WIP Re-Adding the AoP Battleship

[Pieter Boelen]

On the other hand, this one has transparent windows and a cabin.

That's cool! Might be a different version from the stock AoP one then; I doubt that one had a visible cabin.
So that's bonus.

How do you add those sorts of details? Some of them, e.g. wheel and anchors, are built into this ship already. Others, such as deck guns and windlass, I wouldn't mind adding.

It can be done using TOOL. I'm not the expert on that, but @Jack Rackham is quite proficient at it.

 

[Jack Rackham]

The idea is to make one or several .gm models for ex. called deck.gm
Now in the locatorfile for the hull add a line with deck, group = geometry
coordinates 0 0 0.

See for ex. GoldenHind and open its locatorfile.

It's easier to see what's happening in the TOOL if you make it point to a folder with .tga textures.
Then it's just to test and test... to get those items in place.

 

[Grey Roger]

But presumably first the .gm files have to be created, which is currently beyond me. Remember, I was feeling pleased with myself for just setting up a rope. And on that note, I did indeed look at the locators for Golden Hind. It has some rope ends without any corresponding beginnings, or at least I can't find the beginnings in any of the mast or rey files, and the reason they're not giving "Bad rope" errors is probably that they're AoP style "fale" locators. One of us will need to do to Golden Hind what I did to the battleship: find out where they're supposed to go, then convert them to "ropee" and add corresponding "ropeb" locators...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

A lot of those "detail GMs" can be found in VCO.
If I recall, that is where Seb originally got them from.
@Jack Rackham probably has a lot of that in his archives.

 

[Grey Roger]

Next problem: we're running out of slots in the four big files of interface pictures. I'm considering defining a fifth - call it "shipsTM", perhaps. Is there any reason why this can't be done, or anything I need to be careful about? Or is it just a matter of adding another section to "pictures.ini" to define "shipsTM" as "SHIPS5", then using "SHIPS5" in future ship definitions in "Ships_init.c"?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Totally possible. The four current ones are named as they are for:
Top Right
Top Left
Bottom Right
Bottom Left

 

[Armada]

One thing I'd strongly recommend doing for this ship is adding a third square sail to the foremast and mainmast, like the other battleships have. Its current rig looks outdated for a hull of that size and design, and a new sail layout would help it fit in with other 17th and 18th century ships.

 

[Jack Rackham]

Yes I see the deck guns are missing. I'll see if I have anything.

When adding parts you first have to place them in the meshes folder of the TOOL.
Then open a new TOOL. Open your model. Scene/Edit scene.
Click on your model, search for the wanted model to the left and doubleclick it. Save gm.

This would add a cannon for ex. to you ship model. But we wanted it as a separate
gm-model. (I think) Why not add them permanent to the hull?

For the GoldenHind I added my things to a copy of the hull and when all were in place I deleted the hull.

 

[Grey Roger]

Totally possible. The four current ones are named as they are for:
Top Right
Top Left
Bottom Right
Bottom Left

I thought so. That's why I suggested TM - Top Middle.

 

[Grey Roger]

One thing I'd strongly recommend doing for this ship is adding a third square sail to the foremast and mainmast, like the other battleships have. Its current rig looks outdated for a hull of that size and design, and a new sail layout would help it fit in with other 17th and 18th century ships.

That will be a neat trick if I can do it! A third sail is going to mean a new mast with three sections, which means I'll need to copy the masts from some other ship, which is going to play merry havoc with the ropes. Unless anyone else wants to volunteer, in which case I can upload the files I have now and let someone who knows what he is doing upgrade the model.

Meanwhile, here's my new hull:


Based loosely on the colour scheme of HMS Centurion, the royal blue is replaced by the lighter turquoise blue which seems common to some warships of similar vintage. The fleurs-de-lys are gone so the ship is not restricted to France. The white stripes are now wood colour and broadened a bit, while the thick dark brown middle stripe is now black, matching the bottom stripe, and is a bit narrower. The waterline extends forward to the bow and back onto the rudder. The red on top of the sides of the cabin is now the same blue as surrounding areas, but the stern platform remains red.

 

[Jack Rackham]

There's a single cannon with wheels "cannon2" in Ammo/BuildingItemsJRH.
The size can always be changed in the TOOL.

 

[Armada]

This would add a cannon for ex. to you ship model. But we wanted it as a separate
gm-model. (I think) Why not add them permanent to the hull?

Editing the hull model directly in TOOL could cause problems such as reverse lighting or making the model unreadable, so a separate GM is safer.
The best way to edit a hull itself is through Maya, though it's understandably a more daunting and complicated solution.

A third sail is going to mean a new mast with three sections, which means I'll need to copy the masts from some other ship, which is going to play merry havoc with the ropes.

That would be tricky because of those mast stumps on the hull, which probably won't match any other masts exactly.

