Freelancer Beta

Nova

I dont sure anybody have it.
It could be very useful for all, and i think if beta exists - we all would know about it.

Xarian_Prime

Beta testers signed some silly deal (as referred to by OP) forbidding them from distributing the Beta, Now DA is no more there’s no way to get a retraction on that deal & MS is far from talkative over the matter.

Pretty much end of story here…

tomsons26

Aren’t Beta testing deals vid until the beta ends?

FriendlyFire

NDAs are permanent unless lifted. MS hasn’t done so, DA can’t because they’re gone.

The beta has nothing interesting in it, anyways. You’re dreaming if you think it’s got some UBARCODE!!!1one!1 hidden in it that’d allow us to make fancy stuff. It’s just a buggier version of FL, released way after the interesting things like 3D radar were cut out.

Nova

FriendlyFire wrote:
The beta has nothing interesting in it, anyways.

Animated ships at least?

FriendlyFire

Animated ships are already done and possible?

Sushi

Nova wrote:

FriendlyFire wrote:
The beta has nothing interesting in it, anyways.

Animated ships at least?

We already have custom animated ships:
<object width=“560” height=“420”><param name=“movie” value=“http://www.moddb.com/media/embed/176862”><param name=“wmode” value=“transparent”><param name=“allowfullscreen” value=“true”><param name=“allowscriptaccess” value=“always”><embed src=“http://www.moddb.com/media/embed/176862” type=“application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=“transparent” allowfullscreen=“true” allowscriptaccess=“always” width=“560” height=“420”></object>
B-Wing Folding Animation video - Freeworlds: Tides of War Mod for Freelancer - Mod DB

Here’s the tutorial:

@w0dk4:

Introduction

This tutorial will cover how to add simple rotating animations (parts that rotate) to ships. This is basically a collection of info, so a lot of credits go to
Mini_Me, BBalazs, Bejaymac and RimShot

Requirements

First off, before we start, make sure your model’s parts that should get animated are all seperate groups (also export them as groups, so they are components within the .cmp).
Here already comes the tricky part that will save you trouble later on:
Animating parts always rotate around their 0,0,0 point in object space. That means, you will have to move the components in question to the center in such a way that it will rotate correctly. If the center of the model is 0,0,0 in object space, it will rotate around itself! Note that you can get away for certain animations without moving any group simply because of the nature of the animation. For example the X-Wing or B-Wing have wings that, in relation to the overall 0,0,0 point, should also rotate around that point. However, for this tutorial we will use the Eta-2 Jedi Fighter, where we definately have to move the components in order to get the animation right:

Before we move the animating groups, it might be wise at this point to measure angles to make life easier later on. There might be easier ways to measure an angle in Milkshape, but I just downloaded PicPick ( http://picpick.wiziple.net/download ) which has the awesome ability to measure an angle anywhere on the screen. So, I get angles of ~60° for the top wings, and ~70° for the bottom wings.
Now we move the animating groups:

Since we will rotate around the z axis, its important we zero the wings on the x and y axis.
Now, you see the model is now pretty ugly. Dont worry, we will move the wings to their proper places in the .cmp!

Also, make sure that all components have an component-attached, fitting hitbox, otherwise the hitbox will not move with the animation. I will not explain how to do this because honestly I simply dont really know. Watch the excellent other (video) tutorials about cmp file structure, cmp/sur splicing and hitboxing to get the idea.
Important: if you displaced your animating components in milkshape, you will have to do the same for their hitbox part!
Also, make sure that any hardpoints on moving parts are actually placed on the moving components, NOT on the root. Otherwise, your hardpoints will not move with your components.

When we have made the ship meet the requirements above, we are ready to go. We’ll need the following tools:

UTF Edit v1.003

UTF Edit v1.004 (yes, we’ll need both)

Your favourite hex editor

Lets get the bloddy wings to fold!

I’ll use the eta-2 Jedi Fighter.

All 4 wings are seperate, in the groups/components
z_eta-2_2 to z_eta-2_5
(check Milkshape screenshot above)

The first and most important thing to do is messing with the cons_fix data. Hit up utf edit v1.4 and load the .cmp
Look at the fix data (right click -> “Edit Fix Data”):

Now, for animations to work, all animating parts must not be “fixed” aka “Fix”, they need to be either “revolute” aka “Rev” which describes a rotation, or “Pris” which describes a translation (moving). For most of our animations we only need rotations, so I wont talk about translation-type animations here.
So, what we have to do here is delete all the moving parts from the Fix data, and add them to a Rev data node.
UTF edit v1.4 can not delete/add Fix/Rev/Pris data! So we have to do that manually, oh the joy!

