Yet another fast war galleon

[Grey Roger]

This is something of a personal project for me.

Years ago when I was a lad, I built plastic scale kits of various things, including a few sailing ships. (Occasionally I still do, though it's been a long time since I built a ship model - these days I prefer to work on PoTC ship models. ) Lack of space meant I couldn't get large scale models, so I built small stuff, the sailing ships being on the order of 10-15cm long. That lack of space didn't stop me from getting cataloguese with pictures of larger models, and one of them showed a Spanish galleon similar to the English Revenge but with only three masts, a topsail on the mizzen, and a second platform round the stern. The key phrase is "similar to the Revenge" - I already had a small model of that, so I got another one, left out a mast, made new sails and scratch-built the second stern platform. And so I built my first fast war galleon, long before anyone had heard of "Pirates of the Caribbean", including Disney and Akella, and for that matter probably long before anyone had heard of Akella.

Fast forward to 2017, when I visited Duart castle during my holiday. They had a model which was supposed to be the Tobermory galleon - or at least, the model was next to a piece of text about the Tobermory galleon. The colour scheme was a bit different but the basic shape and sail plan were unmistakable - that was either the same ship I'd seen in the catalogue ages ago, or another company's version of the same ship.


The fast galleon model in PoTC isn't quite the same - it has a sprit topmast and lacks the upper stern platform. The stern is also slightly different in shape. So this version isn't quite the same as the decorations, especially round the stern, had to change. But here's the PoTC version of my old model:

One slight difference between this and other fast galleons is the open frame on the bow, the result of a bit of work with the alpha channel. Also visible here is a change I've made to all fast galleons - the pennants are a longer.

It should be fairly easy to identify a couple of the shields on the stern. Bragging rights to the first person to correctly identify the black one and red one...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

When I saw your thread title (before seeing the content), my immediate reason was:
"@Grey Roger seems to really like War Galleons!"

But I had no clue it was THIS personal to you. That's a pretty awesome story you've got there!
And pretty wonderful you've taken steps to recreate your model in PotC as well.

The result looks really nice. Especially that open frame on the bow is a good touch too.

It should be fairly easy to identify a couple of the shields on the stern. Bragging rights to the first person to correctly identify the black one and red one...

I had a quick look, but on that resolution of image, I honestly cannot tell.
Looks like I'll have to give a pass on my chance for the bragging rights...

 

[Grey Roger]

When I saw your thread title (before seeing the content), my immediate reason was:
"@Grey Roger seems to really like War Galleons!"

I do. Any time I'm playing in "Spanish Main" or "Golden Age" periods, once I'm able to survive boarding a naval ship, I go looking for one. Big guns, big cargo hold, a decent performance and a classy appearance - what's not to like?

The result looks really nice. Especially that open frame on the bow is a good touch too.

I had hoped to customise it even further. The GoF files contain an alternative bow without the dragon figurehead, so I wanted to use that and add on one of the other figureheads. The only problem is that the GoF fast galleon is the older model with thick mast stumps. That small model of mine had over-thick masts because if they were correct to scale, they'd probably have snapped if you sneezed at them. If you scaled up that model, its masts would probably be about the size of the GoF ones. But the GoF model has a different bow on the main hull, so the separate bow part doesn't fit with the newer PoTC model from De Zeeroovers. So I'm stuck with the same figurehead as every other fast galleon in PoTC after all.

I had a quick look, but on that resolution of image, I honestly cannot tell.
Looks like I'll have to give a pass on my chance for the bragging rights...

Try this:

Still fairly small, but not as small as on the screenshot of the ship. Those are the shields as they are in the texture file.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Armada split the bow and made two versions, one with that dragon and one without, at my request. We ran that in POTC and GOF2 until the Zeeroovers came out with their version, which is the one in POTC now. If only a modeler could do that again....

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

She's a beauty, @Grey Roger! Lovely work, indeed.

 

[Grey Roger]

Armada split the bow and made two versions, one with that dragon and one without, at my request. We ran that in POTC and GOF2 until the Zeeroovers came out with their version, which is the one in POTC now. If only a modeler could do that again....

What would be ideal would be the Zeeroovers masts on your hull. Apart from the split bow allowing for different figureheads, yours has interior cabin detail.

She's a beauty, @Grey Roger! Lovely work, indeed.

