Freelancer original singleplayer engines

first of all, go for an SDK archive. best suggestions here would come up with the JFLP and it is likely the best currently available. just watch in the downloads section.
the engines are stored in the .\data\equipment\engine_equip.ini and the loadouts of the NPCs in the .\data\ships\loadouts.ini.
to make a trail your own just enter a trail entry of an engine to the trail_effect_player line of the certain engine within engine_equip.ini
knowing what engines look like is a question of knowing the game, understanding some shortcuts but in addition you can download the misc database created in early stages of FL modding.
let us not go deeper in the techniques of creating an engine effect by hand, you will come to this one day yourself if you want to mod a longer time than a month or two.

Well you only need the SDK if you are going to make a big mod, I wouldn’t bother for a small home-gaming one.

You’ll have to do a bit of looking up and down in the inis to find the choices.

Use TinyFish INI editor (FL INI Editor v1.44), it puts the data into columns so it’s very easy to read. Here it is:- http://the-starport.net/freelancer/download/singlefile.php?cid=5&lid=883

You could change the engine that is mounted on your ship. The BH fighter (Piranha) uses the ge_bhf_engine_01. Look in DATA\EQUIPMENT\goods.ini for bhf_package (player Piranha) and change the engine to the pirate engine you want, e.g. ge_cof_engine_01 (Legionnaire) or ge_pf_engine_01 (Bloodhound).

If you want to keep the same engine and change the colours, it’s the ge_bhf_engine_01 (Piranha) entry in DATA\EQUIPMENT\engine_equip.ini

Change these lines:-

flame_effect = gf_co_smallengine02_fire
trail_effect = gf_co_smallengine02_trail
trail_effect_player = gf_co_smallengine02_trail

The NPC piranhas already use the Bloodhound engine (look in DATA\SHIPS\loadouts.ini for gd_bh_bh_fighter_loadout01 and gd_bh_bh_fighter_loadout02 (NPC Piranha) ).

If you mean condensation trails (vapour) then that is in the goods.ini:-

addon = contrail01, HpContrail01, 1

… but the ship must have the HpContrail01 and HpContrail02 etc hardpoints in the cmp model. Most of them do.

correcture: all ships do, and all ships a player can purchase in vanilla have even at least one condensation trail. meant is likely the engine trail and this is the trail_effect_player within .\data\equipment\engine_equip.ini

Its very simple! no need for this whole mumbo jumbo, Discovery files and stuff…
As the guys here said alredy, go to engine_equip.ini to add engine trails (and edit engines generally). You can find tutorials how to do it, or mods which add it.
About switching the engines: go to loadouts.ini and change the loadouts. [d]You can even add double engine with double speed.[/d] Ignore, don’t use it.

look out for your nickname to be valid.

To get engine trails on players, open up a vanilla engine_equip.ini and do a find and replace of _playtrail -> _trail
This will make lines like
trail_effect_player = gf_li_smallengine01_playtrail
look like
trail_effect_player = gf_li_smallengine01_trail
and enable engine trails on players - the *_playtrail entries have no trail, whereas the *_trail entries do.

Careful foxy, he’s already having problems with this change. Step by step!

Branic - Just take your time. Check the change you made.

There must be a mistake in the new engine name. Or you didn’t specify
addon = ge_pf_engine_01, internal, 1 if it was in goods.ini
or
equip = ge_pf_engine_01 if it was in loadouts.ini

• notice the entries are very different!

When you change the engine you can search, find select the entire name of the new engine from inside the editor, Ctrl-C to copy it, go to the file and place you want to change, Ctrl-V to insert it, and delete the remaining part of the old name carefully.

We always tell everyone to keep a copy of the original file. I forgot to mention it this time, sorry.

However, my friend TinyFish editor automatically makes a copy called (inifilename).org.fmybak on the first save, in the same folder, and saves each additional changed file copy as (inifilename).fmybak. So to undo all your changes, copy the (inifilename).org.fmybak as (inifilename) - for example if it is loadouts.ini then it will be loadouts.ini.org.fmybak. Delete the bad loadouts.ini and copy loadouts.ini.org.fmybak as loadouts.ini.

If you still have problems just copy and paste your changed lines here and we will try to help.

(Goes & grabs the big silver Adoxa spanner… & throws it in…)

Take a look at the engclass.dll from AdoXa… when up & running you can swap out ye ships engines… Ingame!!!

It will however take a slight understanding of mounting, goods & require some extra Hardpoints on ships… all in 1 days works really if just using the stock lineup of flyables (no trasports/GB-Battleships).