Solved Fixing the Build Mod Ships

[Armada]

For the stats then, do what you think is best to balance things out with similar ships. Ideally two fighting versions and one merchant would work well.
The sailing stats can be adjusted too if need be. Maybe a speed of 8.0 and a turn rate of 50 for Realistic Mode?

For the pics, the textures you need are in RESOURCE > Textures > INTERFACES, named 'shipsBL, BR, TL and TR'.
Can you check the last time those files were updated? I might need to send you newer versions, but I'm not sure.

The code to change is in RESOURCE > INI > INTERFACES > pictures.ini, which you should recognise when you see it.
Also, in ships_init.c, the line refShip.BigPicTexName = "SHIPS1" (for example) must correspond to the texture file which contains the image for the ship.
SHIPS1 = shipsTL.tga, SHIPS2 = shipsTR.tga, SHIPS3 = shipsBL.tga and SHIPS4 =shipsBR.tga.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Adjust the sailing stats? There is another first. I will be asking questions as I don't know what most of that stuff means.

What are shipsBL,BR,TL,&TR? They are tga.tx files. Do I need the tx converter?

shipsBL: 5-26-2011
shipsBR: 4-21-2011
shipsTL: 6-28-2011
shipsTR: 4-29-2011

Is this a tutorial? I need one.

 

[Armada]

Well for the sailing stats, all I'm suggesting to start with is changing two lines: refShip.SpeedRate and refShip.TurnRate.
There are two of each one, for Realistic and Arcade mode. The Realistic one comes first, under "if (!bArcadeMode)" (which means "if not Arcade mode").
All you need to do is change the numbers on each of the two lines to something more reasonable, like I suggested before (speed = 8.0, turn = 50)
You'll then need to test the ship to see if it handles more like you'd expect it to.

As for the textures, I completely forgot you don't do texture work, sorry.
It's probably easier if you send me the pictures you want to add (256x256 pixels), and I'll put them in the textures.
It involves using a photo editing program and using layers etc, which is why it's a bit much for me to explain in a quick tutorial.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Good! I was NOT looking forward to learning that texture stuff too. : Here are the pics I was going to use.



I've been looking around in the shipsinit.c and have decided that your suggestion of 8 and 50 is too slow. Most ships of that size are 9 and 60.

One thing I have played with and will be tweaking is "refship.weight". This seems to affect how quickly the ship responds to the helm. I had it at 1100 and that seems to be too much, so I'm lowering it.

I'm using a class 1 pinnace of war to judge the Revenge. Right now with a tail wind the pinnace is very slightly faster, but in a cross wind the Revenge has the advantage with its 2 lateens.

They both turn about the same but the pinnace responds to the helm better.

 

[Armada]

I hadn't really thought much about the weight attribute until now, good point. I guess it had been set far too low for quite some time.

Thanks for the pics, I'll sort them out soon. Is there anything else left to do for the Revenge?

 

[Armada]

... Although I do agree Battleship4's texture is pretty nice.
Maybe I could try adjusting that texture to fit the Battleship1 model, to see how it looks.

I've just tried out this idea, and I'm actually impressed by the results. I adapted Battleship4's texture to fit Battleship5, for test purposes, and here's how it looks:



Apart from a few wonky UVs that have been revealed by the hi-res texture, everything looks pretty good to me.
One feature I know looks good on the AOP battleships is the internal cabin, and I'm now considering adding one to the PotC battleships.
It would definitely work well with this new texture, and the others could be adapted to work with it too. More ships with cabins could be a nice step up.

In other news, I've checked all versions of the FastGalleon for that bow wave problem, and unfortunately it seems like it's always existed.
We might have to just put up with it until I can figure out how to fix it.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

That refship.weight thing makes a difference. Some ships have it down in the 400's while the really big ships have it in the 4000-5000 range.

For now I'm setting it at 1000, 900, and 800.

All I'm doing now is messing with the sails and shipsinit.c. Those lateens will not behave. They are always on the wrong side of the mast.

I guess I could bundle them up and put them on the FTP, and then just post updates later.

One thing that isn't working out so well is that I captured an old galleon and then repainted it in the shipyard. It worked, but it has kept its old stats so far. Maybe I'll have to get them from the console to really be able to check them out.



That battleship is looking much better! :2up Cabins? Oh yeah, baby! ) I'm still getting ye olde "could not be read" thing.

 

[Armada]

Shame about the Revenge's lateens. I bet they're not modelled at an angle in all directions like the Battleship lateens are...

About repaints, I think for Beta 2 we really should restrict it to ships with identical stats, so this code confusion doesn't happen.
It might also affect the new Black Pearl, as Legendary_Spider tried repainting between versions with bugged results.

I think I've nearly fixed the FastGalleons as much as I can, so I'll upload them soon.
I can give Battleship1 a simple re-export too if you want to work on it. You'll have to wait longer if you want a cabin, though.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

The spars are modeled straight. But that is not the problem. The sails hang to the starboard side no matter what I do. That wouldn't be bad if the spars were attached on that side also, but they are attached to the port side.

That means that the sails foul the rigging and the masts. Always.



I do want to work on the Spanish fast galleons and the battleships. They are both common ships that really need to be upgraded.

But more than that, I want to import some more ships! This is very much a use it or lose it proposition for me. I'm already forgetting what I did to get the Revenge this far into POTC.

And there are two ships that Pgargon completed last January that are calling to me...........

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I found the problem with the lateens! ) The numbers of the sail corners were in the wrong sequence. That means that you have to put sail1 at the farthest point from the XYZ axis, and then go from there.

