Pinnace Berlin

[Hylie Pistof]

I have been playing GOF 2.1.5 and recently acquired the Pinnace Berlin. Like so many COAS ships this is the very first version of the ship and has the high camera bug. So I am in the process of porting over the later version from POTC that has this and a few other fixes.

The COAS version comes in three flavors. A light hull with purple upper trim, a medium colored hull with red trim, and a dark hull with dark red trim.
The medium and dark hulls also have their own emblems on the stern.

The POTC version are all the light hull with Green, red, and purple upper trim. They also all have the same stern emblem.

So far I have ported the light hull with green trim, the light hull with purple trim, and the dark hull. IMO the dark hull looks best with no stern emblem as I have not yet figured out how to get an emblem on it.



Also, this ship is afflicted with shipworms and is sinking, with her deck awash and water pouring in through the gun ports. Many GOF ships are afflicted with shipworms and I have been repairing them as I come to them.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Well, I learned how to get a stern emblem on, but not well.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I give up. This is as good as it gets for me. Now to just play the game.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Not so bad, is it?

 

[Elderlaw]

Such a pretty boat. SHIP! The Berlin is a very nice ship model.

Is the "High Camera Bug" actually a BUG? Or is it just a number that's flat out wrong in a file somewhere?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It is because some ship models were exported with the mast as part of the hull GM file.
That increases the average height of the hull GM (that the camera normally centrers on) so the camera ends up aiming higher than it normally would.

 

[Elderlaw]

Thank you sir. I'd been meaning to ask that for months!

 

[Hylie Pistof]

The high camera bug was not a bug at first. I never noticed it until I switched from a 4:3 monitor to a 16:9 monitor. Suddenly some ships could barely be seen at all because the camera was aiming at the sky.

Anyway, I am done except for getting the waterline set properly. I have no ideer how long that will take because the only way to see any changes is to get another one of these ships. And so far there is nothing.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I just discovered that there is already a Dutch pinnace in GOF2.1.5 that looks exactly like the pinnace Berlin with the Dutch paint, so dug out the medium dark skin and glued a pic on the stern. Watcha think?


Still have not seen anything of interest out there except that the Arabella and the 16 gun pinnace have the high camera bug too.

 

[Elderlaw]

I like it. I'd really like to someday do some skins, but haven't even started down that road!

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I am seriously no good at creating textures and only use very basic tools like a 15 year old version of Paint Shop Pro and the regular tools like GMViewer, texture converter, XVI32, and TOOL. Mostly I browse the textures in POTC where they are all dumped into one huge folder and pick and choose the ones I like.

This job was simple as I used text converter to find the textures and then convert them to a type that PSP can use. Then it was a simple copy and paste job where the hardest part was getting the things centered.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That's the way to start.

 

[Elderlaw]

I use a fairly new version of Photoshop where I work, but good old PaintShop Pro can do anything I ever need to do at home. I've done a fair number of skins for both rFactor and FS9. But I haven't gotten my head around how AOP2 works in that area. It's on my list of things to do someday.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

There are two types of ship skins. The older ships use something called a bortout where the entire hull is one 2048 X 2048 texture. Redoing that is your basic copy and paste job.

The newer ships use a different system where different parts of the ship use different textures. I like this system better as you can go wild on colors.

The pinnace Berlin uses bortout and the Neptunus uses the new system.



I have another problem. I just got another pinnace Berlin and could hardly wait to see how good my guess was as to how she rides with full holds. But there was no change! The ship still has water pouring in the gun ports and washing across the deck. What am I missing?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

You made a ships_init.c edit, right?
Did you start a new game or reinitialize afterwards?

 

[Armada]

There are two types of ship skins. The older ships use something called a bortout where the entire hull is one 2048 X 2048 texture. Redoing that is your basic copy and paste job.

The newer ships use a different system where different parts of the ship use different textures. I like this system better as you can go wild on colors.

The 'bortout' textures could be better described as 'non-tileable', where several components are crammed into a single texture. I've no idea what 'bortout' actually means.
The other system is 'tileable' textures such as planking and various metal and wood grains.

Just to summarise the pros and cons...
Tileable textures:

+ Can be low-resolution, repeats across the hull
+ Standardised, can be reused on other ships
+ Easy to edit or change colour

- More textures per ship
- Can't be used on stock ships without changing the UVs
​

Non-tileable textures:

+ Fewer textures per ship
+ Can add unique detailing to ships

- Must be high-resolution to cover entire hull in sufficient quality
- Non-standardised, unique to specific ship models
- Difficult to edit accurately without a UV overlay​

 

[Hylie Pistof]

You made a ships_init.c edit, right?
Did you start a new game or reinitialize afterwards?

Yes I have edited shipinit.c. COAS is different as the changes will not take place until you get another ship of that type. I have done this two times now

I have hit F12 many times and also went into Mod Options and did a reinit there too. Dunno what I'm doing wrong.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Yes I have edited shipinit.c. COAS is different as the changes will not take place until you get another ship of that type. I have done this two times now

That applied to PotC as well until I included a GiveShip2Character update in the Reinit code and that was only a few weeks back.

Maybe the Reinit functionality in CoAS just doesn't work right. In that case, you would need to start a new game.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

That applied to PotC as well until I included a GiveShip2Character update in the Reinit code and that was only a few weeks back.

Maybe the Reinit functionality in CoAS just doesn't work right. In that case, you would need to start a new game.

Umm, no. I have been editing the waterline in POTC for years and hitting F11 and a scene change is all that is needed.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

So I started a new game and just now finally got another pinnace Berlin. The waterline looks ok! I set it to -1.0 in ships init.c and it might actually be better at -1.1, but this is good enough.