turning an object towards the mouse pointer

Hello there. I'm an old user who recently got back to the program. Due to money issues, I'm still using A6.

Now the issue I have is I have a tank that moves with wsad and a turret that is suppose to move with the mouse. However, with the code I have the turret only rotates to the positive y axis and doesn't follow the mouse very closely.

Code:

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function mouse_trace()
{
	from.X = MOUSE_POS.X;	//set from.x to mouse_pos.x
	from.Y = MOUSE_POS.Y;	//set from.y to mouse_pos.y
	from.Z = 0;		//set from.z to zero
	vec_set(to,from);	//copy from to to
	vec_for_screen(from,camera);	//convert from to 3d coords
	to.Z = 3000; 			//set to.z to 3000
	vec_for_screen(to,camera); 	//convert to to 3d coords
	return(trace(from,to));		//return the distance between from and to
} 

action tankTurret
{
	turret = my;
	while(!player){ wait(1);}	//wait for the player entity to load before doing anything
	while(player)					//once the player exists
	{
		my.x = player.x;			//follow player
		my.y = player.y;
		my.z = player.z;
		target = mouse_trace();
		vec_diff(target,target,my.x);
		vec_to_angle(my.pan,target);   //turn to mouse
		if((my.tilt != 0) || (my.roll != 0)) { my.tilt = 0; my.roll = 0;} //stay aligned with horizontal plane
		wait(1);
	}
}

 

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That is the current code. It follows the body of the tank (player) fine. And the line of code that keeps it from rotating on roll and tilt seems to have no effect on how it turns to the mouse (I commented it out to see if it was interfering, no change)

And just a side note, mouse_trace() isn't strictly mine, it came from the forums about a year ago. I've used it in other projects and I know it works.

So the two issues are that (1) it only rotates to point to the left (even when I drive and turn the model around (2) it doesn't follow the mouse closely.

Is trace() too slow for this sort of thing? Is there a better way to do this?

Ha ha I found the solution.

I looked more closely at mouse_trace() and found it returns a distance, not a vector so instead I used the to[3] vector to rotate the cannon and it works.

Code:

---

action tankTurret
{
	turret = my;
	while(!player){ wait(1);}	//wait for the player entity to load before doing anything
	while(player)					//once the player exists
	{
		my.x = player.x;			//follow player
		my.y = player.y;
		my.z = player.z;
		mouse_trace();
		vec_diff(to,to,my.x);
		vec_to_angle(my.pan,to);
		if((my.tilt != 0) || (my.roll != 0)) { my.tilt = 0; my.roll = 0;} //stay aligned with horizontal plane
		wait(1);
	}
}

  

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no changes were made to mouse_trace();