Ship imports from GoF

[Pieter Boelen]

The amount of time I have available to check that is exactly zero.
Or technically a negative number as I'm already behind on all sorts of other things that I also need to do.
But I can barely stay awake....

 

[Grey Roger]

Existing PoTC sloop model ("FR_Sloop" with new texture):


GoF model:


The flag shows which way the wind is blowing. I'd guess that the GoF model is the one which is moving the spanker correctly. If so, I'll see about trimming that mainsail, which again can be seen billowing so far forward that it goes through the jibs.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The flag shows which way the wind is blowing. I'd guess that the GoF model is the one which is moving the spanker correctly.

You guess correctly.

Only thing that still looks a little bit strange is that on some pictures, the sail seems to be billowing into the wind.
But that could be an optical illusion, I suppose. If not, it's still not a big deal.

 

[Grey Roger]

If the spanker does billow the wrong way, I'm not sure how to fix it - billowing does not seem to be controlled by locators.

Anyway, I've modified the GoF model to use the same locators for the mainsail as "FR_Sloop". While I was at it, I removed some locators from the hull model which are to do with lighting in AoP and later games, which PoTC doesn't recognise, and which means I can remove the "fonar" files. So:

The spanker at least moves correctly as per GoF and the mainsail doesn't foul the jibs as per PoTC. Best of both worlds.

"FR_Sloop", being the model I used for the first version of what is now "Sloop4", naturally also has the same spanker problem. So I made a revised "FR_Sloop" by copying and renaming "FR_Sloop4" and hex-editing the hull model to use the "FR_Sloop" texture. Le Rève will now also have a spanker which moves correctly.

You may be wondering what happened to "Sloop3". Judging by the names of the texture files ("bortoutsloop1.tga.tx", "bortoutsloop2.tga.tx", "bortoutsloop3.tga.tx") "Sloop3" is actually "FR_Sloop".

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If the spanker does billow the wrong way, I'm not sure how to fix it - billowing does not seem to be controlled by locators.

If anyone knows, it is @Hylie Pistof or @Armada. I haven't a clue.
It's only minor anyway, so don't worry about it.

The spanker at least moves correctly as per GoF and the mainsail doesn't foul the jibs as per PoTC. Best of both worlds.

AWESOME!

You may be wondering what happened to "Sloop3". Judging by the names of the texture files ("bortoutsloop1.tga.tx", "bortoutsloop2.tga.tx", "bortoutsloop3.tga.tx") "Sloop3" is actually "FR_Sloop".

Uh, do we have two copies of the same identical ship? If so, please get rid of one of them!

 

[Grey Roger]

No, there are not two identical copies. We don't have a "Sloop3" model. We do have texture file "bortoutsloop3.tga.tx", which is applied to "FR_Sloop". It might have been confusing if I'd named the imported ship "Sloop3" and made it use "bortoutsloop4.tga.tx", while "bortoutsloop3.tga.tx" is used for something else. So the new one is "Sloop4".

 

[Pieter Boelen]

No, there are not two identical copies. We don't have a "Sloop3" model. We do have texture file "bortoutsloop3.tga.tx", which is applied to "FR_Sloop". It might have been confusing if I'd named the imported ship "Sloop3" and made it use "bortoutsloop4.tga.tx", while "bortoutsloop3.tga.tx" is used for something else. So the new one is "Sloop4".

Ah, understood!

Alternatively, why not rename the texture file used by FR_Sloop and change "Sloop4" into "Sloop3"?
Otherwise some clever person might wonder why there are a Sloop 1, 2 and 4 but not a 3.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Yes there is a way to stop the spanker sail from billowing the wrong way. The sail type must be changed. I forget what it should be changed to but look at the spanker on the CastelF brig. It should be the one you want. The Hoy should also have the proper sail type.

The work I did on the FR_sloop was before we learned how to make the spankers behave. Dunno if I did the GOF version or not but I can't find anything but a sloop1 in my GOF archives.

Btw I did find a pic of the original FR_sloop.

 

[Grey Roger]

Having played again and watched carefully, I can now report that the spanker does not billow away from the wind, into the wind, or for that matter at all. It flutters. The screenshot which appears to show it billowing the wrong way must have been because I pressed F8 while it was on the backswing, so to speak.