Thanks!

 

[Grey Roger]

Next question: what to do with this ship? The easiest is just to set its 'refShip.period' and 'refShip.spain' entries in "Ships_init.c" to make it generally available to Spain, though rarer than the normal "FastGalleon4".

Otherwise:

       if(iShipType == GetShipIndex("FastGalleon4") && TreasureFleet == true)
       {
           trace("Fantom_GenerateEncounter: replacing FastGalleon4 with FastGalleon5");
           iShipType = GetShipIndex("FastGalleon5");   // GR: use custom fast war galleon for treasure fleet
       }

That goes into "PROGRAM\SEA_AI\AIFantom.c", function "Fantom_GenerateEncounter", in the loop which assigns ship types to all the warships in the group. If this is a treasure fleet, any escorts which happen to be fast war galleons become the new one.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

So your new one would appear exclusively in treasure fleets?
That sounds pretty cool, actually! Special use for a special ship.

 

[Grey Roger]

If I can't customise the figurehead, how about the bowsprit?

Like the "FastGalleon" models, the "Revenge" models have bowsprits of which half is a stub on the hull and the other half is a separate mast model. If the "Revenge" bowsprit can be transplanted onto "FastGalleon5", the result should be a fast war galleon without a sprit topmast. Not that I have anything against sprit topmasts in general, but every other fast galleon in PoTC has one, my original plastic model doesn't, and neither does the one in Duart Castle.

It should just be a matter of renaming the rope locators on the "Revenge" bowsprit to match their corresponding ropes on the "FastGalleon" bowsprit, then edit the "FastGalleon" hull and foremast models to remove surplus ropes associated with the sprit topmast and its sail, right?

Well, not quite. That was certainly a start. For one thing, the "Revenge" bowsprit is much darker, so a new texture file was needed, easily created once I found which of the various textures used by "FastGalleon5_mast0" is used for the bowsprit itself rather than the topmast and its supports. But for some reason, the bowsprit on the "Revenge" models is squint, angled a couple of degrees starboard, so when it was transplanted onto "FastGalleon5", the bowsprit appeared bent. Normally this would be fixed by rotating the locator. But the geometry locator which mounts the bowsprit is located at 0,0,0 in the centre of the hull, and the bowsprit itself is a long way forward in the model. Rotating the locator would leave the bowsprit pointing straight ahead and positioned some way off to port.

Fortunately, TOOL allows you to reposition components of a model. So I moved the geometry locator on the hull file to the tip of the bowsprit stub. Then I moved the bowsprit aft in its own model file - a lot of trial and error was needed here to get it into position so that it sat properly on the tip of the stub, and it needed to be slightly larger as well. Then some more trial and error to rotate the geometry locator to straighten out the bowsprit. And finally...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Wow, that's quite an epic adventure you had there for your bowsprit!

It sounds like you're doing fine on your own, but if you need some serious TOOL-magic, perhaps @Jack Rackham knows some extra tricks.

 

[Jack Rackham]

Yes this comes as one piece. Would it be possible to use alpha channels on the texture file to make the dragon invisible?
If so another figurehead could be added as a separate part.

 

[Grey Roger]

Yes, that ought to work. The "La_Marianna" model already uses alpha channels on the dragon to put holes in its wings, so a more extensive patch of black alpha should indeed make the whole dragon invisible...

 

[Grey Roger]

It works fine! The whale works well as the roller below it fits neatly into the bow. I may experiment with a couple of the other figurehead types.


Look again at the picture of the model in Duart Castle in the first post. It has emblems on its foresail and mainsail. PoTC doesn't allow different emblems on the same ship, so you're getting the choice. Also, I found out what the 'refShip.GeraldSails' lines in "Ships_init.c" do - they control which sails will show emblems. Other fast galleon models have their emblems on their topsails, but the Duart Castle model shows them on the course sails, so that's where I've put mine. The picture above shows the emblem of Castile-Leon, which is on the Duart Castle model's foresail and which also appears on one of the Personal flags.

The Duart Castle model's mainsail shows a double-headed eagle. That's not Russian. It's the coat of arms of the Holy Roman Empire. Exactly which emperor, I'm not sure - looking through the various Imperial coats of arms on Wikipedia doesn't show any which match it exactly in layout. But this one is for Rudolf II, Matthias and Ferdinand II, who between them cover 1576 - 1637, which is most of the game lifespan of the fast galleons.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It works fine! The whale works well as the roller below it fits neatly into the bow.

