Conventional Modding

ok i got it to work the navy and order are using the gate and flying around i even expanded the exclusion zone

adoxa wrote:
Updated the patch again.

Very much appreciated adoxa! This works perfectly.

adoxa wrote:
It is exactly far clipping. If for some reason you don’t want to use the ini setting: freelancer.exe, 11C3D3, 75->EB = remove (exclusion) zone clipping.

Do you mean this hack also addresses the planets disappearing from sight beyond 130K.

I’ve since long applied the hack FriendlyFire discovered (see my post above) but that is setting the limit larger instead of totally removing it.

Have a look at the textures themselves, in FX\jumpeffect.txm. Jumptube seems to the smoke/cloud/fog/whatever whilst jumptube5 looks to be the sides (it’s very spiky). I don’t think u et al relate to color, but a simple test would be to make du & dv 0 - that will stop them changing (you’ll probably end up with a static tunnel).

StarTrader wrote:
Do you mean 3DS Max to MilkShape?

No, I mean the cmp exporter for 3DS Max 9. But looking again, it doesn’t look like it was properly finished. If I have the quota in 6 months when my net runs out, I’ll consider getting it then.

RimShot wrote:
fl explorer has a base designer, but i cant recall where it is found in the program. only used it a long time ago, i think it had some problems in older versions, so make sure you have the latest.

Correct, it’s part of FLExplorer.

It (the base construction thingy) didn’t work on my graphics card on one machine, it crashed on starting it, but on my desktop it was ok - so I could use my desjtop with FL Explorer to make a dummy system and assemble the base in it, then just copy the base components into my real system.

Its not a polished feature, needs a lot of joggling and farting about, but it’s better than eyeballing the parts into place.

For example i changed the material textures by hex editor into vmeshdata .
First you see in hex what hex value have the material (45E798FE for example ) and search into hex for FE98E745 - thats how is written into vmeshref .
Then add the new material name into CRC hash code and replace the old material name with the new one.
But this method i made few times and it`s takes some time .

Heheheheh… that’s a very good one, well spotted!

Btw, there are a few systems with no msg_id_prefix; a.o. the purple nomad system and the Primus & Gammu system.

Does that mean the msg_id_prefix is optional and can be simply left out without the game engine bothering?

Or is it just that no traffic is going to and/or coming from those systems, so that the NPCs simply do not need to mention them, but actually would produce a voice error if they would be set up to try (by, e.g. equipping the purple nomad system with a base, a tradelane, a jump gate and accompanying traffic zones)?

My guess would be the second option.

Thanks a lot for looking into this adoxa. I haven’t had a chance to test this though because I’ve been pretty busy. I’ll let you know what happens.

But if what you say is true, doesn’t that mean there is a huge oversight or bug in the program? I would think a fixed version should be big news.

Kuze wrote:
Also there is are the hardware you can see in the equipment room…what a fine models.

Actually, I thought to use them as stations, because they look like station props more then equipment to me…

each <datafile line=“” has=“” a=“” comment=“” attached.=“” looks=“” like=“” this:<br=“”><data file=“data\equipment\st_equip.ini” method=“sectionreplace” options=“7:0, 7:1, 7:2”>;NPC Shield Regens

I thought the same thing but don’t see any problems. What’s interesting is that I can remove one of the *.xmls (any one) and the rest will work properly.

I just used a different approach which seems to be running OK atm. My mod has about 12 options that the server admin can enable or select from when setting up the server. Instead of adding development stuff to the existing ‘activate flu mod’ option, I added a 12th option to ‘activate development updates’. and gave it the correct options=“12:1”> setting.
That seems to work for some reason. Gonna keep an eye on it.</data></datafile>

Thanks for the reply Adoxa! It works fine.

Chips wrote:

So I’d say try it out, see if you can balance, if you like it. Then see if others do. Asking first all depends upon who answers - they may not think something through and you may miss an awesome idea/balance etc simply because the right people weren’t in the right place at the right time 😉

Good point too. I didn’t see it? Probably because yo editted your post after you submitted it. Very bad habit! I do it all the time too.

O wow, my gf is in trance before the television! Time to Explore The Game Files!!

Thanks again for an excellent tutorial!

I guess I must have confused the type = line in ShipArch.ini with the state_graph = line in NPCShips.ini

I happily found the relevant files in a 2004/2005 mod project, in which I did have some succesful cap ship encounters. More luck than knowledge I guess, and possible copied from forum tutorials.

I see that, in the NPCShips.ini, I have classified the Liberty Dreadnought as a CRUISER… I also remember I did this because it wouldn’t work otherwise (CAPSHIP or whatever default there is). Weird, because I had it in a formation with some (real) cruisers, escorting it on both sides… And the only distinction I can see is the level. But we can’t have ships of differing levels in one encounter, can we? So, I must work it thru to see how I did it back then… Or try my luck again and copy the whole thing into my present mod and hunt down errors afterwards, but that migth be the road to disaster.

Anyway, your reply is saved to my INFO folder so I can take it to work, where internet is thin and distant, like sunlight on Sedna. I hope everything is quiet, so I can look into all this while being paid 😄

i remember a stand alone exporter…. you could use it when making character mods for neverwinter nights…

anyone remember the name of it?

it may have been milkshape…

robocop wrote:
Are the loot_preference entries in pilots_story.ini and pilots_population.ini necessary?

What I’m wondering is, would there be any potential problems if I remarked that line out altogether?

The default is LT_NONE, so removing loot_preferences altogether should have the desired effect.

@StarTrader:
if i remember correctly they are called lefthanded and righthanded coordinate systems. its been a long time ago that i learned professional 3d programs though.
i believe you can even change the coordinate system used in most of the programs settings.

@Moonhead:
just to clear that up, for pos = x, y, z

+x is east, -x is west
+y is up, -y is down
+z is south, -z is north

Moonhead wrote:
I’m not claiming that I just discovered anything, except the solution someone else found before me.

Yeah, that is called “exploring”.
I can’t yet understand why it didn’t work to you with the Roid Miner. With me it all works just fine!

See this thread on EOA to get the tool:-
http://forums.seriouszone.com/showthread.php?58762

And just use the original tutorial:-

http://forums.seriouszone.com/showthread.php?55837

It’s long-winded, but there are others out there too.