Has anyone done this, or is working on this..

[kennosen]

... basically I want to change all British ships to include the 'Black and yellow banding' Has anyone else done this already?

cheers

 

[iamthejarha]

<!--QuoteBegin-kennosen+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(kennosen)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->... basically I want to change all British ships to include the 'Black and yellow banding' Has anyone else done this already?

cheers<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

It can be done, and I don't think anyone else has done it. You'll need to make textures of every ship you want to have that pattern--for reference, Rafe Bligh made a black brig with yellow banding, so you can use that as a guide of sorts. You'll need a TX converter to convert the .tga.tx texture files to .tga files, so you can edit them in Photoshop/PSP/GIMP/etc.

Once you edit the textures, you can `re-insert` them one of two ways: either overwrite the original textures, or add the ships in as new ships entirely. Either way, you're talking about a lot of code editing (mostly with Ships_init.c), but with the latter, you'll need a hex editor, because you'll have to copy the original ship's model folder to a new name, then edit the [modelname].gm file to point to the new texture.

On top of that, if you want all English ships to <i>only</i> use your new textures, you'll have to do some major file editing. For example, let's say you use that brig texture I was talking about as a new ship, and want England brigs to have only that texture. The model for that brig in my game is called brig4_44 (the texture is named bortoutbrg45.tga.tx). What I would do is edit the entry for 'brig1' in Ships_init.c (only the one with ENGLAND as the nation, not the others!) so that it uses my new texture, like this:

makeref(refShip,ShipsTypes[n]);
n++;
refShip.Name = "Brig4_44";
refShip.All = "Brig1_1";
refShip.Nation = ENGLAND;
refShip.id = refShip.Name + "_" + refShip.Nation;

Normally, "refShip.All" would point to "Brig1_0," which means Brig1_ENGLAND, but since you're replacing that one, you can't reference it. You need to reference the properties of a brig that's already been initialized--in this case, it's France (brig1_1 == brig1_FRANCE). After you've edited England's brig1, you'll have to remove the English brig2 entry, to make sure that English ships don't use any other texture--and even then, there's a chance that they will anyway. Every different ship type has to be done this way, assuming you've got textures for all of them and want to add them as new ships.

To make matters worse, there are characters in StoryCharacters.c, TempQuestCharacters.c, Officers.c, and possibly other files that have ships directly assigned to them. If any of them has "brig1_ENGLAND" or "brig2_ENGLAND", those will be BROKEN, so you'll have to go into those files manually, find the offending entries, and update them to reflect your new ship(s).

To make a long story short (too late), if you really want to do what you're talking about, it's going to be `time-consuming` and tedious, and that's not even including how long it'll take to make all those new textures. If you want to jump in and go for it, though, I'll be happy to help you with the coding and such. I've grown pretty familiar with everything I've mentioned, because I've been working on something similar (in code, at least: making certain textures appear only with certain nations). If you try it, best of luck with it, and have a couple round of rum on me! <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/par-ty.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="par-ty.gif" />

 

[Kieron]

i think the biggest problem, kennosen, would be that you would have to edit most, if not all, the ship textures in the game, and because of the size of that download you wouldn't be able to distribute it <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="sad.gif" />

 

[kennosen]

I guess...

.. you guys are right, a lot of work needed.

Thanks for the info, its good to have such help around if I need it though. I think maybe, as you say, it would be a tedious project to attempt, although it would have been very nice to see a fleet of English black and gold cutting through the water... <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_eek.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":" border="0" alt="icon_eek.gif" /> Enough to scare even the boldest of pirate scum <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_twisted.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":twisted:" border="0" alt="icon_twisted.gif" />

What about just one ship though, you know a custom 'man o war' or something?

 

[CatalinaThePirate]

If you do only one texture, Kennosen, you can have a fleet of four of those ships! <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" /> It's a lot easier than changing all the English ship skins over... Unless of course, you wish to do it on your own for your own personal game. <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/me.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="me.gif" />

 

[jmv575]

To ease the size of the download you could do only `men-of`-war, no merchantmen. Afterall, only Royal Navy and English East India Company vessles used the Nelson Checker, and even then, only the big Indiamen in hte company used the paint scheme. So, you could do the Sloop, Brig, Corvette, Frigate, `Man-o`-war and you'd be fine.

If you are really into to doing a project like this for all of the nations, a while back I found some information on how ships were painted during the late 18th, early 19th century period. I just need to find it again.

I think this is a great idea. Personally, I would like someone to do this, I grew tired of seeing such light colored hulls with such colorful work. These are `men-of`-war, not Royal Yachts. My "quick" fix was I put a 50% black overlay over the textures. The ships are much more impressive now.

 

[kennosen]

I agree totally..

... changing the British fleet to a more historically correct texture would look fantastic, especially during a large battle between nations...

I will have a look at some of my books and see if I can come up with a few likely candidates to use as a guide.. I'll give it a go, and see what happens.. I will let you know as soon as I'm getting anywhere... I'd like to add more rigging as well, I think that the rigging on most of the ships is a little poor, and maybe sort the sails out while I@m at it.... <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="rolleyes.gif" />

 

[jmv575]

Wow, I posted this in the wrong thread. Go here:http://forum.piratesahoy.net/`ftopic2083-100`.php


We haven't heard from this team from a while. I certainly don't mean to rush anyone, especially with something this large and impressive. My apologies if I seem impatient.

Now then, there was talk that this mod expands the size of the archipelago with more islands. Can anyone confirm that?

Best

 

[CatalinaThePirate]

Koor, Alan_Smithee, and Vassal were working on this, as I recall.

Yes, according to a Babelfish translation there will be sixteen islands altogether. I think a couple were left vacant so that you could build your own private area - I *think*.

Koor is a linguist, his specialty is Russian, and he was going to go over Alan and Vassal's work on translations to see if there were places that needed some reinterpretation.