.

#17

Sorry didnā€™t mean that in a bad way, I was just wondering where you got it from :slightly_smiling:

#18

I know :wink:

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