Help with creating the mortar variant of the Bren Carrier

[Gepanzert Faust]

I've noticed that all nations have a vehicle mounted mortar apart from the United Kingdom.

The Japanese have the Isuzu mortar truck, Germany has the SdKfz 251 and the US and Soviet Union share the M21 mortar half-track.

Thus what I want to do is simple (in theory), I want to copy the Bren Carrier but mount a mortar inside of it to create a new unit. I know this is possible because of all the examples above, I'm just not sure how to do it.

It would be a historically correct vehicle as well, take a look: http://www.panzerbaer.de/archiv/pix/...arrier-013.jpg

If you are interested and have any experience or knowledge with modding vehicles please could you assist me?

Kind regards, Gepanzert Faust

[GeneralJ927]

Its possible using the in-game bren carrier and the mortar, but you'll need or need someone with very good .mdl editing skils. All you need from the mortar is its .ply model file, place it in the bren carriers folder, then work from there, but it can take quite some time.

[Gepanzert Faust]

Thanks, so you basically have to take the .ply file from the mortar then code where exactly it is you want that model to appear on/in the vehicle?

I'm looking through the files of the SdKfz and the M21 trying to work it out.

[GeneralJ927]

Yes thats right, also use the mortars .mdl file to help you in a way as you can get a few pieces of code from it. Also remember that the .mdl is a structuring type file, linking pieces together, so you'll need to place the mortars .ply in the correct place, or it will go wrong.

You'll also need to add the placers where the mortar crew will be (you can use the passenger placers), which the mortar .mdl will help, you can use the original emitters (used so the AI know where to get in and out of the vehicle) instead of adding new ones. I'd say the hardest part might be adding the foresight for the mortar to fire.

There is another way, which is similar, where the mortar will spawn with the bren carrier, although this way the mortar and bren carrier are as 2, and not as 1 entity, like a soldier in a building window, so you can't control them both at the same time.

[coalminer]

i think animations are needed as well as new bones and foresight? otherwise the vehicle may end up funny or have the mortar face the wrong way when it fires like when i tried to change gun barrels of tanks to make variants it ends up with the barrel sticking the wrong side out and fires from the back of the turret instead

[Dilust]

This may help you too:
http://digitalmindsoft.eu/forums/sho...rret-gun-model

[Gepanzert Faust]

This may help you too:
http://digitalmindsoft.eu/forums/sho...rret-gun-model

Thanks, still trying to make sense of all the model, bone, foresight stuff.

As far as I can tell this is the part of the MDL file (from the M21 half-track) that positions the PLY files of the mortar inside of the carrier - am I right?


{bone revolute "turret1"
{limits -5 25}
{Matrix34
0.939693 0 -0.34202
0.34202 0 0.939693
0 -1 0
-34.8145 -0.188971 11.27829
}
{VolumeView "turret1.ply"}
{bone revolute "gun"
{limits -50 50}
{Matrix34
0.939642 0.342002 0.010375
0.00974933 0.0035483 -0.999946
-0.34202 0.939693 0
0.77268 -0.937828 0
}
{VolumeView "gun.ply"}
{bone revolute "foresight1"
{limits -5 5}
{Matrix34
0.627418 0.00652224 0.778655
-0.0103786 0.999946 -1.32068e-005
-0.778614 -0.00807304 0.627452
21.0571 0.314072 26.26
}
}
{bone "stan"
{Matrix34
0.965874 0.0100213 -0.258819
-0.0103749 0.999946 0
0.258805 0.00268521 0.965926
18.0321 0.557779 6.32522
}
{VolumeView "stan.ply"}
}