But I'm not sure if I can.. Main question is the animation - can we do custom animations (eg, walking) at all yet? Second question (I assume this is already workable but good to confirm) can we attach an arbitrary number of turrets / weapons to a unit?
Custom animation - no, not yet. I have Plans (TM) though. Turrets & Weapons - as far as we know, there's been no limit stated I think. The battleship has 12 weapons, so it's at least that many
Some beginner tutorials for doing stuff like getting a model from 3ds max into the game, setting up a basic balance mod, etc.. would be great. Tutorial form.. I mean, everything in one place and step by step. My head hurts.
This would be really helpful for people that have next no idea what there doing and want to learn how to mod
No custom animations, which means no bots. But you can make tanks, planes, etc Make sure all bones are facing forward up, (Their default) or they won't export correctly. Since I've imported many models and units into the game in the past I think I might do some tutorial over it.
Would be extremely helpful. Especially focusing on how to do the textures properly - for instance I have a multi-material covering my model which is made up of 3 different textures (one for the body, one for the head, one for the weapon) and honestly I have no idea how to correctly composite the textures and set the model correctly so that PA can use it all as a single texture as prescribed by papaTran.
I think the problem with many/different weapons is that the engine doesn't handle them as intelligently as the SupCom engine did, so having say a burst arty cannon for big slow targets and a high DPS machine gun for lighter targets doesn't really work because the unit won't split up it's targeting, I think, it's been awhile since I've talked about it and so far the units we've added in the RCBM are simpler single weapon units. Mike
Looking through the weapons' json files it doesn't seem like there's a way to salvo-fire either. Or any way to control the targeting really. Am I missing something or is the whole thing way more locked down than Supcom's Lua files?
Salvo firing is sorta possible. You can have it fire a salvo but then it will fire whenever it's done reloading. Example code block from the Statera Stomper artillery bot (this is in the weapon json): "ammo_capacity": 800, "ammo_demand": 50, "ammo_per_shot": 100, "ammo_source": "energy", It starts with 800 energy stored and that's its max value. Every time it fires a shot (3 times a second for this) 100 of that is drained. 50 energy is replenished per second. After its fired its salvo, it will fire one shot every two seconds.
Admittedly I'm pretty fuzzy on the details at this point, I remember we had wanted to do a bunch of different things and most of them would work... Mike
OK so we're looking at being able to specify max & min pitch / yaw and max range. I wonder if it's smart enough to pick a new target if the current one leaves the turret's arc.
It will either change targets or rotate the unit so the turret can fire. Can't remember which. It will also change targets if a higher priority target is in range and able to be fired on, I believe. The tool parameters you are looking for are pitch_range (degrees either side of rest position) pitch_rate (degrees per second) yaw_range yaw_rate as well as target_layers target_priorities
IIRC a unit won't move so that it can shoot. For example, lets say you have a unit that can only shoot forward. If an enemy unit rolls past the front, it will shoot. But if an enemy unit stays out of the yaw/pitch range, the other unit will just sit there. Guard radius just moves the unit to within the weapon range stated in the tool weapon, it doesn't do anything extra.
