Sounds like they're FINALLY happy on the Superbe, then!And the main ensign is no longer at half mast.
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Fix in Progress Repairing Bad Ropes
- Thread starter Hylie Pistof
- Start date
"SchoonerWar" gets another few fixes:
The braces from the foremast spars now lead to two different positions on the mainmast. And the foresail, instead of flapping around loose, now has a supporting spar. Simply adding another "geometry" locator to the foremast didn't work, as the new spar had no sail of its own so it didn't turn with the wind. Instead, I copied "SchoonerWar_rey_b2" into TOOL's mesh folder, imported it back into "SchoonerWar_rey_b2", and now that's a double spar - which is how support spars are handled on other ships as well, probably for the same reason.
Next, "Schooner50" gets its rigging upgraded to the same standard:
As with "Schooner2", when I added new locators to the hull, the game beeped. The solution was the same - hex-edit "SchoonerWar.gm" to use the correct texture, then sort out the rope locators. It's lucky that the first schooner I worked on was "SchoonerWar"! If I'd started with any of the others, I'd have run into the beeping bug, concluded that this wasn't going to work, and wouldn't have tried to fix any other schooners' rigging.
I'm glad you picked the right one then!
Yeah, I could never get them to work correctly and gave up on them.
"Battleship2" is the white battleship from the stock game, with rigging and deck detail upgraded to NH standards. But it has an odd problem. "Ships_init.c" defines five flags for it but it only has four, so the flags look odd, especially on the sprit topmast which has both pennant and ensign.
There's a flagpole model, "rey_flag", but no geometry locator anywhere to place it, so it's not used. The obvious solution, then, is to add the locator to the hull model. I forgot to get a "before" screenshot, but you can see how the ship looks at the moment by starting a FreePlay game with cheatmode set, then give yourself the ship. This is how it's going to look in the next update, with the flagpole added:
Ouch, that's never a good thing! I think that might be one of the reasons for those obnoxious "graphic anomalies".
So thanks a lot for catching that and taking care of it!
One of the screenshots in the recent thread about the Hellenic Flag mod showed HMS Interceptor, a fine model which has served the "Jack Sparrow" storyline well and which deserves the same sort of rigging upgrades as other ships. The real HMS Interceptor is actually the Lady Washington, a present day replica sailing ship, making it one of the few ships modelled in the game for which photographic evidence exists, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Apart from the rigging, that photo shows that the ship carries an ensign on the mainmast, and if you watch "Pirates of the Caribbean" closely, HMS Interceptor appears to have an ensign on the mainmast as well. And the pennant on the foremast could do with being longer and thinner.
Original vs. new "US_Interceptor", alias Lady Washington - the quickest way to get this ship into a game is to start as Captain Hook, which is why she's under pirate colours.
Brilliant!
That old picture almost looks naked in comparison...
I wouldn't go quite that far.
"HMS_Interceptor" has been used for ages in "Hoist the Colours" by lots of players, including me, without any complaints. But since I've been on a rigging spree, particularly for ships which feature in storylines, this one needed to be done. The rigging is quite a cat's cradle, with the braces from the foremast going to the mainmast, and the braces from the mainmast going back the way to the foremast because there isn't a mizzen to which they can go. Adding to that, the braces from the topsail spars split and each lead to two ropes going to the other mast. That, incidentally, means I've made my first composite ropes. Each of those braces is made up of three ropes, one end of each tied to the mast or spar, and the other ends of all three meeting up in mid-air.
Maybe not. But it was a fun thing to write!I wouldn't go quite that far.
The Soleil Royal could also do with some braces. Also, the yards are mounted a bit too far from the masts, and the sails a bit too low on the yards, so that both yards and sails appear to be hanging in midair.
TOOL couldn't read "rey_b3". I loaded one of the other "rey" files, resized it so that GM Viewer showed it to be the same size as "rey_b3", then saved it as a replacement "rey_b3".
Original vs. new:
Several of the braces have an interesting structure, based on the pictures I was using for reference. The rope appears to be tied at one end to a stay; then it goes round a pulley attached to the yard, back to another pulley tied to the stay, and down to the deck. The idea is presumably to have a long rope to give good leverage, and tying one end further up the stay than the pulley means that the yard is pulled back rather than down.
The pulleys on the stays are separate model files, each with a pair of pulleys. So are the pulleys on the yards. I tried to edit one of the yards with "Scene Editor" in TOOL and add the pulleys directly, but when I tried to save the result, TOOL crashed, wrecking the model file in the process. So the only way to get the pulleys onto the yards was to have them again as separate models of pairs of pulleys with a "geometry" locator in each yard's model file.
