Flying Dutchman - crew

[Dextr]

Yesterday came across this magnificently looking FD crew of moss-covered skeletons from the Elisabeth Shaw rescue quest. Is there a way to turn your crewmembers into these models? As far as I know, the skeleton crew in the Cortez curse case is possible, though it's sometimes a bit buggy, however, you need the coins to do it and it works on all ships.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Your boarding crew, you mean? You'd have to play with the BOARDERMODEL lines in InternalSettings.h, but I'm not 100% sure that works well.

 

[Red Back Dude]

Your boarding crew, you mean? You'd have to play with the BOARDERMODEL lines in InternalSettings.h, but I'm not 100% sure that works well.

actually come to think of it i have an idea of how it could be done reliably but its a bit basic i guess

change #define BOARDERMODEL to Boarder

then in \RESOURCE\MODELS\Characters Replace all the Soldier_Per models with the ones you want , if you know what they are just copy them to a folder / your desktop then rename them and copy paste overwrite the Soldier_Per models you want to change

its what i did to workaround all of the problems i had trying to get the Spanish soldier model i wanted working where i wanted it too without breaking the periods

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Skeletons as personal soldiers? Sure, that'd be fun!

 

[Dextr]

Your boarding crew, you mean?

Well, yes and no. What I meant was that you get a boarding crew PLUS your regular crew hopping happily aboard the ship featuring a specific model, in my case it would be the seaweed covered skeletons (models "davy1 - 5"). In other words, it should look like a warship belonging to a specific nation and featuring the relevant models of that nation's soldiers, only with the skeletons instead of soldiers.

its what i did to workaround all of the problems i had trying to get the Spanish soldier model i wanted working where i wanted it too without breaking the periods

I tried that, but for some reason it didn't work. I then changed the boarder from "standard" to "skeleton" and it did work, but those dudes were simple old friendly bones, without the seaweed also, they appeared only during boardings. I also tried swiching to Nathaniel boarders and manually changing them into davy1-5 models with the relevant change in the code below, but it did not help either.

Anyway, as far as I understand, the boarding feature is not exactly what I'm after, since I'm looking for a fully functional sea skeletons' infested ship. Is there any way to do it? As already mentioned, the curse of Cortez works exactly this way, so surely there should be a way to do it...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It would take quite some doing, because different situations require different methods of coding it.
You have separately:
- Boarding Crew
- Shore Crew
- Personal Soldiers
- Ship Deck Crew
- 3D Sailing Mode Crew (cannot be changed)

 

[Dextr]

Are all of these to be found in the internalsettings file?

BTW, the cursed FD does not feature 3D sailing mode crew, so that's not an issue

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Are all of these to be found in the internalsettings file?

Afraid not. The code for them is scattered pretty much all over the place.
Ideally some time it should all be recoded to use the same general setting. But I do not see that happening due to there being nobody to do it.
It would take quite a bit of time and effort even if you do know where to look.

BTW, the cursed FD does not feature 3D sailing mode crew, so that's not an issue

That is intentional. No crew at all looks more cursed than an uncursed crew.

 

[Dextr]

Dash it Could the curse of Cortez code be of any help? If it is a single peace, that is. As far as I understand it overrides all of your mentioned subjects - it even has its own 3D sailing mode crew.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The way that one works is to apply a cursed model to EVERY character that is carrying a cursed coin, provided that the curse is in effect.
Relevant files:
PROGRAM\NK.c find CheckCharacterCurse
PROGRAM\INTERFACE\itemsbox.c
PROGRAM\Loc_ai\LAi_boarding.c

Hopefully that will give you some hints.

 

[Dextr]

Thanks, I'll check it. But what do you mean by EVERY character? There are only 882 coins in the game (or is it?), however you always get a 100% cursed crew even when sailing ships with over 1000 crewmembers and having the 882 beauties in your weapons' locker.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Your boarding crew shouldn't change into skeletons unless you put those cursed coins in the weaponslocker.
Each coin curses only a single of your boarding crew.

There are 882 (or 881 if the curse is in effect) coins in the chest on Isla de Muerta.
But random coins do not stick to that number, so if you hoard all coins in the game, you can eventually find more than 882.

If you want to go for a truly simple solution, check this in NK.c:

GetCharacterCursedModel(ref chr);

Find this:

  if(chr.index == GetOfficersIndex(Pchar, 1))     return "Skelt";
   if(chr.index == GetOfficersIndex(Pchar, 2))     return "Skel3";
   if(chr.index == GetOfficersIndex(Pchar, 3))     return "Skel1";
   return "Skel"+makeint(1+rand(3));

Replace with:

  if(chr.index == GetOfficersIndex(Pchar, 1))     return "davy1";
   if(chr.index == GetOfficersIndex(Pchar, 2))     return "davy2";
   if(chr.index == GetOfficersIndex(Pchar, 3))     return "davy3";
   return "davy"+makeint(1+rand(4));

This will replace the regular skeletons with seaweedy ones.

Also find:

  DoCurse = Whr_IsNight() && GetAttribute(lcn, "environment.weather") == "true";
   if(DoCurse && GetAttribute(lcn, "environment.curse") == "false")
   {
     DoCurse = false;
   }

Replace with:

  DoCurse = true;

This will make the curse take effect even during daytime.

 

[Dextr]

Ah, simple it is, yet BRILLIANT! I had this notion that good old Cortez could help and so it seems