Capship Docking
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Don’t worry, this isn’t asking how to make them dock.
What I want to do is when you dock at a base or a planet have it so you see a transport or fighter instead of your capship. I really don’t like it looking like you just crashed into a base or planet. I figured the easiest way to do this would be to create a second THN file for all bases and planets, easy enough. Then create some new rtc prop ships to be those fighters or transports, again easy enough.
What I really need help with is knowing what I need to adjust in the thn files to move the docking point out of sight and put a dummy rtc ship at the landing point. I would also have to change the camera’s so they do not follow the landing and take off.
End goal would be a cap ship lands at a docking moor which takes him to a duplicate base that has no landing camera and all you see is a transport ship on the pad.
Thanks
Noval -
You could have the moorings dock you with a different base (which may or may not require hooking, at least as soon as it comes to stations rather than planets). That base would have the same thn with the exception, that the animated entity is not dependant on the player ship (just look through the script, you’ll see it) but a standard shuttle that is always the same on that particular base as it is ‘hardcoded’ into the thn then.
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First, thx for responding. That is kind of what I plan to do. I would make copies of all the thn files, rename them, using the renamed ones for the moor locations. Then the bases could just be carbon copies, besides of course the whole landing part.
I then want to use a rtc prop at the dock point and just hide the real ship out of sight somewhere else. I just do not have enough experience with thn’s to do much more then change the rtc’s, so knowing how to play with camera’s and the landing pad point would require trial and error. Was hoping some one could point me at the right lines and how I would need to adjust them.
I am making a TCM and will do as much as possible without hook’s. After I get everything done, I will release to the community and some one else can play with adding hook’s as they see fit. Also if I get this on the go I will upload all the adjusted thn’s(eventually every vanilla base) with a text file so others can do the same thing if they wish.
Thanks
Noval -
Thing is, vanilla THNs sometimes are structured quite vaguely and there is no system or pattern by which the different entity types are sorted throughout the file. Also, bases are usually made up of multiple THNs, so you would have something like one for the markers, one for animations, one with the actual props in it etc.
Anyway, you do not need to have the player’s ship in a THN in the first place. Menu backgrounds, for instance, are THN based, too, but there is no reference to any player ship at all. So in your base THNs you want to look for an entity that is obviously referring to the player ship and see that it rather refers to some object that you want to use as your shuttle instead.
If you happen to have a THN decoder or SDK, it doesn’t take a lot to read through them and learn to understand them. When I learned them, the tutorials were either unavailable to me or very old and insufficient. You still might want to have a look at our download section and our Lancer’s Reactor archive. There should be at least enough to get you started
Good luck!