The spanker on the CastelF brig is type "sailf". So is the spanker on "Sloop4". Not surprisingly, the spanker on "SP_CastelF" behaves exactly the same way as the one on "Sloop4" - it flutters. "sailf" is indeed the type of sail recommended for spankers (and quadrilateral staysails) in the "General Guide to Locators" document.

There is indeed only "Sloop1" in GoF. I can't find a GoF version of "FR_Sloop", though I only have the mod itself, not the base CoAS game. "FR_Sloop" looks similar to one of the colour schemes for GoF (the one in "Hull3"), except "FR_Sloop" has a red stripe while the "Sloop1" variant has a yellow stripe, and "FR_Sloop" doesn't have the windows on the stern.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I can't find a GoF version of "FR_Sloop", though I only have the mod itself, not the base CoAS game.

I think the model is from AoP or CoAS, but the model name was renamed for the PotC mod specifically because of its use in the Hornblower storyline.

 

[Jack Rackham]

I've got AOP and COAS, which ship do you need?

 

[Grey Roger]

Thanks, but I don't need either of the ships - it's just a matter of historical curiosity as to where "FR_Sloop" originated.

I have AoP as well - not installed, but it's in a backup of the files from my old XP system. AoP has a "Sloop1" which looks similar to the wood texture hull of the one I found in GoF. But its spanker uses sail type "saild". I'm guessing that version is the one which was retextured to produce the original "FR_Sloop" in @Hylie Pistof's post, because "saild" does allow the spanker to billow as shown in that picture - just not correctly.

I found that out when I was sailing out of Martinique. Random traffic included both a "FR_Sloop" and a "Sloop2". The spanker on the "FR_Sloop" fluttered, but the one on "Sloop2" billowed, so I had a look at "Sloop2" with TOOL, found that its spanker was "saild", and modified "Sloop4" to use the same. When I then loaded up my test savegame with "Sloop4" and turned the ship to face different directions relative to the wind, the sail always billowed the same way, regardless of how the wind was hitting the ship. So I put the spanker back to "sailf".

 

[Grey Roger]

I remember working on that ship years ago. Does the spanker move properly?

@Hylie Pistof: how do you arrange for the spanker to turn correctly? Now that it's been pointed out, I noticed the same problem on a couple of other ships and would rather like to correct it. Changing sail type doesn't stop the spanker from turning the wrong way, it just stops the spanker from billowing the wrong way.

 

[Armada]

You need to change the XX value of the spanker's geometry locator (on the mast) to -1. Typically, this also turns the spanker inside-out, so one workaround is to use an invisible model to act as the spanker, and add another geometry locator to it for the visible yards.

Most ships now have inverted spanker meshes so they don't need to use the workaround, but I just found that Lineship1 still uses the workaround as described, so I'd recommend having a look at that.

 

[Grey Roger]

I'm not sure what you mean by "inside out". Spankers are supposed to use type "sailf", which doesn't billow, it flutters, so it doesn't really care which way the wind is blowing. Some models use "saild", which is supposed to be used for square sails and also doesn't seem to care which way the wind blows - a spanker with that sail type billows the same way regardless of the wind.

"Sloop4" has the separate spanker and yards and that's the one where I found out how the sail types behave. But, now I'm aware of spanker misbehaviour, I noticed that "BrigQeen1", another GoF import, also has its spanker wrongly set up, and that's the one I'm trying to fix at the moment. ("BrigSW1" probably does the same, and if "BrigQeen1" now behaves correctly then "BrigSw1" is getting the same correction.)

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Here are the instructions I used when making spankers behave. They can be a little cryptic so ask for help when confused.

 

[Armada]

I'm not sure what you mean by "inside out".

Sorry, I meant the yard meshes are literally flipped to face inwards, forming a tube with faces on the inside, not the outside. You can see this in GM Viewer if you zoom in on most spanker yard models of custom-made ships; it's corrected by the XX -1 value in-game.

 

[Grey Roger]

Thanks to both @Armada and @Hylie Pistof! Changing the locator to -1 did the trick. "BrigQeen1", "BrigSW1" and "Brig_20_Gun1_181" now have their spankers turning the right way. I'm not going through every ship in the game looking for this, but if I happen to notice a spanker misbehaving during gameplay, now I know how to correct it.