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WIP Re-Adding the AoP Battleship

I know about "Write to File". That's where the .txt files spotted by @Jack Rackham came from. xD

I may have another try at transplanting some other ship's masts onto the battleship. Judging by the Y co-ordinates of some locators, the masts of other battleships may be too short compared to those already on "Battleship4", so I may try taking masts from something larger. The problem is still matching locators from the masts to those on the hull, which is where I got stuck last time...

Simply copying locators might not work. The replacement masts will be a different size from the original, so any locators imported onto the new masts are liable to be somewhere in mid-air. On the other hand, I suppose if I do that, and then look at the result, it might be easier to then figure out which ropes are in the wrong place and correct their co-ordinates rather that try to cross-reference between text files to figure out which locator on the new mast is equivalent to which locator on the original.
 
I have started to add small cannons. Noticed when testing that there are some differences between the
ropes in the upper parts of the masts. Mast2 has 2 ratlines, mast3 only 1 and mast4 none.
 
Yes, the entire starboard upper mainmast shroud and both entire upper mizzenmast shrouds are missing. I'll see what I can do; it should just be a matter of adding some "vant" locators. The bases for the existing upper shrouds could also do with being moved slightly outwards.
 
What I have been reading is "General Guide to Locators.pdf". I've also been using TOOL to look at the locators on this battleship, as well as the stock PoTC variants and a couple of others. What I have found is:
  • On most ships, "vant*l" and "vant*r" locators, the ones which set the base of a set of shroud lines, are always left and right respectively as viewed from the side of the ship on which they're mounted. So a shroud on the port side will have its "vant*l" locator nearer the bow, whereas a shroud on the starboard side will have its "vant*l" locator nearer the stern. On this battleship, "vant*l" locators are always the one nearer the bow. But that is true on both "mast2" (foremast) and "mast3" (mainmast), so if that were the issue, I'd expect all the starboard shrouds to be missing, not just the one on the main topmast.
  • There are no upper shrouds on "mast4", the mizzen, because there are no "vant*l" or "vant*r" locators on the mast. A lot of other ships don't have upper mizzen shrouds either. The stock ship appears to have no shrouds on the mizzen at all; there are no "vant*u" locators on the mizzen and no "vant*l" or "vant*r" locators on the hull near the mizzen. At least the sailors on the AoP battleship can get half way up the mizzen!
  • There are a pair of rope locators, "ropeb55" and "ropee55", one of which is near the top of the mainmast and the other of which is on the platform where the mainmast upper shrouds are supposed to start. That means this rope would run straight through the middle of the mainmast starboard upper shroud, the one which is missing. I'm going to see what happens if I shift the upper locator for that rope over to the mizzen, as there is currently no rope connecting the upper mizzen to the mid mainmast. (Any rope with a number over 50 is one which, on the original AoP model, was a "fal" locator for a heavier rope. The regular ropes on this ship don't go up as far as 50, so I simply added 50 to the number and changed "fal" to "rope".)
Next time I get a chance to play the game, I'm going to load up my saved Free Play game with the battleship and see whether moving that rope made the starboard main topmast shroud visible...
 
Here's the added deck with 15 small cannons, a bell and a figurehead. The 8 cannons pointing at sea
have got locators for firing effects.

I don't know if you count the smaller deck cannons into the total of guns, but if you do
obs there are 4 default ones on the stern balcony too. (which fire)
 

Attachments

  • JRH battleship4 deck 17-02-01.7z
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Thanks, @Jack Rackham! I'll add "geometry" locators to my version of the ship to include that. You've also added a figurehead, too - excellent!

Small deck guns don't generally count toward the ship's total guns. I noticed the four on the stern, and may very well de-activate them - the original ship only had 2 stern cannons.
 
After a lot of messing about, I finally figured out why the mainmast upper shroud doesn't appear. It's defined as "vant10". And it seems the system doesn't like double digit "vant" locators. Shrouds need to be in pairs, so that means 4 pairs at most, which is why the other battleships have no mizzen shrouds at all. With fore upper/lower, main upper/lower, port/starboard for each, you can't have mizzen shrouds unless you lose one of the pairs of shrouds on the fore or main masts.

Or can you?
battleship4_screenshot7.jpg

It turns out that although "vant10" doesn't work, "vant0" does. So I renamed the mainmast upper shroud to "vant0", it now appears, the mizzen gets to keep its shrouds, and (although they can't be seen in this picture) the foremast shrouds are all still there as well. (I found a couple of "fal" locators on the mizzen which I presumably didn't spot and convert to "rope" earlier. They're converted now, so at least there's a pair of ropes on the upper mizzen even if there isn't a pair of full shrouds.)