If you already made special Fix data origin/rotation/offset whatever adjustments, remember them! In most cases, they are all 0 and it has the standard rotation matrix!

Export the Cons/Fix node and use your favourite hex editor to delete the appropriate entries. In this case, its the first 4 entries:

Re-import the fix-data and you are set.

Now we need to create a Cons/Rev data node. Create the node in utf edit v1.4 and export the data from any vanilla ship.
Now, if your vanilla ship has the same amount of animation parts that you need (in this case 4) it would be ideal and we can directly re-import, so we use the Rheinland Valkyre which has 4 rev data parts. (also note, in utf edit v1.4 you can directly copy the rev node, its sooo easy)
But if we would need more or less parts, we’d have to do some deleting/copying within the raw data. Note, we dont have to edit the actual data yet, since we can do all this in a very comfortable way within utf edit. Just make sure your number of rev data parts matches your needs.

Now, in utf edit v1.4, edit all rev entries so they match their former fix data, in most cases like this:

Note, we didnt edit the name (string)! Utf edit v1.4 cannot edit these names (strings)!
To edit those, save the cmp load it in utf edit v1.3
In utf edit v1.3, look at the bottom under “Custom Controls”, there are the buttons to edit the fix/rev/pris data.
Here we can now edit the names of the rev parts, name them just like they were named in the fix data.
Save the file and we can now again proceed in utf edit v1.4 (much more comfortable).

Here comes the 2nd tricky part:
If you moved the animating groups to make them rotate correctly, just like we did in the beginning, we now have to use the “Origin” entries in the Rev node to move our wings to their proper places. If you didnt move the groups, skip this paragraph.
Use HardCMP and play with the excellent Hardpointing feature (CTRL+click when placing hardpoints automatically puts the hp on the model where the mouse is) to get a rough idea for coordinate values. This is a little trial and error until your parts match the model again. Also, if you didnt move the animating parts on the y-axis in Milkshape, you might want to ignore the z-axis in Hardcmp, since you only need to move the parts on the x and y axis.
For our eta-2 we found -2.626627, -0.382567, 0.000000 to be working, which we can then almost copy for all the other parts if we moved them in the same way (only changing the x-axis from -2.62662 to 2.62662).

Now we get to the real stuff: the actual animation.
Note that at the bottom of the rev data parts, there is “Axis Rotate” and “Angle (Radians)”.
These two entries control the rotation axis and the maximum angle the part may rotate.
Note that all angles are always interpreted as radians.
1 radians = 57,2957795 degrees.
The rotation axis controls around which axis the part should rotate and in which direction.
We need it to rotate around the z-axis: 0, 0, 1 (or -1, we will trial and error here later to get the direction right).
The maximum angle is important, because your component does not exceed this angle ever in an animation. So set this to something higher than the angles you will use:
1.5 (= 85,94366925°, so its enough).

Next in line: The Animation node.
Thank god this is the easiest part of the whole animation creation process.
For a start, you can either manually create all nodes (look for a template in any vanilla cmp file), or just copy one over from vanilla and then edit it appropriately.
This time, I just copy the Valkyre animation node and edit that:

Since we have 4 wings, we have 4 joint maps. “Sc_extend wing” is the actual name of the animation and you are free to name it whatever you want.
Every joint map has a child and a parent name entry. Interpret the data as a string to modify it. The parent in most cases is the root, however this may be different on complex models with more components. The parent is always the static object; the animating object (aka the child) always rotates relative to the parent.
The header is a [3] float array and it tells the game which type of animation we want to use.
The value for rotating animations is:
0.000000
-1.000000
0.000000

Frames is the next important node. Its also a float array and it controls the actual animation, like this:
0.000000 <- time 0:00
0.000000 <- angle 0 radians at 0:00
2.000000 <- time 0:02
1.178090 <- angle in radians at 2 seconds
10.000000
1.5707963 <- angle at 0:10 (90 degrees)

I guess you get the idea.

Here we go, you should have everything to control the animation. What you have to do now is a lot of trial and error to get the animation right.
If you are smart you did measure angles in the beginning and you can now paste those in order to get a good start on the animation.
You control the direction of the rotation either within the frames data (which may be buggy when using negative values), or you simply alter the “Axis Rotate” data in the Rev node as explained above.
To test the animation, simply bind the animation to the cargo bay animation.
This is done in shiparch.ini with
“bay_door_anim = Sc_extend wing”
Now, if you jettison cargo, you should see your animation play.

