Fix in Progress Repairing Bad Ropes

[Pieter Boelen]

I could bring back one of the other stock frigates so that "Frigate_sat" can continue to be a copy of it, if you prefer.

Uhm... No.

If the new Kreyser variant is the Animists' ship in "Revolutions" then it doesn't need horns - the Satanist Fluyt of War and Evil Essex don't have them. They'd have to be added with Maya because they'd have to fit the Kreyser's rounded stern plate.

Depends on how creative @Jack Rackham can be. Knowing him, he can be VERY creative!

That's a Maya job as well because the existing cannons are an integral part of the hull. They're not even separate components which can be removed and replaced by TOOL's "Edit Scene". "Frigate_sat.gm" has only two components, one of which is the deck plus all the cannons. But if someone wants to upgrade the cannons in Maya, I'll not object!

That's true; removing anything that is already in the main hull GM cannot be done with the TOOL.
Not without damaging the GM file, that is...

 

[Grey Roger]

My point is, you can't remove the cannons at all. Not unless you take the entire deck with them. They're not separate parts.

The entire deck, including the cannons, is textured from the file "deck.tga.tx". You could improve the cannons a bit by modifying that, but make sure to save it to a new file, then hex-edit "Frigate_sat.gm" to use that new file. "Frigate_sat.gm" isn't the only ship to use "deck.tga.tx" and you don't want your custom evil cannons to appear on a lot of basic ships!

Hmm... the Satanist Fluyt of war has its evil horses of the apocalypse plus the scary sign on the stern. The stock frigate has its horns. The new ship will have whatever the evil imaginations of @Jack Rackham and @The Nameless Pirate can devise. So the evil Essex needs something more than red stripes - perhaps I can do something amusing to its guns...

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

The entire deck, including the cannons, is textured from the file "deck.tga.tx". You could improve the cannons a bit by modifying that, but make sure to save it to a new file, then hex-edit "Frigate_sat.gm" to use that new file. "Frigate_sat.gm" isn't the only ship to use "deck.tga.tx" and you don't want your custom evil cannons to appear on a lot of basic ships!

I could make the cannons texture transparent and add new cannons on top of the old ones with the TOOL.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I could make the cannons texture transparent and add new cannons on top of the old ones with the TOOL.

Indeed, that should work!!

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

Does any one know where i would find a single ship cannon model (the same as the ones used for the Kreyser frigates)?

 

[Grey Roger]

You could try this, which I found among the files of the GoF mod for CoAS. Judging by the long list of texture files which it references, someone probably made it by starting with a model containing a lot of guns plus other stuff, then deleting everything from the model except this one. So if this cannon doesn't work, you could try doing something similar with a different model.

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

Thanks @Grey Roger i'll see what i can do.

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

How do you zoom in the TOOL?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

How do you zoom in the TOOL?

Is there anything mentioned in the Help files? If not, I don't know myself; but maybe @Grey Roger or @Jack Rackham do?

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

Well there was something that i missed before.

 

[Jack Rackham]

I have away from home for some days. Is there anything you want me to do?

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

Welcome back @Jack Rackham!!!

I have away from home for some days. Is there anything you want me to do?

Nothing for now at least from me, thanks though, maybe someone else?

Here is a screenshot comparing the old cannons (left) with the new ones (right).

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Here is a screenshot comparing the old cannons (left) with the new ones (right).

Oh, that IS indeed quite the substantial improvement!

 

[Grey Roger]

The new cannons certainly look much better. Please upload your files, then I can add in my new rigging locators to get a fully improved Mefisto which can go into the next update.

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

I still have some cannons to add, i will upload when i am finished.

 

[Grey Roger]

How did you do that? If you'd blanked out the cannon texture part of "deck.tga.tx", shouldn't it have blanked out all the old cannons?

The reason I'd like to know is that "Frigate_sat" isn't the only ship which could benefit from that upgrade to the cannons...

Meanwhile, I've finished my own contributions to this ship. Additional ropes from the bowsprit complete the rigging, and if you look closely at the stern, you'll see the ship's name:

Also take a close look at the side of the hull near the mainmast. You can't get closer to the stern to see the name using just free camera, you'd need to either sail up close in another ship or look at the frigate with a really good spyglass. But you can get closer to what I added to the quarterdeck:

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

How did you do that? If you'd blanked out the cannon texture part of "deck.tga.tx", shouldn't it have blanked out all the old cannons?

