Will program for free (Bored and Unemployed)

I was converting the ralari right now, and found an strange problem...it has 3 engines...so i place them, put their positions into the script...the game shows the targeting correctly (bridge, engine, engine, engine), but when i destroy the bridge, what actually blows up is the center engine, in the other side of the ship, and the bridge (you can still target it) becomes indestructible...?!?
Dont ask me why...if i take one engine out, it runs fine, its ok if i only use 2 of the 3 engines?

Originally posted by Quarto
... that's a lot of turrets
Click to expand...

Well, if you want i can get it back to 6... :rolleyes: ...hehe
Get ready, because the Ralari is almost done :D



[Edited by KillerWave on 07-01-2001 at 23:08]
 
...What interests me the most right now, though, is what did you do to the VDU? It's using a Remora VDU (933), which we CAN replace! :D [/B]
Click to expand...


It is? It shows the Midway to me...strange...did you made any changes?
 
Ahh,it is...:D
Well, its a bug in wcpedit, maybe the version i have or something, that when i edit some ship with it, it changes the id for the vdu, wich make me think that maybe the capships vdu are not hardcoded, but just isnt the right mat you altered...
 
Sure, if you can't work out where the bug comes from, just use the centre engine as number one, and the two side engines as number two.

Now, regarding that WCPEdit bug... well, for one thing, I'm glad to hear you encountered it too, because so far it seemed as though I was the only one :). Let me explain what happens - if you look at the TYPE chunk (form? I can't remember, and am too lazy to check), there are three values. The first one is ship type - 5 is capship, others I can't remember. The second one is the VDU. If you look at, say, the Midway, you will find a value there. But the WCPEdit bug changes it to "0".
And guess what? Although capship VDUs from 1 onwards are hardcoded, VDU 0 is not hardcoded, because capship VDU 0 does not exist :). The game falls back on the last of the fighter VDUs instead, which happens to be the Remora. Now, this ain't so bad - with corvette-type capships, we only had one VDU to work with anyway. So, what I'm going to do is fix the Remora to use a different VDU, and we'll put a generic capship VDU into this slot. Not the same as having a VDU for every capship, but better than nothing :-D.
 
Originally posted by Quarto
Well, the whole point of getting a really nice model is to put it in without reducing the poly count.
Click to expand...
And what a good job you guys have done. Phew! I wouldn't have believed that there would be so many problems to figure out. Glad to see the VDU one might be fixed.
 
I cant use the two side engines as just one engine target, because they are too far apart...:(
I will have to forget about the middle one for now...i will snet it to HCl and Thomas to take a look if they find out what is the problem, in the mean time, i will just add the turret hardpoints for this one and send to you.
I know how the wcpedit bug works, its very annoyng, at least it served for something ;)
 
The ralari is on the way...;)
Though the center engine will still be there, you wont be able to target or destroy it, but the ship will be possible to destroy...the bridge and the two side engines.
14 gun turrets is enough?
 
Hehe, he moves fast :). Yeah, 14 turrets is plenty. I'm currently placing all those Dauntless turrets... I don't know how the bugs feel, but I for one would rather stay friends with the Dauntless :D.
 
How do you decide how many turrets to put? There were several more guns on those pics in Claw Marks than there were in the stats, in-game included.

[Edited by Wedge009 on 07-02-2001 at 03:10]
 
Well, I don't really know how KW decided on 25 gun turrets and 6 missile turrets... maybe he just figured it's a nice big number :). As a rule, there should be more than the original manual and diagrams, simply because these ships have been upgraded many times since then.
 
Hehehe, I just managed to give a capship an _unassigned_ MAT as its VDU. Hex editing... is there anything it can't accomplish? :) It looks like we've broken the hardcode barrier, KW!
 
Nice Q. New vdus :D Need to tell me how to do it later...
And yes, i just thought 25 gun turrets and 6 missile ones where a nice number for the Dauntless, i can put how much turrets i want, but there should be a limit for capship turrets also, but i havent found it yet...any suggestions in how much to put in the Fralthi?
Take care to not hide the turrets inside the model Q, so they can be targeted and destroyed.
Btw, looks like Pedro messed up the names of the Fralthi and the Ralari in the UE page...

