• New Horizons on Maelstrom
    Maelstrom New Horizons


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Flag Locators Repair Project

Hylie Pistoff said:
Haven't you ever sunk yourself by hitting a mine?
Click to expand...
Always been a near miss for me. The last time I had a proper fleet was... probably before I started modding the game. :rolleyes:
What I meant was, I didn't know you could deploy your own mines, but I have encountered them at sea.

I'd say the model I gave you would be a good base model to use, considering all the extra details.
If you're worried about the there being two hulls 'fused' together, let me put your mind at ease:
The hull you see is the 'bugged' one which would beep by itself, but because of its bugged size of 151KB, it's no bigger than a usual 'deck' detail model.
And because it's not the base hull, it's not responsible for the collision detection, so there's no beeping.
Plus, the 'invisible' model used as the base hull is still MUCH smaller than most of our new high quality ships, so the overall size of the ship model is still reasonable for your HD to cope with.
Even if you had all corvettes use this model, and encountered them all at once, I can't imagine there'd be a huge framerate drop below what you'd normally expect. :no

Hylie Pistoff said:
I'm going to sneak onto my wife's puter and try to save one in TOOL there.
Click to expand...
Good luck then... If you get caught, it was nice knowing you... xD:
 
Well, I'll start on the frigates. But I was thinking of the future. Sure this new model is about 1/5th the size of the Bellona, but it is also about 5 times the size of most ships in POTC. And better skins will be added later. Oh. will a helmsman be added later? I like that wheel and think it should be put on all of the smaller ships. :onya
 
Hylie Pistoff said:
But I was thinking of the future. Sure this new model is about 1/5th the size of the Bellona, but it is also about 5 times the size of most ships in POTC.
Click to expand...
We'll have to wait and see just how much the new model affects things then. I still don't think it will cause problems, but obviously that hasn't been proven yet. :shrug

The helmsman is still there, as part of the 'deck' model, but you can no longer see him. :razz
I only removed him from view because he's probably not in the right position for the new wheel. Some tinkering in TOOL could put that right.

As for the new wheel... unfortunately, along with all the other details, it's not a standalone component (like the old wheel, helmsman etc are within the 'deck' model).
It's part of a whole component, same as the new cannons are, so you can't copy the wheel onto other ships just yet.
We'd need a modeller to isolate the wheel, and preferably some of the other details, into individual files.
I might give it a try sometime, but I think Craiggo did at some point, with no success. That doesn't bode well for anything I attempt. :facepalm
 
And i see we have some lighting issues(they 'glow' at night, so don't have a day/light shadow or something) on some of the current 'ships wheels' as is, so that might be something to consider also.
 
Indeed the Drop Mine is not in DefaultControls, though it could be added.
The call is in PROGRAM\CCCdirectsail.c:
Code: 
void ProcessCCCkeys(string ControlName) // Jan07, called by Seadogs.c. Put the code here so that I don't have to mess with seadogs.c for every control change
{
if(bSeaActive && !bAbordageStarted) // checks if you are in sailing mode
{
switch(ControlName)
{
case "BI_ChargeKey9": //"Minedrop":
LaunchMine(GetMainCharacter());
break;

case "BI_ChargeKey0": //Toggle directsail
if(CheckAttribute(GetMainCharacter(),"nodirectsail"))
{
DeleteAttribute(GetMainCharacter(),"nodirectsail");
Logit("Directsail mod active");
}
else
{
characters[GetMainCharacterIndex()].nodirectsail = 1;
Logit("Directsail mod deactivated");
}
break;

case "BI_ChargeKey8": //"Seaview position":
DisplaySeaviewCoords();
break;
}
}
}
Should still work though. :shrug

The ability to drop mines was introduced to compensate for the chance of being able to encounter them floating around randomly.
I think it's mentioned in the DirectSail documentation, but that's part of the very expansive "New Horizons Tutorials & History.pdf".
Probably most people don't read all the way through that, which I can't blame them for.

Basically all added details have "reverse lighting", which cannot really be helped unless the whole ships are remodeled and re-exported.
 
one curious reverse lighting bug i've seen is that the most detailed lugger has a proper outside, but reversed inside. lugger VML.
 
Yes, that's one's a bit strange. It's less noticeable than most reverse lit ships, luckily, so at least it's acceptable as a starter ship.
I think the old Lydia frigates are similar, in that they're reverse lit in a different way to everything else. :wacko:
 
I've looked at the flags and messed with the rigging and sails. Now to put a hex on her.
 
Woah, woah, woah, stop the presses! I've just made another breakthrough!
I've just managed to re-export the more detailed hull through Maya to fix the lighting bug! And it worked! :mi :warr
It turns out some of those exporting tutorials actually make sense once you've read them a few times. :cheeky

The file (Corvette1.gm) is in the same FTP folder I put the others in.
You can safely do away with the old 'corvette1.gm' and 'corvette1_part1.gm', along with 'blank1_corvette1.tga.tx'.
 
Well, that's good news and bad news. :)) It is very good news that you are learning how to use Maya! :bow That opens up a world of possibilities because almost everything in the game has the reverse lighting bug, including the islands. It is good news that now one model replaces several models lowering the load on the hardware, plus making the install much cleaner. I am a firm believer in the KISS Principle ( Keep It Simple Stupid) and this fits the bill.

