Not really:) Its been pretty smooth since I realized to just trigger off the weapon attack effects instead of anything else. I can answer any further questions a little later today if you have them, fraid I've got a cisco lab in an hour and gotta get ready for that, oh the hardships of college student life :P
Heya guys yah there is one dummy per unit that needs to have its turret puppet-controlled and what's going on is a few triggers that are watching for situations where the unit tries to attack something other then that dummy and when that happens the trigger orders the unit to attack the dummy again. So yup the dummy is just being bobbed around to where I want the turret facing and the turret is just happily sitting there blasting away.
So you need a method of tying a dummy to a unit (I use two arrays of units and just ensure whenever a puppet-turret unit is born its added to one array and instantly a dummy puppeteer is added to the other in the same value so I can more easily refer them to each other), need another trigger to watch for any puppet units dying so that you can kill off the dummy puppeteer at the same time and then an event trigger watching each instance of those empty weapon's effects straying from the wanted target and correcting them with a order to attack(making the weapons fire only like every two seconds doesn't change the turret's motion and greatly reduces the times this event fires, I recommend doing so). Along with the puppet's weapon being setup to let it continue firing on the dummies ala how diamondbacks fire while moving. I further restricted what the empty weapon's targeting filters will fire at just to reduce the number of things that'll potentially distract them from the dummy we want them aiming at.
Btw once I realized to shift the event trigger to watch each time the weapon fired it pretty much fixed those last instances where the turrets would aim off-course for prolonged periods of time, its now pretty rare and only until the next time the weapon shoots, since then its ordered to go back to attacking the right dummy again immediately.
ED: Oh right better explanation of how the dummies are being put where they need to be: There is a periodic trigger event firing every .5 seconds that orders them to move to 8 in front of the facing of their respective puppt units and they have a much higher movement speed then the puppet turret units. Additionally since my attack methods are all ability based there is another trigger that whenever one of those puppet unit's abilities activates it instantly teleports the appropriate dummy to ground zero of where that attack is headed. (then of course a half second later they start to make their way back to 8 ahead when the next periodic fires)
Weren't you the one who posted that video in that thread showing off just such a method and then denying everyone how it was done because it "wasn't your thing to release" or some such? I found that thread btw where you were first asking about how one would do this sort of thing and Umbra gave you all that incredible useful information which I assume led to programmer's mouse detector along with several early attempts at turret manipulation. Umbra certainly seems to know his stuff so why do you still need this, didn't he already do this homework for you?
Unfortunately you face a dilemma as you're right when you issue an order it cancels everything else going on so constantly doing an attack order on invisible units makes everything else very 'laggy' feeling. So the trick...think about how the diamondback's weapon works ;) I've got a working method that I just managed to get functional as of yesterday and eventually I'll release the content just right now much like everything else in it the code is quite ugly and undesirable to show to people. Here's a short demo clip, you'll notice my turret still follows the wrong dummy once or twice and that among other things (like those unrelated errors on the side) are stuff I still have to work out before considering it a complete system worthy of sharing:
To be more specific I'm relying on my units have dummy weapons with a gigantic range and a very specific scan-set of targets they're looking for (the invisible floating dummies that you can't see but are present) and so the weapons will be constantly firing at them (doing nothing, the effect is empty) and this drastically minimizes how often I have to send an attack order through to force them to target the right dummy (in the case of only one in play who cares, but when you have many of them in close quarters like this the weapons can get confused). There is only one dummy per actual unit and these dummies react to situations like clicks to teleport to that location or by default they quickly move over the battle field to try and be about 8 squares in front of the facing of their unit. So, keep the turrets constantly aiming at their specific dummy...and you get the illusion of proper turret activities for your abilities :)
@tigerija: Go
Not really:) Its been pretty smooth since I realized to just trigger off the weapon attack effects instead of anything else. I can answer any further questions a little later today if you have them, fraid I've got a cisco lab in an hour and gotta get ready for that, oh the hardships of college student life :P
Heya guys yah there is one dummy per unit that needs to have its turret puppet-controlled and what's going on is a few triggers that are watching for situations where the unit tries to attack something other then that dummy and when that happens the trigger orders the unit to attack the dummy again. So yup the dummy is just being bobbed around to where I want the turret facing and the turret is just happily sitting there blasting away.
So you need a method of tying a dummy to a unit (I use two arrays of units and just ensure whenever a puppet-turret unit is born its added to one array and instantly a dummy puppeteer is added to the other in the same value so I can more easily refer them to each other), need another trigger to watch for any puppet units dying so that you can kill off the dummy puppeteer at the same time and then an event trigger watching each instance of those empty weapon's effects straying from the wanted target and correcting them with a order to attack(making the weapons fire only like every two seconds doesn't change the turret's motion and greatly reduces the times this event fires, I recommend doing so). Along with the puppet's weapon being setup to let it continue firing on the dummies ala how diamondbacks fire while moving. I further restricted what the empty weapon's targeting filters will fire at just to reduce the number of things that'll potentially distract them from the dummy we want them aiming at.
Btw once I realized to shift the event trigger to watch each time the weapon fired it pretty much fixed those last instances where the turrets would aim off-course for prolonged periods of time, its now pretty rare and only until the next time the weapon shoots, since then its ordered to go back to attacking the right dummy again immediately.
ED: Oh right better explanation of how the dummies are being put where they need to be: There is a periodic trigger event firing every .5 seconds that orders them to move to 8 in front of the facing of their respective puppt units and they have a much higher movement speed then the puppet turret units. Additionally since my attack methods are all ability based there is another trigger that whenever one of those puppet unit's abilities activates it instantly teleports the appropriate dummy to ground zero of where that attack is headed. (then of course a half second later they start to make their way back to 8 ahead when the next periodic fires)
@tigerija: Go
Weren't you the one who posted that video in that thread showing off just such a method and then denying everyone how it was done because it "wasn't your thing to release" or some such? I found that thread btw where you were first asking about how one would do this sort of thing and Umbra gave you all that incredible useful information which I assume led to programmer's mouse detector along with several early attempts at turret manipulation. Umbra certainly seems to know his stuff so why do you still need this, didn't he already do this homework for you?
@frozenfire2: Go
Unfortunately you face a dilemma as you're right when you issue an order it cancels everything else going on so constantly doing an attack order on invisible units makes everything else very 'laggy' feeling. So the trick...think about how the diamondback's weapon works ;) I've got a working method that I just managed to get functional as of yesterday and eventually I'll release the content just right now much like everything else in it the code is quite ugly and undesirable to show to people. Here's a short demo clip, you'll notice my turret still follows the wrong dummy once or twice and that among other things (like those unrelated errors on the side) are stuff I still have to work out before considering it a complete system worthy of sharing:
To be more specific I'm relying on my units have dummy weapons with a gigantic range and a very specific scan-set of targets they're looking for (the invisible floating dummies that you can't see but are present) and so the weapons will be constantly firing at them (doing nothing, the effect is empty) and this drastically minimizes how often I have to send an attack order through to force them to target the right dummy (in the case of only one in play who cares, but when you have many of them in close quarters like this the weapons can get confused). There is only one dummy per actual unit and these dummies react to situations like clicks to teleport to that location or by default they quickly move over the battle field to try and be about 8 squares in front of the facing of their unit. So, keep the turrets constantly aiming at their specific dummy...and you get the illusion of proper turret activities for your abilities :)