Where is DH those days?

Oh, nice vdu you put on the Ralari Q ;)


[Edited by KillerWave on 07-02-2001 at 16:40]
 
Hey, it's a happy Ralari :D. Yeah, Pedro must've got the two ships confused, but it's not an important mistake.

I gave them independent VDUs by editing the TYPE chunk with a hex editor... but now that I think about it, using a hex editor shouldn't be necessary. Editing the ship's TYPE chunk with something like WCPPas should probably be enough - presumably, you'd simply need to give it a VDU number much, much higher than the normal capship VDUs. I'll check that out in a moment.

BTW, I think the Ralari should have at least one or two missile turrets... but that can easily be fixed later. As for the Fralthi, I'd say 16 gun turrets, and 4 missile turrets.

It took me quite a bit to work out how to rotate the blasted turrets, but I think I got the hang of it. All the Dauntless turrets have been roughly placed - now I'm just gonna have to move each one to its precise position.

As for DH, I haven't heard from him for while, and he hasn't appeared here either, so I don't know :(.
 
The Fralthi is on its way :)

Do you still have those armada iffs? I had a gladius done with dissapearing faces, now i fixed it, i lost the textures...and unfortunatelly all armada, wc3 and wc4 iffs...but i can always get back the wc3 and wc4 ones

I think it covers all needed capships right?
Btw, you can enter nicely into the fralthi hangar :D

[Edited by KillerWave on 07-02-2001 at 22:07]
 
Yeah, I'll get those Armada iffs for ya :).

Actually, that's not quite everything... those are the three ships that we need as absolute essentials, but if you've got time, I can think of at least seven others that would be good as capships ;). For starters, that spacelab that you resized and retextured for us a while back... of course, this is just if you've got time, I mean you've already done a hell of a lot for us.

Fralthi hanger? I didn't see a hanger, unless you mean the area between the forward prongs (it's always fun to fly through there).
 
Well, the BW Lab to be transformed into a capship type would need to have the model edited, the same for every ship...
Plus Pedro wants me to do some nebulas, explosion effects, and i still want to make a few conversions for the B5 mod...then there is always a busy life...;)
7 are a lot of ships after all, i mean, i'd like to do it, its always nice to have a new ship to play with, but it takes some work to get done...
If you get the models edited i might find some time to do it later...

Originally posted by Quarto
Fralthi hanger? I didn't see a hanger, unless you mean the area between the forward prongs (it's always fun to fly through there).
Click to expand...

Those openings in the back of the fralthi arent hangars?
Its fun to fly inside it anyway...;)



[Edited by KillerWave on 07-02-2001 at 23:31]
 
Don't worry, most of those ships are cutscene-only, so they don't really need to be capships :). Anyway, I'll get the models edited, and then we'll see how you're doing with time.

Oh, those openings... I didn't actually notice them until now :D. Actually, I can only get into the left one, but never mind that. I'm definitely gonna have to write a routine to launch ships out of those.

BTW, how would I go about increasing the hitpoints for the turrets? Right now, they die after just one hit.
 
I managed to enter both openings actually, could be the angle you are tryng to enter it ;)
Dont think you can edit the hitpoints of the turrets, its the same for the regular SO turrets, unless you altered it. if they are blowing up too easily is probably the gun you're using that is too strong.


[Edited by KillerWave on 07-03-2001 at 00:01]
 
A laser? :) I'll compare them to Midway turrets, but from what I've seen so far, there is a problem here.
 
Right, I've conducted a small experiment. Now, it takes one-two single laser shots to kill a turret on the Dauntless, Ralari, or Fralthi. In contrast, it takes up to 45 single laser shots to destroy a turret on the Midway. There's gotta be hitpoints stats in there somewhere...

I also experimented a bit more with assigning VDUs. I must have been half asleep yesterday to miss the obvious - you don't need to do any hex editing, and you don't need extremely high values such as those that I used. You can use any MAT above (approximately) 1000. The offset for the VDU value is 933 (that's why putting 0 in gave us the Remora VDU). The Dauntless, for example, will be 1400 - so I entered 467 ( 467+933=1400 ).
 
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