It is bad news in that I have done 10 of the frigates and will now get to go back and do them again. But that is a small job.

It has been years since I last did any hex editing and I have forgotten how to blank out something. This means that all of the light frigates have the same bow ornament, that weird half bird thing with legs sticking out all over the place.

Anyway, this is a good day. :cheers

This also means I don't have to use the wife's computer.
 
It's great news indeed, especially for fixing reverse lighting issues. I'll have a much busier 'To do' list now than I did before...
I can just see Legendary_Spider nagging me about the Constitution now. It was only earlier today that I told him on ModDB I had no idea how to export through Maya... :facepalm

I'm sorry you have to do the corvettes again. :eek:ops I'm annoyed I didn't try this sooner, but at least you shouldn't need to change any locators.

About the extra 'deck' details. You can blank them out using the HEX editor by replacing their textures with an appropriate 'blank' texture.
All the blank textures I used for the deck I gave you are exactly the same; their names are just different lengths so that they can replace different length texture names.
For example, you can simply replace 'deck.tga' with 'blnk.tga', or any five-letter names with 'blank.tga' etc.

That's the easy way, but it uses more textures. The other way involves using TOOL to remove the unwanted details altogether, using 'Edit Scene'.
That's not difficult, but it relies on TOOL behaving itself, and we all know how often it throws tantrums. :j3

Speaking of details, I might be able to separate that new wheel after all... ;)
 
It appears there is still a problem that I don't know how to correct. I've got those 10 ships working again but there is a problem with "deck.gm". If I rename it to blnk.gm or Blnk.gm the ship gets transparent. If I leave it as deck.gm the ship is good except that it has the corvette1 figurehead. I will attempt to use TOOL to "edit scene" again when I am done with the rest of the frigates. I had no luck at all the last time I tried to do that for the flagpoles. TOOL didn't do it at all.
 
i think the problem caused by renaming is because the game is now looking for a file that can't be found. that transparency is what you get when you're looking against the non-viewable side of a model. so the deck isn't transparent, it's just not there at all. have you ever tried side-sliding out of a building? you can look inside from the outside through the now transparent walls.
 
Looks to me like you've been editing the wrong model. :blink:
If you did what you described, then Morgan is right, the ship is now looking for a model (deck.gm) which no longer exists (it's now 'blnk.gm').
What confuses me is that should cause an immediate CTD, though. And I don't see how the deck on the hull should disappear by doing that, since that's part of the hull.

What you should be doing is using the HEX editor to open the 'deck.gm' of each corvette, and finding the textures listed which you don't want, and replacing them with 'Blnk.tga' etc.
Nothing in that process should remove the actual deck on the hull; it should only remove the unwanted extra details from view, and leave you with the figurehead.

Using 'Edit Scene' in TOOL should work if you know what you're doing.
Once you open it, expand the group you see by clicking the [+] sign, and you'll see a short list of things which don't make sense.
You then need to find, by trial and error, which of those is the figurehead, simply by clicking each one in turn and clicking the 'Delete' button.
When I looked at Corvette1's deck file, it was 'Object 06' which was the figurehead; I'd imagine it's similar for the others.
Close the window and save the file once you're finished. You'll know you were successful if TOOL doesn't throw any error messages at you.
 
When I look at deck.gm in GMViewer all it shows is the figurehead. So I thought that making the deck.gm blank would only make the figurehead invisible. Obviously not. :eek:k So all of the light frigates will have that figurehead until someone figures it out.


On a happier note, I took a break and went sailing in CorvFrig1. I happened upon a battle between the French and Spanish and settled down to wait. Soon one of them surrendered and I sailed over and rammed it. It took several passes but eventually the frigate lost a mast. I then sailed around in the middle of 15 big ships on a dark and rainy night for a full hour game time and never saw even a hint of graphic anomalies. :shoot:

Since all of the light frigates are the same except for the paint job, I'm going to say that they all should be good and clean sailing ships. :nerbz

Ok, I read your post Armada. Back to ye olde drawing board........... :whipa
 
Using TOOL to remove details can cause reverse lighting. But then those added details already DO have reverse lighting. :shrug
 
If a surface is usually shown with a texture, when the texture is missing it will show gray instead and cause a note in system.log.
To have a surface disappear, you must apply an alpha map texture to it.
It is true though that surfaces do have a visible and invisible side, but the hull of a ship is generally visible from the outside. :shrug
 
Well at least you've confirmed the flags are good then... despite the rather evil testing technique or ramming into a surrendered ship... xD:
So the ships are probably around 99% perfect now, when you consider that two of the deadeye models have reverse lighting.
I would try to export them through Maya to fix them, but opening them in GM Viewer is a lag death trap.
Seriously, I can't do a thing, because the program bombards me with error message windows every split second. It even showed a 'stack error' once; I'd never seen that before! :8q
 
I got a new toy! I got a new toy! :)) TOOL worked this time! The first ten light frigates are done and have their original figureheads. I even left the lilguns on the ones that already have them. I'll post them to the FTP as soon as I do a little file cleanup, and then start on the next batch.




It isn't really ramming. It's more like sliding along the side trying to knock a mast off. Picking a fight and just letting them blast away doesn't always work so well because they mostly shoot at the hull.


Those deadeyes do take a long time to load. I've seen that deluge of error messages when trying to open a bad file. Sometimes reinstalling GMViewer helps, sometimes not.
 
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