Other things I discovered:
  • The system doesn't seem to care about the group name for "vant" locators. I've seen various groups assigned to them on other ships. But it means you can't have "vants\vant1" defining a shroud from hull to mast, and "mast3\vant1" defining another shroud on the topmast - the system disregards the group, regards the whole lot as "vant1", gets confused, and makes a mess.
  • Letters instead of numbers are accepted, but the system seems to regard any letter as the same invalid number. So "vanta" is accepted, "vantb" is accepted, but if you have them both, again the system regards them as all the same, and makes a mess, as I found out when I tried to make the mainmast upper shroud "vanta", then defined shrouds "vantb" and "vantc" for mizzen upper shrouds.
So you effectively have ten sets of shroud locators, "vant0" - "vant9", therefore five pairs, which means you can have foremast upper/lower, mainmast upper/lower and mizzen lower. You can't also have mizzen upper, or shrouds on the sprit topmast, or third shrouds on the fore and mainmast for those ships with three-section masts. (Unless you go the alternative route of building shrouds directly into the mast models, and not using "vant" locators at all, which is what some ships do. But that's currently beyond my ability.)
 
That's some good discoveries, @Grey Roger! :onya

@Armada and @Hylie Pistof: Does the above agree with what you know as well?
Or is there some trickery you know of to get around those limitations?
Alternatively, should those limitations be mentioned in the "General Guide to Locators"?
 
@Jack Rackham: the figurehead appears to be an enlarged version of the griffon figurehead from "Corvette1". Would you be able to similarly enlarge the warrior and panther figureheads from "Corvette2" and "RN_Corvette"? I'm planning on doing French and Spanish versions of the ship - the French one is easy, it's just going to use the original texture from AoP, while the Spanish one will be similar to the new one with dark red instead of blue. It would be nice if each version also had a different figurehead.
 
Yes I can look into it but I'm out on the roads this thursday - sunday again so next week.
 
Pieter Boelen said:
@Armada and @Hylie Pistof: Does the above agree with what you know as well?
Or is there some trickery you know of to get around those limitations?
Alternatively, should those limitations be mentioned in the "General Guide to Locators"?
Click to expand...
I vaguely recall encountering that 8-vant limit before, but apparently I didn't try vant0. :oops:
I'll look into updating the PDF soon. Is there anything else the tutorial doesn't cover?
 
Jack Rackham said:
Yes I can look into it but I'm out on the roads this thursday - sunday again so next week.
Click to expand...
No problem, it gives me time to set up the model files for the French and Spanish versions. The figurehead is a separate module anyway, so I can put its locator in the base model, use the griffin figurehead for now, and drop in one of the others as and when you have time to build it.
 
Yes vant 0 to vant 9 is the limit. You can see that if you look at some of the last ships I upgraded. Of course I no longer remember what they were, perhaps the fluyts.

I hooked up my external drive and found a working Beta 1 Patch 5 install from 2011 that has 6 battleships. If you want anything, let me know.
 
Do you have a version of "Battleship1.gm" or any derivative of it ("Battleship3.gm", "RN_Battleship.gm", "SP_Battleship.gm") which is readable by TOOL? The current versions aren't, and the PDF guide says this means the model has become corrupted.

Meanwhile, I have two choices for a Spanish colour scheme. Either replace the black stripes with red and leave the wood alone:
sp_battleship4_1.jpg

Or replace the wood stripes with red and leave the black alone:
sp_battleship4_2.jpg

The first looks nicer, to me anyway, but the second looks more consistent with some other Spanish ships. Anyone else have any preference?
 
Do you have a version of "Battleship1.gm" or any derivative of it ("Battleship3.gm", "RN_Battleship.gm", "SP_Battleship.gm") which is readable by TOOL?
Click to expand...
No I have not.
 
Grey Roger said:
The first looks nicer, to me anyway, but the second looks more consistent with some other Spanish ships. Anyone else have any preference?
Click to expand...
This ship isn't really a Napoleonic one, right? So perhaps it is OK to be a bit more loose with the colour scheme?
I agree with you that the first looks nicer; it's more colourful. The black/grey on the other one seems a bit dull to me.
 
Grey Roger said:
Meanwhile, I have two choices for a Spanish colour scheme.
Click to expand...
I prefer the first one as well. It looks more unique than many of our other Spanish ships of the same era.
 
Behold the work of @Jack Rackham...

Ding ding!
bell.jpg

Boarders and mutineers beware!
deck_guns.jpg

The ship's new figurehead.
figurehead.jpg


Meanwhile, the original colour scheme will return as the French version:
fr_battleship4.jpg

And here are how the two Spanish choices look in broad daylight, as opposed to the dull lighting in GM Viewer:
sp_battleship4_1_screenshot.jpg sp_battleship4_2_screenshot.jpg
 
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