I still have the Bellona on my desktop to remind me to get to work on it, but GOG had a sale and I have been reaquainting meself with some old friends.
-
Visit our website www.piratehorizons.com to quickly find download links for the newest versions of our New Horizons mods Beyond New Horizons and Maelstrom New Horizons!-
Join our discord server for regular podcasts/AMA about upcoming and released pirate games (Caribbean Legend, Corsairs Legacy, Ahoy, ERAS 2, etc.):
-
Quick links for Beyond New Horizons
- Download latest version
- Wiki - FAQ - Report bugs here - Bug Tracker on Github -
Quick links for Maelstrom
- Download the latest version of Maelstrom
- Download the latest version of ERAS II - Download the latest version of New Horizons on Maelstrom
-
Join PiratesAhoy! on our social channels:
-
Quick links for PotC: New Horizons
- Download latest version
- Wiki - FAQ - Report bugs here
-
Thanks to YOUR votes, GOG.com now sells:
- Sea Dogs - Sea Dogs: Caribbean Tales
- Sea Dogs: City of Abandoned Ships
Vote now to add Pirates of the Caribbean to the list! -
Quick links for AoP2: Gentlemen of Fortune 2
- Downloads and info
- ModDB Profile
- Forums Archive -
A Pirate Podcast with Interviews
Music, Comedy and all things Pirate!
- Episode Guide - About - Subscribe -
- Twitter - Facebook - iTunes - Android -
- Youtube - Fill the Coffers -
Fix in Progress Repairing Bad Ropes
- Thread starter Hylie Pistof
- Start date
I've dealt with "SP_BattleGalleon" (and "PiratBattleGalleon", a storyline-specific variant). "HMS_Victory" still needs to be done. I noticed that because:
... I've dealt with the "Bellona" types as well, due to their presence in "Hornblower". While working on those, I looked at a few other ships to get some idea of how the rigging should look, one of those others being "HMS_Victory", and it did indeed spawn some "Bad Rope" errors. Anyone else want to tackle that one? (And "NL_Lineship", if it still has errors.)
Incidentally, "RN_Superbe" didn't have "Bad Rope" messages when I used it as a comparison with "HMS_Bellona", but it was missing several ropes, so I've added them. Any fixes which I applied to the British versions of those ships, I then copied over to the other versions.
"NL_Lineship" is odd. It appears to be an import from AoP or later because it has some "fal" locators, which AoP uses for heavy, saggy ropes, and which PoTC doesn't use at all. Someone appears to have converted some "fal" locators to "rope" by adding 500 to the number, but didn't finish the job. So the "Bad Rope" messages refer to ropes with numbers over 500 whose other ends are still "fal".
The problem is that TOOL won't read "mast2" - at least, not for me. But for the rope errors, that turned out not to matter because "mast2" must have become corrupted when the locators were changed. It's not the unconverted "fal" locators which are on "mast2", but the converted ropes with numbers over 500, and for some reason one of them had 6300 added to its number. I found the "fal" locators on "mast1", rey_a3" and "rey_c2", converted them to "rope" by adding 500 (or 6300), and now I don't get any "Bad Rope" messages.
Next problem: flags. At present, "NL_Lineship" is set to have pennants on masts 2 and 4 (main and mizzen), and ensigns everywhere else. But the pennant locators on masts 2 and 4 are just duplicates of the flag locators, so the pennants just look like slightly forked ensigns. And I can't correct them on "mast2" because TOOL won't read it. Maybe swap them all, so that masts 0 (hull flagpole), 2 and 4 have ensigns and everything else has pennants? "mast3" already has locators for a stretched pennant and "mast1" can easily be corrected.
Incidentally, some ships with straight bowsprits including a flagpole have a pennant on that flagpole, e.g. "HMS_Bellona". I believe these should be ensigns because that's the jackstaff. In reality, the flag flown there would be the jack, which is not necessarily the same as the ensign everywhere else. For example, the British national flag is often incorrectly called the Union Jack. It's really the Union Flag; it's only the Union Jack when it is a jack, flown from a ship's jackstaff. PoTC can't handle two different flags, but for some nations that wouldn't matter, and any flag would probably be more correct than a pennant.
@Grey Roger: As far as I'm concerned, whatever you think makes it better is fine by me!
Fair enough. Unless there are objections from @pedrwyth or @Hylie Pistof, I'll set anything with a jackstaff on an otherwise straight bowsprit to use a flag there, and set "NL_Lineship" to have its pennants on the main mast and sprit topmast. (Sprit topmasts aren't jackstaffs, so I'm not changing all those to use flags instead of pennants.
)
I never touched that ship because of being unable to read mast2 plus it has the high camera bug. Many ships were like that after being worked over by 2-4 different modders of varying skill levels and methodology.
Do what you want. My eyes are bad and reading can be difficult, so about all I do anymore is reshape a sail here and there on the smaller ships. No more 12-18 hour days doing rigging.
Everything you did and do is still appreciated though.
