So, I would like to mod the commander's uber cannon to fire straight up before seeking to the targeted area. This would be so that the commander does not have to turn before firing, and also to reduce the risk of the uber cannon projectile colliding with the ground. To make this work, I either need to find a bone in the base commander's model which points up that I can use as a muzzle in the weapon json, or I need a way to specify that the actual firing direction is up, relative to the supplied muzzle bone. Another alternative would be for the projectile to ignore ground collisions until it reaches the target area, but I have no idea how to make that work. Or, even better, if there is some way to use a beam type weapon to apply the uber cannon to a target area instantaneously (I've tried this but it appears to just hit the ground near the commander's feat, or it's just not able to fire correctly).
Umm what aim bone would that be though? I already changed the weapon spec to be like the bluehawk so that the commander does not need to face in the direction that it is firing, however this seems to have the problem that the projectile hits the ground or it travels in a big arc that takes a while to arrive. Is there some way to use a bone of the commander without having it turn? Does a staged projectile let you control the initial direction regardless of the bone it is attached to?
@KillerKiwiJuice, so I managed to get the commander to fire the uber cannon without turning! Thanks for the suggestion. I attached the weapon to "bone_turret" but then gave the weapon insane yaw rate. That seems to produce the effect that I would like. There are still some issues with the uber cannon sometimes hitting the ground too early. I will be trying @stuart98's suggestion next.
Some magic settings to make weapons fire without having to aim. Code: "firing_arc_yaw": 180, "firing_arc_pitch": 180
Cool, I actually used 360 for those values, is there actually a special significance to 180 vs 360? I managed to get the staged missile thing working for the uber cannon, so now it fires without delay and doesn't hit the ground very often! Thanks for all the help people
The value means degrees either side of center, so 180 gives full coverage. Values above 180 would have no additional effect.
This. The values are that many degrees in either direction, so a value of 180 is 180 degrees +/- the current aim, which is the full 360 degrees. Technically for the "firing_arc_pitch" anything over 90 is excessive, but my vague memories of the weapon code make me think at 180 (or above) it'll end up doing slightly less math. 180 on both also groks for me slightly faster as I read it as "f*** it, just shoot everything!" where as having one at 90 doesn't.
