Fixed Gun Emplacements

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

JJ86 Don't read this unless you've got to Meduna in JA2!
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Okay that should be enough spoiler space for JJ86 : )

I've been reading about how the Russians turned their old WWII tanks into fixed artillary emplacements along the Russian/China border and also some other articles about entrenching tanks on the battlefield. After playing JA2 where they have stationary tanks surrounded by sandbag walls I thought that would be nice to implement in FOT. I'm trying to set up some enemy tanks by making some turrets using the tank turret sprite. I've made a breakable entity for the tank body and with the turret placed on top and with the whole tank surrounded by sandbags it looks quite good. The turrets rotate nicely and follow the player but unfortunately I can't get them to fire, has anyone tried to do this before and if so have you had any success?

So far I've tried making a brand new gunturret actor using the tank turret sprite, and armed with a custom rocket attack that fires tank shells, I've also tried changing the sprite for the robot rocket turret and leaving the weapon alone (The tank gun is just a rocket launcher that fires tank shells rather than rockets anyway). I've even tried equiping the turret with the vehicle weapon tank gun.

But all to no avail, I've set the AI to turret and I've made sure that the turret armed box is ticked but still no joy.

Anyone got any ideas to what I've doing wrong? Or any suggestions to try?

[Jimmyjay86]

Yeah, I've got to parts of Meduna. I don't like the tanks because they kick my ass repeatedly. I am trying to sneak past them and see if I can go directly to the Queen. No luck yet.

Have you looked at the tank turret in Redviewer? What types of animations are in the sprite? I guess try to compare it with the robot turrets and see how similar they are.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Yeah, I've got to parts of Meduna. I don't like the tanks because they kick my ass repeatedly. I am trying to sneak past them and see if I can go directly to the Queen. No luck yet.

MORTAR, MORTAR, MORTAR.

Failing that SNEAK, SNEAK, SNEAK, then LAW, LAW, LAW

Have you looked at the tank turret in Redviewer? What types of animations are in the sprite? I guess try to compare it with the robot turrets and see how similar they are.

Yeah I've looked at it it in Redviewer but I didn't see anything different that jumped out at me, can anyone who's hip to the sprite animations help out?

[OnTheBounce]

My guess would be that the animation rotations are mismatched, which has been a problem that has dogged us since the first person hatched this scheme. IIRC the tank turret has 32 animation rotations, while turrets have 16.

Now, while we can't make AI gun turrets like the ones you were thinking of, if you'd like you could make a tank turned pillbox for the PCs very easily. All you would have to do is to make a vehicle for a map and make it require a non-existant repair item. That way the PCs could fire the main gun, but couldn't drive it around the map.

Alternately, you could allow them limited mobility using a Zone and %hitpoints trigger (IIRC vehicles don't count as "alive", so you can't use that as a condition) and set the action to "kill" the vehicle when it leaves a certain zone. (You might want to add some World Text that informs the player that the tank has caught fire or the electrical system is starting to malfunction badly.)

OTB

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

My guess would be that the animation rotations are mismatched, which has been a problem that has dogged us since the first person hatched this scheme. IIRC the tank turret has 32 animation rotations, while turrets have 16.

Hmm maybe I'll have ago at editing the tank turret sprite in Spray, see if I can delete some of the extra rotations.

Now, while we can't make AI gun turrets like the ones you were thinking of, if you'd like you could make a tank turned pillbox for the PCs very easily. All you would have to do is to make a vehicle for a map and make it require a non-existant repair item. That way the PCs could fire the main gun, but couldn't drive it around the map.

Alternately, you could allow them limited mobility using a Zone and %hitpoints trigger (IIRC vehicles don't count as "alive", so you can't use that as a condition) and set the action to "kill" the vehicle when it leaves a certain zone. (You might want to add some World Text that informs the player that the tank has caught fire or the electrical system is starting to malfunction badly.)

OTB

The way I've set up the tanks, they are hemmed in by sandbags so they aren't going anywhere. Unfortunately having them under the control of the Player would mean turning the whole storyline around and changing the sides, so that the player controls the BOS. I'll have to think about that, oh something just occured to me, since the turrets rotate and track the player fine, maybe I can fudge them firing with the explosion spawns, the way I'm going to set up the terrain the player will only be able to come at the tanks from certain directions anyway. edit The main campaign uses the conditions 'vehicle has exactly 1 death anywhere' for the two missions where you have to keep the hummer and apc alive.

Cheers

[PaladinHeart]

While I am not fond of cheesy workarounds, it is sometimes the only alternative while maintaining a minimum level of quality fun. In other words, you're going to have it there or not.. Not having it would probably lead to a drastic change in your storyline or something even MORE cheesier than what the previous idea would ahve entailed.

Here are a few workaround ideas:

1. A custom robotic tank with 4 or more turrets on top that fire.. whatever you want them to fire. This would probably look good considering you never know what type of robotic monstrosities you're going to run into in the fallout world. You could even make the tank chasis a custom blueish color and make the turrets like so as well. Or whatever color you wish just so they match up and look like they go together.

2. A fearless guy with a rocket launcher or auto rocket gun or whatever you wish to use. Since you're using BOS for this particularly scenario I would suggest a guy in power armor with a large gun that fires tank shells or such. You could have the gun weigh in at 500 pounds and be worth nothing. If you want the player NOT to use it then simply have it nonlootable or have the ammo nonlootable.

[Jimmyjay86]

Hmm maybe I'll have ago at editing the tank turret sprite in Spray, see if I can delete some of the extra rotations.

You may want to go directly with a hex editor to get the animations in the right location and then bring it into Spray to delete the extra animations.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

You may want to go directly with a hex editor to get the animations in the right location and then bring it into Spray to delete the extra animations.

In that case maybe I won't, messing about in Spray is one thing but hex editing ties my brain into knots.

[Jimmyjay86]

I just tried deleting an animation in Hex Workshop, saved the sprite and tried it in Redviewer but it crashed. Must be more to it than that! We'll have to ask RED to make his viewer able to edit sprites. Hey Red!

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

I just tried deleting an animation in Hex Workshop, saved the sprite and tried it in Redviewer but it crashed. Must be more to it than that! We'll have to ask RED to make his viewer able to edit sprites. Hey Red!

Well I've edited the vault desks in spray before. When viewed in the level editor they look fine, but instead of an animation to show the desks opening like other furniture, they have a frame showing them as vault tables instead. So when you fire up the map to play they turn into vault tables. I deleted that frame and they worked okay. But then again the tank turret is a lot more complicated.

[Red]

Spray can't handle compressed sprites, sorry.

And indeed, turret sprites have 16 rotations while the tank's has 32.

You can forget about hex editing those extra frames out, way too complicated.

I think I'll drop the project to convert the viewer to .NET+DX9 since it means people would need to download 20+megs worth of DLLs to make it work...

[Jimmyjay86]

Could Redviewer handle compressed sprites if you'd add the function??

[Red]

Uh? it does. I think since version 1.5...