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Flag Locators Repair Project

This is getting ridiculous. How can the sail insist on crossing the mast no matter how you arrange the ropes? :modding
Maybe you should try moving the corner of the sail off to the same side as the ropes are placed, and see if that does anything.
 
It's not the sail itself so much as the spar swings over so far that the sail HAS to cross the mast. I'll get a better screenie to illustrate this.
 
Yes I see your point, but surely there must be a way to stop that based on where you put the rope end on the hull.
This different to my other suggestion: if you can roughly figure out the maximum angle the spar moves around the mast, you could place the rope end parallel to it, so that the sail would theoretically be completely vertical in that position, and therefore not cross the mast. Does that make sense? Just throwing ideas out there.
 
Yes, that requires the rope to be moved forward on the hull. In my testing so far doing that it moves the corner of the sail forward as well leaving just a sliver of sail remaining instead of the full sail. I'm trying different sail types now with bad results. So far only "sail" and "sailt" work.
 
Yeah, I had a feeling you'd get less sail from moving the rope end forward. Darn it. :rumgone
I doubt very much any other sail types will work, but I guess there's not harm trying.
 
Yeah, I've given up. I'm going to finish of the wargalleon4 and La Licorne and then put them on the FTP as is until more fixes for them come along, like a flagpole fix and new bowsprit. Wargalleon 1 & 4 will have the old lateen and wargalleon 2 & 3 will have the new lateen.

WarGalleon 1,2,3,&4 are on the FTP. In game they are the class 1 Heavy East Indiaman.

The La Licorne is next and since it has 3 sails per mast instead of 2 like the others it will take some time.
 
Hylie Pistoff said:
Thank you! :onya

Would you be interested in doing that for the ships in my FTP folder? Some of them could use your touch.

Once you learn its quirks TOOL seems to be ok. Except when it crashes every so often. It also seems to work better on some puters than others.
Click to expand...
Do you mean that you want the stock ship files I modified? If yes, how come? I thought the build mod didn't use the stock ships or that they were heavily modified and whatnot. :shock

All of them or some specific? I guess I could try. :)

Is it known which circumstances work best for it? I use it with XP and .NET Framework 1.1.
 
Most of the stock ships are still being used, but they have been modified with things like anchors and bells and figureheads. Mainly what I have done with the ships in my folder is the rigging. But I started on them back in May before the camera locator was an issue. So some of the newest old ships still have odd camera locators. For me to fix them would require me to sail every ship again and then adjust them in TOOL. But you have already done that. You could simply compare the ships with your camera locators with mine and adjust mine as needed. Or you could just post your files and I could attempt using Winmerge.


TOOL works well for me most of the time, except when it doesn't. There are some ships that when I try to save the GM it corrupts them. I could not change the camera or add ropes to those ships. Others work ok until I try to modify them in tool. The East Indiaman is like that. We can not fix the flagpole problem with them. But maybe you could. I use Win7 and .NET framework 4.
 
unless i'm mistaken, those extra pieces added to the stock ships were added with mast locators. could that matter with repairing the flag locators?
 
The light frigates have 2 hulls mated together with a locator and are fine. The brigs and/or barks have 2 spankers mated together with a locator. But sometimes they still give GA. The small ships in general are poorly made and troublesome. The big ships are better.

But overall I would say the the things added over the years have no effect on GA. Most ships have the extras added on as "deck.gm". This is one locator, and while doing my rigging I have added dozens of locators to ships that are now fine. Have you tried the new light frigates? They are nice ships.

It is the flags that are causing the GA. And it's not just flags on the ships. It's the forts, and maybe islands. I have had bad GA around islands with no forts. And the ship sinking stuff causes GA. There is still tons of work to do.

This is the frigate 1 deck.gm.
 
have you noticed how that sometimes goes missing? i've seen it happen when i repainted my ship a few times, like the game only loads the basic ship when it repaints and not both parts of the model.
 
Curses. You want me to remember stuff? :facepalm I know repainting in the shipyard can get buggy but it usually only goes wonky when you get an out of class ship, like going from the class 6 light corvette to a class 5 light frigate. Or going from a class 6 light fluyt to the class 4 heavy fluyt.
 
I see. I'll give it a look. Before I try anything, though, I would like to know how you would like the camera placed. In my game I made it so that the player is slightly taller than the crew. This is partly so that they're not "in the way", so to speak. Would you like the player to be as tall as the crew, or...?