When i uploaded that screenshot i had not blanked out the cannon texture, because i still needed the old cannons for positioning.

Now that i finished i have blanked out the cannon texture, the new texture file is decS.tga.tx and i also blanked out the base and removed the ropes of the new cannons that were not in the upper deck, this texture file is inzanegunS.tga.tx.

 

[Grey Roger]

Unfortunately it doesn't quite work. When I tried putting your files into the game and loaded up my savegame with the Mefisto, the game beeped and "system.log" contained this:

SHIP: Up trace error, ship Frigate_sat
SHIP: Down trace error, ship Frigate_sat

I've seen this before, earlier in this thread when I was re-rigging "Schooner2":
Fix in Progress - Repairing Bad Ropes

In this case, the problem is likely to have been caused by adding new components to the base "Frigate_sat.gm" model using TOOL. Adding locators is fine, otherwise a lot of my re-rigging work wouldn't work; but adding or removing components with "Edit Scene" seems not to work, which is probably why those ships which have extra details added have them in a separate "deck.gm" file. "Frigate_sat" has one, containing the usual wheel, bell, capstan and anchors, and it's also where I added the swivel guns.

At first I thought that you'd need to add the cannons to "Frigate_sat_deck.gm", which would be a major pain because you can't use GM Viewer to see where they are relative to the rest of the ship. But then a really simple solution occurred to me. I used TOOL to edit your "Frigate_sat.gm", removed the hull and deck components to leave only the new guns, removed all the locators, and saved the result as "Frigate_sat_guns.gm". Then all I had to do was add a "geometry" locator to my "Frigate_sat.gm" to reference "guns". The result worked perfectly - nice guns, no beeps, no errors in "system.log".

I've also made the nameplate a bit more visible.


By the way, if you're modding or creating ships, FreePlay and cheatmode are your new best friends. FreePlay allows you to choose any ship of modest level (tier 5 - 8) from your chosen period - set the year before trying to pick a ship. Cheatmode removes the tier restriction so you can choose any ship valid for your chosen period. That means once the ship model is done (and the entries in "Ships_init.c" and "ShipModels_descriptions.txt", if necessary), it takes just a few minutes to start a game using your ship so you can test it. If the ship is likely to need more work, save game, then you can reload it and get back to your ship even more quickly without having to go through the character and ship selection process again.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

In this case, the problem is likely to have been caused by adding new components to the base "Frigate_sat.gm" model using TOOL.

Correct. Basically, any edit to the ship hull GM cannot be saved properly by the TOOL without losing lighting/collision data and that "beeping" error.
You can tell also because the geometry catches the light from the wrong side afterwards, which is a bit of a strange effect.
This also applies to any "_deck.gm" added details, but since that's just small bits and pieces, it doesn't really stand out as weird.

I've also made the nameplate a bit more visible.

Ah, that works!

By the way, if you're modding or creating ships, FreePlay and cheatmode are your new best friends. FreePlay allows you to choose any ship of modest level (tier 5 - 8) from your chosen period - set the year before trying to pick a ship. Cheatmode removes the tier restriction so you can choose any ship valid for your chosen period. That means once the ship model is done (and the entries in "Ships_init.c" and "ShipModels_descriptions.txt", if necessary), it takes just a few minutes to start a game using your ship so you can test it. If the ship is likely to need more work, save game, then you can reload it and get back to your ship even more quickly without having to go through the character and ship selection process again.

Also the console!

 

[Grey Roger]

Correct. Basically, any edit to the ship hull GM cannot be saved properly by the TOOL without losing lighting/collision data and that "beeping" error.
You can tell also because the geometry catches the light from the wrong side afterwards, which is a bit of a strange effect.

Ah, that's possibly why several ships which I wanted to import from GoF have the reverse lighting problem. They have additional deadeyes at the base of the shrouds, compared to the basic stock AoP hulls, and adding those probably fouled up the files.

Also the console!

That's fine if you have a game in progress which you don't mind altering for the purpose of testing the ship. Otherwise you'll need to start a new FreePlay game to have something on which to use console, and in that case you may as well pick the right ship to start with.