Modifying Tau-31/Hokkaido/Other Systems Progress

Hahukum_Konn

Hi,

A long time ago me and another guy, Shade Yuka, were trying to tweak Tau-31 for the old Phoenix 1.93 mod (which never did get off the ground).

Anyway, I found the file, and strangely, FLScan doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with my bw10.ini file.

However there’s a few things I’d like to clean up and tweak.

1. The trade lanes have rocks in them! I want to get the rocks out.

2. I want to move Holman Outpost a bit to be more equidistant (screenshot of modified Tau-31 will be attached).

3. Some of the TLs don’t have quite the right identifications on them so I think maybe a faction ID is missing or something.

The ini is attached inside of a zip file.

Any suggestions for hand editing this would be helpful.

One last question - do people who connect to my server need to have this modified ini file client-side, or can they use my server-side variant without trouble?

Thaddeus

Hahukum_Konn wrote:

1. The trade lanes have rocks in them! I want to get the rocks out.

You will have to set up an exclusion in bw10_ice_crystal_field.ini in data\solar\asteroids

Copy the code for the other exclusions

exclusion = Zone_Bw10_Tradelane_1
exclude_billboards = 1
exclusion = Zone_Bw10_Tradelane_2
exclude_billboards = 1
exclusion = Zone_Bw10_Tradelane_3
exclude_billboards = 1
exclusion = Zone_Bw10_Tradelane_4
exclude_billboards = 1

you will have to setup a tradelane zone on your 5th tradelane, the one that goes between Harris and the Tau gate to do this, not difficult in FLE

2. I want to move Holman Outpost a bit to be more equidistant (screenshot of modified Tau-31 will be attached).

Best done in FLExplorer or another 3d editor

3. Some of the TLs don’t have quite the right identifications on them so I think maybe a faction ID is missing or something.

All your tradelane_space_name values have been deleted, these values are in the first and last rings in a tradelane, usually just a base or planet name ids

original code

[Object]
nickname = Bw10_Trade_Lane_Ring_7
ids_name = 260893
pos = 13614, 0, 24057
rotate = 0, -77, 0
Archetype = Trade_Lane_Ring
prev_ring = Bw10_Trade_Lane_Ring_6
ids_info = 66170
reputation = br_n_grp
tradelane_space_name = 196716
behavior = NOTHING
difficulty_level = 10
loadout = trade_lane_ring_br_02
pilot = pilot_solar_hardest

One last question - do people who connect to my server need to have this modified ini file client-side, or can they use my server-side variant without trouble?

Yes, they do need to download the modified file, it will cause random crashes as modded players enter tradelanes unseen by unmodded players

Hope that helps a bit

Hahukum_Konn

Thanks!

Unfortunately I can’t get FLE to work worth a damn, but that’s probably a Vista 64bit incompatibility thing.

I’ll just carefully tweak by hand and hopefully it’ll work properly.

Hahukum_Konn

Update: Okay, I sort of managed to fix things - I noticed one more thing, there are “[zone]” entries with “BOX” types for the tradelanes already in Tau-31. Now what happened for some reason is that FLSE stripped out the third dimension of the “size”. So I fixed that based on the SDK 1.5b version.

Now the rocks are out of the trade lanes which have their names back in, and which existed in the SP version (Holman -> Leeds, Holman -> Tau-23 and Holman -> Tau-29). I need to know how to make those boxes for the others and get the right IDs for the other TLs.

Thaddeus

Take the co-ordinates of the first and last tradelane ring and plug them into Distance Calculator.

Use the result as your third value in the “size =” line, the rotate line should be the same value as the tradelane ring. That will produce a crude but workable box to keep the roids out.

I use FLED-ids to quickly look up ids_names, or Freelancer Developer to search the Ids

tradelane_space_name = 196715; Planet Harris
tradelane_space_name = 196716; Holman Outpost
tradelane_space_name = 261668; Leeds Jump Gate
tradelane_space_name = 261681; Tau-29 Jump Gate

There is no id for the “Tau-23 Jump Gate”, you could use the “Tau-31 -> Tau-23” value (260890) but that would look odd, best to make a proper one with FLDeveloper

CK256

I’d suggest you try FL mod studio as it appears to be compatible with Win 7 64 bit, and as it works with activated mods you can view the results very quickly.

http://code.google.com/p/freelancermodstudio/

CK256

Hahukum_Konn

CK256 wrote:
I’d suggest you try FL mod studio as it appears to be compatible with Win 7 64 bit, and as it works with activated mods you can view the results very quickly.

http://code.google.com/p/freelancermodstudio/

CK256

Hi,

As I noted in my server advertisement there would eventually be a mod created for the server. I’m basing it on SDK 1.5b files onto which the Argh XML Toolkit 1.2 files have been installed, so it’s kind of a mishmash. (the XML toolkit has some great ships though and has faster speeds etc )

Now I am trying, from scratch, to add tradelanes to Tau 31 using the SDK bw10.ini file as the template but my god is this 3d mod studio thing frustrating, I can’t select individual beacons and/or trade lane rings! So how on earth am I to delete the beacons and get a working trade lane in there?

tears hair out

Bobthemanofsteel

It may seem frustrating, but it’s an amazing program for people used to doing things the old fashioned way.

You can’t select things in the 3D Window (yet), but they are there in the object list.
They should be pretty obviously named, just look for them, select them, check in the 3D window that they’re the right ones, and hit delete.

Hahukum_Konn

sigh Wish the 3D window had more granularity in letting me select stuff. Anyhoo, I think I’ve managed to sort it!

So thanks muchly for the tip

Edit -

And, success! I’ve attached my latest .ini - still prolly some tweaking needed but now the TLs are properly Bretonian Armed Forces, and have to and from labels!

The observantly astute will notice that I’ve moved Holman Outpost and tweaked some of the exclusion zones. (I’ve also rotated the Jump Gate to Tau 29 to kind of face both TLs more)

I also made sure to add the proper exclusion zones into the bw ice crystal field file.

Hahukum_Konn

And for my next project - trade lanes in Hokkaido!

I found it was easier to just move the trade lanes than all the patrol paths.

Also, I left in the nav buoys because those clouds are THICK and you could easily get lost and never find those TLs without looking at the nav map and setting a waypoint.

So thanks to you folks for sticking with me and helping me get going on modding! I realize this is kinda pretty basic stuff, but I’m inordinately happy as I always ended up leaving the modding to others and just running a server.

Bobthemanofsteel

I know exactly how you feel, when I made my first system, got my first ship in game, I was so proud.

Good work!

Hahukum_Konn

So! Check out my work in Sigma-17 and Sigma-19

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Y5L93IKR

(~50 meg WMV, 1280x960 gaming resolution)

Lower quality, extremely condensed (640x480, minimalistic)

http://hdshare.tv/watch_video.php?v=SDU2879BNAGA

Bobthemanofsteel

Haven’t been in those systems for so long I can’t really tell the difference, but I presume you added Tradelanes.

Nice work!

Hahukum_Konn

Yep. Sig 19 normally lacks a trade lane to Hawaii. My back story is that Orbital Spa and Cruise got the GMG to let them put the TL in because Hawaii was getting so popular.

(also, sig 17’s normal Kurile trip is just by flying past the nav buoys)