By the way, which version of the model are you using? I think the version I uploaded before had gun models on the deck.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Nice texture work there, @Grey Roger!

 

[Grey Roger]

Next problem: we're running out of slots in the four big files of interface pictures. I'm considering defining a fifth - call it "shipsTM", perhaps. Is there any reason why this can't be done, or anything I need to be careful about?

Answer: yes! It turns out that there are several hard-coded references to "SHIPS1", "SHIPS2", "SHIPS3" and "SHIPS4", starting with some code at the end of "Ships_init.c". The others are interface code, with blocks similar to:

   GameInterface.SHIP.ImagesGroup.t0 = "ICONS";
   GameInterface.SHIP.ImagesGroup.t1 = "SHIPS16";
   GameInterface.SHIP.ImagesGroup.t2 = "SHIPS1";
   GameInterface.SHIP.ImagesGroup.t3 = "SHIPS2";
   GameInterface.SHIP.ImagesGroup.t4 = "SHIPS3";
   GameInterface.SHIP.ImagesGroup.t5 = "SHIPS4";

I had to add in a line to accomodate "SHIPS5":

   GameInterface.SHIP.ImagesGroup.t0 = "ICONS";
   GameInterface.SHIP.ImagesGroup.t1 = "SHIPS16";
   GameInterface.SHIP.ImagesGroup.t2 = "SHIPS1";
   GameInterface.SHIP.ImagesGroup.t3 = "SHIPS2";
   GameInterface.SHIP.ImagesGroup.t4 = "SHIPS3";
   GameInterface.SHIP.ImagesGroup.t5 = "SHIPS4";
   GameInterface.SHIP.ImagesGroup.t6 = "SHIPS5";

Once I'd tracked them all down, it worked. I missed one, so for a while it seemed to work until I went to hire some crew, at which point I got another blank image. I hadn't found the similar block in "hirecrew.c". Once that one was fixed, hiring crew worked as well. And so:

Unless anyone objects, I plan to change "Tales of a Sea Hawk" to use this ship as the flagship of Silehard's counterattack on Bridgetown, which is where I last saw it in action - though at that time it was Greenford, in Build 13. Meanwhile, a bit of customisation allows me to play Silehard's right-hand man, on the search for the renegade Nathaniel Hawk:


The ship is currently the only one of its kind, so no repaints available:


What was once only a development picture in GMViewer is now reality:

By the way, which version of the model are you using?

The one which to which @Pieter Boelen posted a link here:
WIP - Re-Adding the AoP Battleship | PiratesAhoy!

I had a try at changing masts but figuring out which ropes from the new masts went where so that I could rename them to match their counterparts on the rest of the model proved too hard. If you want three sails to a mast, perhaps you could have a try? And maybe @Jack Rackham, could you knock up a "battleship4_deck.gm" with some small deck guns and maybe a figurehead? If so, this ship is going to be awesome - it's already a better looking base model than the regular battleship based on the stock PoTC one. (Well, I think so anyway, and not because I've been working on it! It's the other way round - I've been working on it because I think it's a better base model.) If it does get upgraded like that, I could create a few variants for other nations. French is easy, just use the original texture - or maybe use the new one, with dark brown instead of black stripes, and the original royal blue with fleurs-de-lys instead of the new shade. A Spanish version could have dark red stripes and uppers, a Dutch one could have green uppers, and I'd need to decide what to do for a Portuguese one. It's not as though we're short of interface picture slots any more.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Congratulations, @Grey Roger!

 

[Grey Roger]

Now available for people to try out:
http://piratesahoy.bowengames.com/potc/Grey Roger/aop_battleship.zip

Included in there are the new "shipsTM.tga.tx" and amended files to make it work. There are still a few slots left in the original four interface picture files but now there are a lot more.

Also included is "PROGRAM\Storyline\standard\characters\init\Story.c" with Waulter Tomlison now using the new battleship. His original ship assignment is still there, commented out, so you can easily change him back to using the variant of the stock battleship if you prefer it.

 

[Jack Rackham]

First, all those extra .txt files included in the folder, do they really have to be there in the game?

I can try add those things but don't have time right now. Next weekend I have to go to Stockholm
but after that I'll see what I can do.

 

[Grey Roger]

Randswear();

No, those .txt files weren't supposed to be there. They were part of my effort to link locators on new masts to locators on the existing hull. I've removed them and re-uploaded the .zip file. Thanks for spotting that!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Randswear();

 

[Armada]

I had a try at changing masts but figuring out which ropes from the new masts went where so that I could rename them to match their counterparts on the rest of the model proved too hard.

This is where the Locators > Write to File and Read from File options are helpful in TOOL. A good method is to write the locators from the old masts to a file and import them onto the new masts, so you don't have to rename the locators individually.

If you want three sails to a mast, perhaps you could have a try?

Maybe I would, but in my free time I'm currently working on this:

Spoiler: Show image

I'm not ruling out a version for PotC...