Here's "NL_Lineship" as it was:
And now in its final form, unless anyone else wants to improve it further:
"Bad Ropes" are fixed, in particular the ones leading from the bowsprit to the foremast. Those are significant because the braces from the spars on the bowsprit and sprit topmast are supposed to be tied to those ropes; without them, the braces appeared to hang in midair.
Pennants and ensigns are swapped as previously suggested, the mainmast pennant is extended slightly and the sprit topmast pennant is extended a lot. You can see the flag-sized pennants on the earlier picture, and the one on the sprit topmast was similar.
Amazing what difference those improved flags make! Nice one.
This is probably one of my favourite mod-added ship models as she's gorgeous.
And even more so now!
She's a custom model made by, I think, @pgargon.
But while he allowed us to use his models when he was here, he himself worked exclusively on CoAS.
So he delivered the model for the later games and somebody else did a quick and dirty conversion to PotC.
Is the original version available anywhere? (I couldn't find it in GoF.) The unmodified version might have a readable "mast2" - someone must have been able to read it in order to convert its "fal" locators into "rope".
Uhm... The only thing I can think of is to ask @Jan Marten.
@pgargon joined his German Modding Community.
Careful though; Jan is a really good guy, but communication can be tricky because of the language barrier.
I've now fixed "HMS_Victory", along with the "FirstRate" models.
Surprisingly, "RN_FirstRate" is different from the others. It only has one sail on the bowsprit and it has three staysails between the main and mizzen masts. So after I'd done that one, I had to do "FR_FirstRate" the hard way as well. "SP_FirstRate" and "US_FirstRate" are identical to "FR_FirstRate", so fixing "SP_FirstRate" was simply a matter of loading up its version of each of the files I'd fixed on "FR_FirstRate", using TOOL's "Read Locators" ability to import the "FR_FirstRate" locators, then saving the results back into "SP_FirstRate". In hindsight I should have done "US_FirstRate" first rather than last, as that one appeared to already have been fixed - it was the only one which didn't produce any "Bad Rope" errors before I'd done anything to it!
"HMS_Victory.gm" had a few more unmatched ropes beyond those I'd removed from the others, and four other ropes had locators different to those on "FR_FirstRate". At first I thought to add locators to balance out the unmatched ones to give HMS Victory some extra rigging, and leave the different ropes alone to make it more distinctive. However, when I checked them in GM Viewer, all these locators were near the waterline, which meant the lower corners of the mainsail and foresail were all tied to silly places on the hull, and adding locators elsewhere to match the surplus ropes would just have added some more weird ropes tied to the lower hull. So I simply read the text locator file from "FR_FirstRate" again to remove the surplus ropes and tie the sails to the proper frames.
And with that, all the ships listed in post #99 plus their variants are now free of "Bad Rope" errors. The whole lot is going into the next update, which I hope to release at the end of this week.
Brilliant work, @Grey Roger!
This is the naval topsail schooner, alias "SchoonerWar":
It doesn't have any bad ropes. This is because it hardly has any ropes at all!
Alright, let's do a bit of rigging work:
As well as a lot of new ropes, the fixed version now has its sails move correctly with the wind, along with a lengthened pennant.
And now the basic "Schooner2", as used by Danielle Greene in "Tales of a Sea Hawk". It didn't need much work: backstays added to the masts, a few support ropes to the foremast spars, and the flags resized. Original vs. new:
There was a peculiar problem here. When I tried to add new rope locators to the hull for the backstays, the game beeped and there were a couple of lines in "system.log" about "trace up" and "trace down". I couldn't see anything wrong with the locators, and if it was some sort of typo then I must have made the same typo, then copied back the original version and tried again, four times in a row. Since "SchoonerWar.gm" is the same basic hull model and I had already successfully added a whole load of rope locators to that, I hex-edited it to use the texture for "Schooner2.gm" and removed a lot of rope locators which aren't needed for this version. And then, when I'd got "Schooner2" the way I wanted it, I copied all the files to "Schooner1", hex-editing the hull again to use the relevant texture.
Good to see the foremast and upper boom won't be falling down any time soon now!
OUCH, that's a super-annoying one! That "beeping" means that the TOOL somehow erased some "collision data" from the model.
Nobody knows why it does that on some GM files, but not others. Even stranger, some people with older computers don't get that problem.
The beeping is definitely not good though. Apart from being an annoying sound, I think it also messes up the positioning of the bow waves and maybe other stuff too.
The first ship to have its jackstaff pennant replaced by a flag is "FR_Sloop", alias Le Rêve. But if the jack gets a flag then the only place for a pennant is the mast; and if that becomes a pennant, there's nowhere for a full size ensign.
Unless it's added onto the gaff. Old vs. new:
I like gaff flags. They're cool.
"RN_Superbe" is missing a few ropes, namely most of the braces. And the ropes from the lower corners of the foresail and mainsail are tied to the hull very low, near the waterline:
Now with added braces and with the sails tied to the same platforms as the shrouds:
The pennants are closer to the masts. And the main ensign is no longer at half mast. -