"RN_Essex", as well as being the British version of USS Essex, is used to represent frigates with 18lb guns in general. This includes Hornblower's HMS Lydia. Hornblower was not impressed by her lack of rigging - apart from lacking any lifts or braces, the ship also has no ropes on the trailing corners of the staysails:
Now fixed:
And then I copied the fixes to the other "Essex" variants. Testing "US_Essex" revealed something odd:
The hull is almost all black, including the stripe through the gunports. Normally ships have a light-coloured stripe through the gunports, including other US ships. It's not a problem with the texture file. "US_Essex" uses "US_Hull1.tga.tx", and so do several other ships which have white gunport stripes, including "US_PrinceNeufchatel":
So someone, presumably @Captain Armstrong (who is listed in "Ships_init.c" as the ship's creator), wanted it that way - the model file is using the texture file differently from other US ships, and for that matter other variants of "Essex". (Incidentally, "US_PrinceNeufchatel" is also credited to @Captain Armstrong, so my compliments to him on that ship's rigging - it has a nice, full set already.
)
Are the GMs different then for the US version and the other ones?
That's the only explanation I can think of...
That would be my guess, yes. As an experiment, I renamed "US_Hull1.tga.tx" to keep it safe, copied and renamed "SP_Hull1.tga.tx" files to "US_Hull1.tga.tx", and sure enough, "US_Essex" then had dark red stripes instead of white, but still in the same place. As another experiment, I copied "FR_Essex.gm", hex-edited it to use "dcUS.tga.tx" and "US_Hull1.tg.tx" instead of their French counterparts, and the result looks more like this:
Is @Captain Armstrong still around? If he can tell me why he preferred the black hull, I'll leave it alone, otherwise I'll put my Americanised French version into the updates along with the rigging.Last edited:
According to his profile, he was last seen Jan 23, 2018 so that was a while ago.
You could try to send him a PM; he should get an e-mail notification on that and hopefully respond.
Pending an answer from @Captain Armstrong, I've finished off the white-hulled "US_Essex". There was a slight complication. Original "US_Essex.gm" is indeed different from other "Essex.gm" models, one difference being that it uses "Poseidon6.tga.tx" to colour the inner hull walls. "FR_Essex" uses "p3ank_brwn6.tga.tx". The different filename sizes mean I can't hex-edit my new "US_Essex" to use the same file as the original. So I copied and renamed "Poseidon6.tga.tx" to "p3ank_blueg.tga.tx", then hex-edited the model to use that, and now:
Even if this one does replace the current "US_Essex", the black-hulled version does look good even if not accurate for a US warship. Besides, I don't want to throw away someone else's work. So a few possible uses for the black one include:
- Remove the bow and stern guns, reduce the maximum calibre, increase the cargo capacity and call it another fast merchantman. The black hull with white stripes is reminiscent of the Cutty Sark, though that ship had different bow and sails, and no cannons. So it's no accurate model of a clipper but could still work as a merchant.
- Make it a pirate version. Disable "CanBuy" and "CanEncounter" so it's only available from Vanderdecken, but it's available for anyone to use for a quest. Maybe leave the "Model" line so anyone who acquires a normal "Essex" during gameplay can repaint it black.
- Change it to use the French textures. That means red hull lines and black masts instead of white. Maybe do something evil to the figurehead. And then we have a new Satanist frigate for the "Strange Things Going On in the Archipelago" quest in "Revolutions" and "Napoleonic" periods.
That's difficult; ALL those ideas sound like fun! But I imagine actually doing all three individually is a bit overkill.
But... What if you combine all three ideas? A Quest-Only Satanist Pirate Clipper with Cannons? Now THAT would be a special ship indeed!!
A new model for the satanist frigate would be welcome!!!
The Satanist frigate is by definition a quest-only ship. Both the existing Satanist frigate and fluyt of war are quest only, the latter being for those periods too early for the normal frigate to be valid. The evil "Essex" would just complete the line-up by providing the same quest with another ship for periods too late for the normal frigate.That's difficult; ALL those ideas sound like fun! But I imagine actually doing all three individually is a bit overkill.
But... What if you combine all three ideas? A Quest-Only Satanist Pirate Clipper with Cannons? Now THAT would be a special ship indeed!!
It certainly wouldn't be a clipper. That would require a whole new model, or at least a whole new rig. Besides, if its armament is reduced to make it a fast merchant then it's no longer a scary Satanist ship!
Got it.
I was thinking "new rig" only. But still, that's a lot of work and you already indicated elsewhere you've got enough to do, so I can imagine this isn't work it.
Hey, I said "Clipper With Cannons"!
Yep, I threw any sense of historical realism right out the window with my crazy suggestion.
So... uhm... then just make it a Pirate version, "evil it up" a bit and use it as the Satanist one.
That's what I'd suggest anyway. But I'm fine with whatever option you choose; it's your idea, after all. -
