[mazuho]

Hi all!
I'm making my own version of the Grand Cannon from RA2. I want to incorporate it into CnC: Generals ZH. As I want to make it a superweaon rather than just for defence, I would like to know if it is possible and if so, how to animate the firing sequence even though the cannon'll turn and pitch when aiming.

Basically, I think I'll start with setting it up as a normal base defence structure with an animated firing sequence and when I got that to work, I'll try to make it a superweapon.

Thx for reading.

[CommieDog]

What kind of animation are you planning? Is it just a recoiling barrel, or is it more complex?

[mazuho]

Well, basically I want to add recoil, but kind of advanced. Like Howitzers only I have the whole barrel and the "ammunition compartment" stationed on a rail and I want the barrel to recoil and the ac respond to this by also recoiling backwards.

When the ac reaches the point where it starts moving back to firing position I have made a shell flying out. Should I animate this or can the game fix this for me so it looks more dynamic? I also want to put some smoke either on the shell or coming out from where the shell came from.

I would like to put some nice shockwave effect when it fires and some nice cloudey smoke coming from the back of the cannon (as the shockwave puts up a nice cloud of dust). Some camera shake would be nice too, dunno if this is possible though.

Thanks for any replies and suggestions! Oh and thanks for reading through all of this.

[CommieDog]

Well, of you want the ammunition compartment to move in exactly the same way as the barrel does during recoil, then you can have it attached to the barrel as a child object. Otherwise, you'll probably need to do a custom animation.

As for the other effects, I know it is possible to generate shockwaves, smoke, and camera shaking through weapon FX lists (in FXList.ini if you want to take a look). A shell casing would be more difficult, but you might be able to do that by coding the shell casing as if it were debris in an OCL (which has support for random velocity) and then calling it using the FireOCL= tag in the cannon's weapon.

[mazuho]

Hey thanks for the reply!

That was a very good idea. At first I wanted the ac being a bit more cushioned in it's movements but when you suggested a direct link I realized it would probably look better to have the both of them move as one. Can I adjust the time it takes for the barrel to reposition itself? I kind of want to make it slowly move back to the original position to further emphasize that it's a slooow but very powerful weapon.

About the effects, I'll do some further reading before being irritating with my absence of knowledge. I'll try to replace the fire base with it just to try out the bones and see if it turns correctly and all that.

About the shell, I though of making it a debris object called when the cannon enters reloading. If I am not wrong, I could look on the code of infantries to see how they made the shells appear when firing.

Thank you so much for helping me and also for reading through all of this!

[CommieDog]

As a matter of fact, you can adjust the recoil properties with the following lines in an object's W3DModelDraw module:

  InitialRecoilSpeed   = 10
  MaxRecoilDistance    = 1.5
  RecoilSettleSpeed    = 3

[Dibelius]

Originally Posted by CommieDog";p=&quot

As a matter of fact, you can adjust the recoil properties with the following lines in an object's W3DModelDraw module:

  InitialRecoilSpeed   = 10
  MaxRecoilDistance    = 1.5
  RecoilSettleSpeed    = 3

Actually these are parameters for the W3DTankDraw module (and afaik W3DTankTruckDraw module as well)

[CommieDog]

Hmm...I don't suppose that giving a W3DTankDraw module to a structure would be bad, would it?

[Dibelius]

I don't see any problem with it. even the build stuff process works with this module. But at first the guy who opened this thread should know that the recoil stuff is also defined in weapon.ini (don't have the code atm, just search for "recoil" there). This parameter must be in the object's weapon template as well.

I'm not sure if you really need
InitialRecoilSpeed = 10
MaxRecoilDistance = 1.5
RecoilSettleSpeed = 3

Afaik the barrels do recoil even without these parameters. BUT: there's a bug in game logic that forbids recoiling for PRIMARY defined weapons, only SECONDARY and TERTIARY weapons actually do recoil... unfortunately. The way around this bug is in the end doing it per firing animation (see infantry code). You can play with some ConditionStates like FIRING_X, BETWEEN_FIRING_SHOTS_X, RELOADING_X (X= A, B, C for primary, secondary, tertiary weapon)

[beng]

Just look at the infantry firing animations, like the tank hunter / tunnel defender, and make a custom animation for the ConditionState = FIRING_A. If you want a pre-attack sequence like a loading anim you can also do that. For pitching the turret up to fire see the tomahawk and scud launcher AIupdate modules which have firepitch. As for recoil, see the battleship weapons and the battleship draw module for how to set it up.