Ship lanterns

[Merciless Mark]

Brainstorming time again <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

I reviewed an old topic called "Lamps and Light" where it was discussed on if it was possible to implement ship lanterns into PoTC, it never did seem to get anywhere. however i think ive come up with an idea.

<img src="http://www.playlogicgames.com/img/games/screenshots/ageofpirates/50.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
Age Of pirate's lanterns. notice, that most of it just seems to be flares without actually emitting light. I beleive we can implement this, ive already Isolated the shaders used for the corona's on land based lamps in game, and finding the code that implements them should be easy to find.

This can work, all that we need to do is find a way to code in new locators onto the ships for lantern positions, and have them on in the night, theoretically, it could look Exactly like the pic there in game!
Actual light emissions is another story, but at least we would have a nice effect and visual aid to see ships easier in the night.

So, what do you think? and what do the coders think? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I reckon that would be an excellent idea. I don't know how to implement it, but it would be great. We just need lamps at the stern of the ships though. No need changing the ships into floating christmas trees like Akella did with AoP. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />
We can add locators to models with Inez' tool. So all you'd need to do is find a way to attach the light to a locator.

 

[Merciless Mark]

well, i would think it would be good on stern, bowsprit and on top of the masts. but definatley not on every single end on the rigs.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

For all I know, ships usually only had lights at the stern. Feel free to prove me wrong. Also: You should be able to put the lights out if you want to sneak up on an enemy in the night. But you can't sneak up to enemies in the night anyway, so that might be another new features to add.

 

[Meigger]

To my knowledge (agree with Pieter) wooden sailing ships only had Stern lights, generally just one, but some of the larger MOW's or Line ships had three, usually very ornate. Some ships also had a small light on the quarterdeck.

 

[SirChristopherMings]

Merciless Mark,

If I recall, the picture you posted above was one of the reasons that particular endeavour lost steam, seeing that the ship models in AOP already have lights in the rigging made putting the effort of trying to figure out how to accomplish it on POTC ships, per Duke Surakner's caveat; a hefty undertaking, when we could see how it was done when AOP came out, (Whenever that will be... <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/nerbz.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="nerbz.gif" /> ) a wasted effort.

Not only to play AOP for its own sake, I'm also anxious to get a look at the code to see what can and cannot be done in terms of the modding that is being done now with POTC. I'm anticipating that there will be a number of things that have changed, but it would be nice if some the changes that we know how to implement now wind up in the new game, or that we learn some new techniques.

One of the ideas that was being kicked around on this topic was replacing pistols or swords with lanterns for exploring the caves or dungeons, or jungles at night, (if not the main character then one of the officers,) and I thought that was a pretty cool idea. Imagine a party going into the caves and one of the members is carrying a lantern to light the way. It might make the game more interesting to try to keep the "link-boy" alive, especially if because of the lantern he's not as able to defend himself as the other party members. I rarely take anyone into the cave with me because more often than not they run into danger and block me from getting into the fight, but it strikes me that this would only make trying to keep the lantern carrier alive more challenging.

Possibly, rather than make every model in the game able to carry lanterns, a couple of the models could be set up specifically to be "lantern carriers" and they could be hired in the taverns and assigned as officers.

 

[Arconthe]

<!--quoteo(post=143747:date=Mar 28 2006, 10:29 AM:name=Pieter Boelen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pieter Boelen @ Mar 28 2006, 10:29 AM) [snapback]143747[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
I reckon that would be an excellent idea. I don't know how to implement it, but it would be great. We just need lamps at the stern of the ships though. No need changing the ships into floating christmas trees like Akella did with AoP. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" /> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I second that matey <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/doff.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="doff.gif" />

 

[Petros]

I guess everyone missed my earlier post in another, but related topic, so I'll add it here.

<!--quoteo(post=143657:date=Mar 27 2006, 09:53 PM:name=Petros)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Petros @ Mar 27 2006, 09:53 PM) [snapback]143657[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
...
If it might save you some time; a long while back, the discussion came up about possibly adding lamps to ships to get the same effect as the street lamps in towns at night.

It was explained, that the way POTC handles lamp lighting is through the use of a separate tga.tx for morning, afternoon, evening, and night.

To do this for ships would require a new tga.tx for each ship, to be loaded at night, which would basically paint the lighting effect on the hull.

As most of the lighting would affect the deck of a ship, the deck.tga.tx would have to be redone also.

Problem here is that all (most all) of the ships use different parts of the Deck.tga.tx file in different ways so that would require a separate deck.tga for each one, and even then the mapping of lit parts might not work when applied over the entire deck.

In the case of cannon fire, while it would only involves the hull tga.tx, would require a different one, or part of one, for each cannon.
Then they would have to be loaded/changed dynamically as the guns fired, and I believe that there is no way to change textures on the fly. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/modding.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="modding.gif" />
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

 

[Pieter Boelen]

But how possible is it to add lights that DON'T light up the surrounding? Making the lights light up the surrounding would be hard, but adding lights that just light up themselves without lighting the surroundings should be possible. Right...? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":?" border="0" alt="unsure.gif" />

 

[Merciless Mark]

No i didnt miss your post.

And yes pieter thats what im talking about, there are particles and sprites that are just texture, but sort of luminescant themselves, they glow bright, but dont give off light, it is my idea that we attach such graphics to latern postion via locators. while they may not light up decks they will aid in spotting ships in the dark, friend or foe.

And i must say its quite possible, we can attach cannon flashes to the guns via gun locators, so all we need is lantern locators, a code to attach a particle that is on indefinatley(but only at night thou) and voila! you have a lantern light.

Notice on the pic how the majority of the lights there actually dont light up anything

 

[Capt. Daniel Wolf]

AOP program directory is stored in program.dat and program1.dat.... So its CLOSED.... Im gonna be really suprised, if they change this in the english release. They dont let AOP mod freely.


Hmm.... Ading new locators in Ineztool, is pretty easy. However, writing a code that uses it, not... If you manage to make this succesfully, let me know, I need help for making, and using a parrot locator on the characters shoulder.

 

[Merciless Mark]

is it possible to get a ship model to use the texture fonar.tga.tx in the texture directory?

because all my attempts seem to end it in the Ships subfolder