That looks to have worked quite well!

PoTC doesn't allow different emblems on the same ship, so you're getting the choice.

I wonder if there is a way to hack 'procGetSailTextureData.c' so that you CAN do different sails; at least for your specific ship.
You could try to add a check for your ship ID/index, then intercept the "cycling through all sails",
figure out which sail number should get the third sail and then hard-code it in there.
Not technically the prettiest code solution, but who cares about pretty code when it looks pretty ingame?

 

[Grey Roger]

I'd rather not. The ship might be special, but not that special, and I'd rather not risk messing up anything for general gameplay. Anyway, you can choose the Castile-Leon sails to go with the relevant Personal flag; or you can choose the Imperial sails. What I can do is add the Imperial banner as another Personal flag. Then a ship (not necessarily this one) can be assigned to the Empire either by quest code or by player choice.

Beyond that, the next job is to try to create a "deck" model to add the usual details - swivel guns, wheel, bell, capstan. I haven't figured out how to use TOOL to create a whole new model, but I can adapt the "deck" model from one of the other galleon types. Delete the anchors as the fast galleon models already have them, then move everything else around to fit. And if I get that working, it can easily be added to any of the other fast galleons.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'd rather not. The ship might be special, but not that special, and I'd rather not risk messing up anything for general gameplay.

Why not? I doubt you could do much harm by experimenting a bit.
Worst case scenario, it won't work (all that well) and you'll decide it isn't worth it, so you revert to the old code.
But maybe it'll turn out good enough that you'll be inspired to make more use of of it in the future?

Or maybe not...
I'm not too fussed either way; I'm just trying to give you some encouragement if you want it.

 

[Jack Rackham]

1. When I made a new deck model for the Golden Hind I first took a copy of the Hind hull and worked on that one to
experiment with what to add and where exact to place those additions.
2. I deleted the hull from that .gm -file and I had what I wanted. (a "deck" model)
3. made a locator in the hull's location file in the same way other parts are being added.

4. How to add a thing at all with the TOOL?
place the gm-model for what you want to add in the meshes folder of the TOOL
restart the TOOL (important)
scene\edit scene
open gm and choose the model you want to add something to
edit scene window: click the models name
doubleclick the thing you want to add in the left window
save gm
5. Adjust the position, direction, size with sliders and/or coordinates in the edit scene window

 

[Grey Roger]

Why not? I doubt you could do much harm by experimenting a bit.
Worst case scenario, it won't work (all that well) and you'll decide it isn't worth it, so you revert to the old code.
But maybe it'll turn out good enough that you'll be inspired to make more use of of it in the future?

As far as I can tell from looking at "procGetSailTextureData.c", it does a switch based on whether you have chosen emblemed sails and whether you're under the curse of Cortes, to decide which sail textures to use for emblemed and non-emblemed sails. Then it reads those "GeraldSails" attributes from "Ships_init.c" to decide which sails get emblemed textures. Customising all that for a specific ship is going to be horrible and will probably break if the player then chooses a different sail emblem or gets cursed. And anyway, the little plastic model didn't have emblems at all because at that time I had no way to print decals and I wouldn't have been able to paint the details.

@Jack Rackham: presumably at some point you also deleted the deck itself from the "deck" model? There isn't an actual deck there now.

Can I use some stuff from "Ammo\BuildingItemsJRH"? I may want to add a boat and I'll certainly need "lilgun.gm", unless I go with my original plan of starting with something like "galeon1_deck.gm" and just move what's already there around to fit the fast galleon model.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Sorry to put you through so much trouble. The original fast galleon had the straight bowsprit but I decided it was not period correct and filched one from a different ship and stuck it on.

I might still have the original one somewhere.

 

[Grey Roger]

I have the original, it's in AoP:CT. The bowsprit, and for that matter the masts, are too thick. This is why, when I found some unused texture files and used them to create "FastGalleon3" and "FastGalleon4", I used the current model - I couldn't bring myself to put the fat masts back in the game even if it would also have put the interior cabin detail back at the same time.

The bowsprit from "Revenge" is nice and slim, and fits much better with this model.