• New Horizons on Maelstrom
    Maelstrom New Horizons


    Visit our website www.piratehorizons.com to quickly find download links for the newest versions of our New Horizons mods Beyond New Horizons and Maelstrom New Horizons!

New Ship Models?

Ship requests, eh? I'd vote for just adding all Pgargon's one and that should take care of the lion's share.

For the name, how about "Pgargon's & Experienced Captain's Historical Ship Pack"?

I think nobody will read a brief history of each ship included in the pack.
HOWEVER, if you post the same as an Article on the ModDB, it'll be a different story.
That might be posted to the main ModDB page and create interest again.
 
All good suggestions as usual Pieter, but I've just hit another problem.:modding Hard. :modding

This is NOT GOOD:
Pgargon's ships all use their own textures, as opposed to many PotC ships which 'share' some textures and have some unique ones.
This has resulted in some- no, ALL of our original ships trying to use the new versions of textures such as 'deck.tga' or 'desk.tga' provided with the new ships! This may sound good, but it doesn't look as good as it sounds.

To illustrate, here's an example with the new files.
The 'battleship2' model is supposed to have a dark brown wooden deck (like everything else always used to), which is the original 'deck.tga' file. However, now that the new files are in place, the ship has the light brown deck typical of Royal Navy ships.
In addition, the masts have the RN black yard textures on the lower half on one side, and are also light brown in colour. The yards themselves are light brown with no details on them.
A similar effect is produced with ships using the 'desk.tga' file.

However, when using the OLD files, for example:
The HMS Victory is meant to have the light brown deck with black masts and yards. But with this file she has the dark brown deck with the stock details on the masts and yards. This does not compliment her at all. Same goes for the Bellona, which uses the 'desk.tga' file.

In other words, I can't use both files at the same time, as the names would be conflicting, and renamed versions are NOT recognised by any of the ships.

The bottom line: something needs to be done about the texture file sharing before I release the ship pack! :excl:
 
I'm uploading all the necessary files for the Historical Ship Pack onto the FTP in my folder. That way anyone who wants to try to sort out this texture issue can access the files while I'm away.
Couldn't have noticed at a worse time, could I? :facepalm

UPDATE: all files now uploaded to FTP.
 
24yy8v4.jpg

The corvette's getting on :keith
 
Nice hull, Oskar! :onya

Experienced Captain, you can HEX-edit the GM files to point to a different texture file.
That may sound complicated, but really it isn't. That'll allow you to use renamed textures.

Note that deck.tga is the original PotC file, while desk.tga is the AoP/CoAS version.
(It's called deck.tga in AoP/CoAS but was renamed for PotC to desk.tga to prevent overwriting the PotC original).
 
Pieter Boelen said:
Experienced Captain, you can HEX-edit the GM files to point to a different texture file.
That may sound complicated, but really it isn't. That'll allow you to use renamed textures.
Click to expand...
Just sounds like more work to me... :shrug
So how do I do this? I rename the texture files for the specific ships... then how do I tell the ships to use them?
 
By using a HEX Editor. Download one (search on the internet or in our Downloads section),
open a GM file and find where it says deck.tga/desk.tga inbetween the seeming nonsense text.
Then change what it sayd, but note that the number of characters in the filename must remain the same.
 
Pieter Boelen said:
By using a HEX Editor. Download one (search on the internet or in our Downloads section),
open a GM file and find where it says deck.tga/desk.tga inbetween the seeming nonsense text.
Then change what it sayd, but note that the number of characters in the filename must remain the same.
Click to expand...
OK I've got one now, thanks. I'll probably just change the filenames to 'dek1.tga'/'des1.tga' etc, which should allow the ships to use them as unique textures.
 
Yippee! I think the HEX-editing worked! :woot
It turns out that some of the textures ARE shared between the new ships, so I didn't need so many new filenames, which means lower download size!

Now all I'm doing is converting the sailorspoints into walk files, and waiting on the Mordaunt's correct textures.
And perhaps any current WIP ships could be included when they're done. :onya

EDIT: Mordaunt now has the correct textures, thanks to pgargon. :cheers
But unfortunately, I've just noticed that ALL of his new ships have the reverse lighting bug.
I guess it's a lot of work to re-export all the ships, but I hope to release the pack some time in the near future.
 
Did Pgargon not export his ship with Maya then? :shock

Anyway, other than that: good news and good job! :onya
 
I don't think he's exported them through Maya, but I've asked him to try to do so when possible.
Once that's sorted, it's smooth sailing all the way to release! :dance
Hopefully.
 
If necessary, add them even with reverse lighting bug. They're too good to not have! :shock
 
Pieter Boelen said:
If necessary, add them even with reverse lighting bug. They're too good to not have! :shock
Click to expand...
Absolutely! I seem to take for granted that I'm the only one who's tested these ships in PotC, so I understand that people are getting impatient.
But I'm aiming for top quality here, so fixing the reverse lighting bug would perfect it! :woot
 
I am working on fixing the reverse lighting bug. You must import the finished models only in Maya. Then they have to export new and texture. As this process is different than in 3DS Max, I need to know maya even better. :hmm
I hope the La Couronne is already without the bug.
But I can promise nothing. :rolleyes:
 
At least you're trying, mate, so thanks for that! :doff
Don't worry if you can't fix them, because as Pieter said, they're too good not to have, even if we include them with the reverse lighting bug.
My only concern is that, if you manage to fix it, I'll need to do all my work on locators and HEX-editing all over again on the fixed models. :modding
Other than that, the only alternative is for you to fix my converted versions and your original CoAS versions, but that's twice the workload for you, which is unfair. :no
 
You can export the locators to a file, then re-import them in the fixed versions. That might save you some issues with redoing them.

All the locator-work you did was to add the "penn" locators, right?
There would be no harm in Pgargon just taking your versions and fixing those then.
It doesn't matter if the CoAS editions DO have the "penn" locators and it might actually HELP if we ever port the Different Flags mod over.
 
Pieter Boelen said:
You can export the locators to a file, then re-import them in the fixed versions. That might save you some issues with redoing them.

All the locator-work you did was to add the "penn" locators, right?
There would be no harm in Pgargon just taking your versions and fixing those then.
It doesn't matter if the CoAS editions DO have the "penn" locators and it might actually HELP if we ever port the Different Flags mod over.
Click to expand...
Redoing them isn't a problem , it's just a long and tedious job which I'm not too keen to do again.
But since I can just export those and import them to the fixed ones as you said, that shouldn't be a problem.
I'm guessing that's the 'Write to/Read from File' option under 'Locators' in TOOL, right?

However, the problem is I've also HEX-edited them to point to the newly named deck/desk file variants, so that would need undoing in CoAS if pgargon were to fix only my versions, or doing again in PotC if he fixes only his originals. :wacko:
 
Redoing them isn't a problem , it's just a long and tedious job which I'm not too keen to do again.
But since I can just export those and import them to the fixed ones as you said, that shouldn't be a problem.
I'm guessing that's the 'Write to/Read from File' option under 'Locators' in TOOL, right?
Click to expand...
Exactly.

However, the problem is I've also HEX-edited them to point to the newly named deck/desk file variants, so that would need undoing in CoAS if pgargon were to fix only my versions, or doing again in PotC if he fixes only his originals.
Click to expand...
True. You can set up Notepad++ as HEX Editor and let GM files automatically be opened with the HEX Editor plugin of Notepad++.
That makes HEX editing REAL quick. You might want to have a look into that.

Also, be sure to check out "The Rename" if you want to mass-rename files,
for example when you want to change a ship's folder and GM file names.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top