In the case of our eta-2 this looks like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSuMZCit_as

Awesome :mrgreen:

Quick Recap

Here is a quick overview over the animation process:

make the ship meet the requirements, maybe move the animating groups so they’ll rotate correctly

edit fix/rev data, maybe move the displaced components by editing rev data

create and edit the animation node

edit shiparch to bind the animation to bay doors and start trial and error process

Nova

Sushi, honestly, all what i understood in this tutorial are screenshots.
I don’t know english so good and i simply cant understand. It would be nice to see russian translation.

StarTrader

Nova - you are doing well in English, I realise it is difficult for you, but come on, think before you write something.

You may not be aware, but…

The way you write (several times now) is a demand: “I did not understand nothing! Tell me in Russian! Now!”

It is not a request: “Guys I did not understand this, can you explain it for me step-by-step please? Or can anyone give me a translation in Russian?”.

This tutorial is quite clear, although I know it is written like a discussion, as many authors do, nd this means too many words for non-native English speakers. But the fact that you did not understand nothing is not because the tutorial is bad. It is because your English is still not enough.

We will help, but your writing implies that the tutorial is not understandable. That is offensive to the author.

When you need help, just say “Can someone please help me with a Russian translation, my English is not so good. Thanks.”

What is the difference?

It is a request: “Can someone…”

It contains “PLEASE.”

and…

“THANKS.”

Try again - GENTLY! and we will always try to help you, and we will help to add more (and better) English to your memory banks too!

Nova

StarTrader wrote:
This tutorial is quite clear, although I know it is written like a discussion, as many authors do, nd this means too many words for non-native English speakers. But the fact that you did not understand nothing is not because the tutorial is bad. It is because your English is still not enough.

Where i said that tutorial is bad? I said that i cant understand it, it doesnt mean its bad.

LancerSolurus

Hehe, I had the same problem in reverse, you should read the translations of the Russian Stalker threads to English, quite funny when it talks about hanging a lamp then hanging your neighbor in the very next sentence….

Let’s take it easy on the foreign speakers, google is their best friend and their worst enemy but it’s getting better, drink a cold brew and reread their posts, it always helps me …

StarTrader

Ya, but it was the way you wrote - the English language has many subtle meanings and sarcasms which only native speakers can get from it.

Don’t worry, I have seen it from many other nationals, Italians and French and Germans and Greeks also say it the same and in those languages it only means what you see - “I did not understand anything from this”. But in English it reflects on the material, not their own non-understandings. An English speaker would say “I didn’t understand much of this” - (this is another subtlety of English - reversal, for another example: “This isn’t bad, is it?”) This means he understood some of it, and has no implication that the material is bad because the word “from” is not used.

Even though they don’t say “from this”, it is implied, and because of the implied “from this”, this in turn also implies that “this material is insufficient”. It is almost like adding “It is rubbish!” - because when English people say “I didn’t understand anything from this!” that is what they are meaning, that the material is bad or insufficient - or crap!! Sadly we use extremely derogatory words such as “crap” too often in speech, instead of saying “this could be better” or other less offensive words, and this is becoming the implied meaning more and more even when the bad word itself is not there!

Can you see what I am saying? That is the hard part to understand. But it really is there.

I realise you did not mean it to sound like that, but we need to help you correct it. And it will make your English much better and more natural, so this is a good thing!

Keep up the good work, be encouraged, and don’t be offended, I don’t mean any offence to you, only to help and teach you and others who are willing to learn the subtle parts of the English language!

Then you can use the subtle parts to be bad when you want to be, like me! rofl -

( Hey, FF - where’s my goddam ROFL button?!! ) - so subtle!

I like the way you wrote your new request for translation, good work.

FriendlyFire

A troll will always be a troll.

? Offline

Nova wrote:
Sushi, honestly, all what i understood in this tutorial are screenshots.
I don’t know english so good and i simply cant understand. It would be nice to see russian translation.

Ask me in Skype, i will translate

tomsons26

Freestalker.fr

Your links are broken.

? Offline

http://kdaug.com/Art_Freelancer.html x)

adoxa

Looks like it’s a problem with XOOPS. Let’s just link the description.

Pittsburgh
LIGHT EFFECTS ON ASTEROIDS???
Old Trent costume
Old Trent costume 2 and lights
Old Trent costume 3
Dr. Sinclair
Shadows???
A beautiful nebula on an ugly jpg compression lol
Dynamic lights
Another A beautiful nebula
Freeport 7

Gisteron

the only thing i see is trent’s costume (prolly still in the costumes somewhere)
all the other things can be modded. or are from the released game. there are no dynamic lights or shadows on that screens or anything else that is graphically or technically different from the freelancer we’re used to.

? Offline

I think it is promo rendering