All I did was swap the sail1&2 and sail3&4 numbers and they work much better now. I discovered this by comparing them to the lateens in wargalleon4.

When I'm a little more awake I will put all of the Revenge stuff into a folder on the FTP.

 

[Armada]

I do want to work on the Spanish fast galleons and the battleships. They are both common ships that really need to be upgraded.

But more than that, I want to import some more ships! This is very much a use it or lose it proposition for me. I'm already forgetting what I did to get the Revenge this far into POTC.

And there are two ships that Pgargon completed last January that are calling to me...........

I'm glad to hear you want to do more conversions; it's really not that complicated once you know what you're doing.
Which Pgargon ships are you on about? I know I made a start to convert some of them, so I can send you my work so far to give you a head start.

I found the problem with the lateens! ) The numbers of the sail corners were in the wrong sequence. That means that you have to put sail1 at the farthest point from the XYZ axis, and then go from there.

All I did was swap the sail1&2 and sail3&4 numbers and they work much better now. I discovered this by comparing them to the lateens in wargalleon4.

Ah, problem solved! Yes, the order of the sail locator numbers is crucial to avoiding bizarrely shaped sails.
If done in a certain incorrect way, the sails even cross over themselves like some origami figure, which looks pretty weird!

 

[Hylie Pistof]

The Revenge is on the FTP. Please look into it and tell me what I forgot. I included instructions in every folder for those who want to install them now. Oh, after everything was zipped up and on the FTP I realized that I had not given credit to Craiggo for his work. Could someone add that please? ops2


The conversion process is complicated enough that I could easily forget something, but is mostly lots of small things. On the Revenge, most of my time was spent working on the sails.

Send me what you've got. I'll look up those ships now.

The first ones I'm going to tackle are the Dutch pinnaces.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I saw the first Revenge in the wild. It was Revenge2 and it was part of a 9 ship British convoy. My Revenge got sunk. I guess that means it is working ok. I changed the refshipweight for revenge1 from 1000 to 900 last night. It was just too sluggish.


I converted and installed the DutchPinnace1 last night. POTC didn't crash, so I hope that means I got it right. If it doesn't appear in a shipyard soon I will get it with the console.





OK, new business on the same post. :nk


First, I adjusted the mainsail on the Revenge to make it a little lower and back. I'm also desperately trying not to touch the lateens again.



After several hours I finally hit on the correct combination to get the DutchPinnace1 in POTC. :j2 That's the good news. The bad news is that it needs a LOT of work. :j3

The screenie shows most of it. Both mainsails float way too far forward fouling control lines and the bowsprit. The Revenge was like that also. Then the flagpole is attached to the hull making it next to impossible to see this ship.

Armada! Help!

 

[Armada]

Dang, that flagpole makes the ship's overall height pretty big!
I was about to say it's a re-export job, but actually, seeing as it's a Pgargon premium ship model, that shouldn't be necessary.
The hull should behave nicely in TOOL, so the 'edit scene' function can be used to separate the part containing the flagpole. That means two copies of the hull model, with a geometry locator.
You could try that yourself or I could do it for you if you can't remember how.

As for the mainsails, all I can say is to keep trying to find the right combination of locator coordinates.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

My first thought was that since Pgargon did it, it was time to learn how to do it myself. There I go doing that thinking stuff again..........

It got corrupted in TOOL, just like all of the others I've tried like Apostol Felipe.

I'm not worried about the sails. I'm not touching them when I can't see the ship.


So, what's coming up next?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Hylie Pistoff, can you please tell me what to do with the various files in your FTP folder? I sort-of lost track of what is what.
I take it the .7z files contains modified model files that should replace the ones currently in the game, right?
What about that Greyhound1 folder? And what about any required ships_init.c modifications for ships where you changed the number of types of the flags/pennants?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I believe I put a "readme" in every ship folder that needed a modified shipsinit.c

Most of them are straight modified GMs that should just replace the existing ones.

The Greyhound has a modified shipsinit.c in it. The only changes made were to the numbering of the flags/ensign section. It seems I'm not a very good writer. ops2

I know the Luggers have a modified shipsinit.c.

Others wit a modified shipsinit.c are:

battleship2
FR_SuperiorWarship1
FR_SuperiorWarship2
NL_battleship
NL_Batavia1


There might be others. The only changes i made were all in the flags/ensign part.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Alright then; I'll get all your files and figure it out. Cheers, mate.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Hylie Pistoff, can you please post your correct ships_init.c file based on Patch 7 WIP 2 and including all your changes, including the Revenge ships_init.c files please?
Also, do you know why the Caravel2 model files were in your FTP folders twice? Now I'm not sure which set I'm supposed to use.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Holy crap; that is a LOT of differences between the ships_init.c file from your Revenge folder and the one currently in my game.
Seems all of Black Bart's ship balancing changes didn't make it into your file. I can't remember if those are from after Patch 7 WIP 2 or not, but they should be included at some point regardless.

Also, I've found the following new GM files that I am not sure we should keep:
battleship2_rey_a4 - small.gm
FR_Frigate_rey_a4 with hull locators.gm (lots more like this)
FR_Frigate_rey_a4.gm-corv (lots more like this)
FR_SuperiorWarship2_mast4 new.gm
FR_SuperiorWarship2_rey_b4 new.gm
JamaicaShip1_deck original.gm
Mordaunt1 - Copy.gm

I presume all the Deadeye and spanker files should be included?

There is a completely different deck.tga.tx file in your Revenge folder, which probably should be renamed and have the ship models HEX edited accordingly, otherwise all other ship models will get messed up.

win_b.tga.tx looks completely different; the one currently in my game probably looks better; I think that's Armada's copy.