Please explain for the uninitiated, what exactly is the "flagpole problem", and if I can open the ships with the problem in TOOL, what must I do to fix it?
 
The flagpole problem is related to the third person camera issue that some ships have, which makes it centre far too high above the ship when zoomed out fully.
Basically, this is because some ships have the flagpole integrated as part of the hull. Since the hull is normally responsible for how the third person camera is centred above the ship, the extra height the flagpole adds makes the camera too high up.
The way to fix this is to remove the flagpole from the hull, and add it as a separate model file using a locator.
This does involve using TOOL in most cases, but sometimes doing so corrupts the hull, and ruins the collision detection, as well as causing a 'beep' sound whenever the ship is encountered.
To avoid that, the model needs to be exported into Maya, where it can have the flagpole removed and made into a separate model file, and re-exporting it all back to GM format.

Anyway, if you want to try the TOOL method yourself, here's what to do:
  1. Make a copy of the model you need to fix.
  2. Open one version in TOOL, and use 'Edit Scene' to delete the part with the flagpole attached. Save the file.
  3. Open the other version, and use 'Edit Scene' to delete everything BUT the flagpole part, and save the file.
  4. Rename the copy which is now just the flagpole to something like '[modelname]_flagpole.gm'.
  5. Add a new geometry locator to the hull. Call it 'flagpole', at position (0,0,0), and save the file. Now the model should appear as one part in-game, and the camera should centre correctly.
What interests me, though, is that your OS and .NET framework combination could be very TOOL-friendly...
Could you try an experiment to confirm that? Just try to open the model 'SoleilRoyal_part1.gm' in RESOURCE/MODELS/Ships/SoleilRoyal, and let me know if it works.
If you can open the model successfully, then that would be extremely useful! :will
 
I have been making us all about the same height. If they get in my way I move to where they aren't. But some of the crews are way off, like I would be waist high to them or they would be chest high to me.


Here is a pic of the ship I'm working on now. When I was using a 4:3 monitor this was not a problem, but when I got a widescreen it became a problem. Some ships are worse. I need to see the wake when sailing and it is not visible.

Armada's instructions will probably leave you lost. It took me many tries to figure out the scene---->edit scene routine, and then more time to think to click on the + next to the ship name. Anyway, on this ship, La Licorne, the offending part is called "detail 5". Hilite it and hit the big delete button. Here is a good thing about TOOL. Nothing is permanent until you hit the "save GM" button. It is still a good idea to make copies of the copies before starting. I often need them. :wp
 
Armada: Thank you.

I tried it and yes, I can open the file. :)

Hylie Pistoff: Okay, then I will place the camera so that the player is as tall as the crew.

I opened the "La_Licorne.gm" file, followed the instructions, and deleted "detail 5". I'm uploading it, and hopefully everything went right.
 
Baste said:
I tried it and yes, I can open the file. :)
Click to expand...
That's a good sign! :woot

Now I have to ask if you can do me another favour, based on 'SoleilRoyal_part1.gm', since this could just be the solution to making that ship editable for everyone else.
With that file open (make four copies before this), can you try to use the 'Edit Scene' function to delete three out of the four parts, and save it?
Then, try to do the same for three of the other copies, each time deleting three parts, but leaving a different one behind.

Next, using the original file again in TOOL, select 'Locators --> Write to file', and save the file in the model folder.
You then need to check that the edited copies can be read in GM Viewer. If each one now has less than 50,000 faces (check in the top left corner of the screen), then select 'OBJ Export' for each of them.
If all of that is successful, then please upload the locator file and the four OBJ files to the FTP (plus the four edited GMs, just for good measure).

If any of that doesn't make sense, or goes wrong, then let me know. Otherwise, fingers crossed that it works! :b:
 
It seems the file has five parts, and when I tried to save only "hull" it gave this error message and the file didn't work in GM Viewer: "Model.ReorderParts: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection. Parameter name: index"

Perhaps that one doesn't need to be saved, though?

Apart from that, everything seemed to work. Now, how do I upload them to the FTP?
 
Hmm, hopefully that shouldn't matter. We'll have to wait and see. :?

To get the files on the FTP, you'll need to get FTP Commander from here, and use the login details provided in that post.
Then, create your own folder on the PotC Files FTP, and upload the files to that folder. If you hit any problems, let me know.
 
All right, then I guess here we go: http://www.pyratesahoy.com/potc/Baste/Armada.rar - Hopefully everything works.
 
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