WIP Steam Gunboat

[Armada]

Attached is the .OBJ I exported from 3DS to make this work. I'm sure it's nothing to do with your tutorial and more to do with me using C4D. Some quirk in the system.

Thanks, I'll take a look at that soon.

I didn't realise it worked like that straight from Maya, was under the impression it had to go through TOOL or a worksheet to work. I feel a little better about doing it now! Does that work with the gun locator?

Yes, this works with all locator types. I'll need to double check, but I think you just need to place other locators in a group that defines what type they are, as you would in TOOL.
For example, you'd call the bow chaser locator "_1" and put it in a group named "cannonf", with that group parented to the main parent locator.

Ok, so this probably doesn't help:



Don't get why it's wrong though, as I set it exactly central in Maya Ah well.

Did you remember to use Freeze Transformations before exporting?

 

[Robert Nutter]

So just to clarify, I can place ALL locators using the same method as the one I placed the whole model under? And that should work in POTC fresh from Maya, so long as I follow the syntax for which locators are what?

Very cool!

Ah. No, I didn't. When I froze transformations, ALL tris went mad and the mesh got ruined; so I assumed it'd be best to leave that. Maybe I shouldn't have? But how could it have been exported so wrong if both the game and GM Viewer render it completely fine? With the obvious exception of this 0,0,0 thing...

 

[Armada]

So just to clarify, I can place ALL locators using the same method as the one I placed the whole model under? And that should work in POTC fresh from Maya, so long as I follow the syntax for which locators are what?

Yes. It took us a long time to figure out exactly how this worked, but it literally involves using the right naming conventions and selecting all locators before exporting.

Ah. No, I didn't. When I froze transformations, ALL tris went mad and the mesh got ruined; so I assumed it'd be best to leave that.

That is definitely not supposed to happen.
Freezing the transformations is necessary to stop parts from moving out of place when exported.

I imported your OBJ file into Maya 5, and indeed, the normals are already correct on most components. Only the deck was inverted once Double Sided was disabled.
However, the "planked" and "opening" components suffer from the same one-sided issue as the boiler funnel. These components do not have thickness, so I'd strongly recommend extruding them instead of copying the mesh and reversing the normals.
The "sweep" shapes following the top of the hull also seem to have far too many sides. For cylindrical objects like this, I wouldn't normally give them more than 12 sides or so; perhaps even 8 sides would do.

I grouped all the objects together and moved the model to the centre of the scene, then used Centre Pivot on all objects before using Freeze Transformations.
The meshes didn't break as you described, so I have no idea how you managed that with your version.

 

[Robert Nutter]

I only wish I could tell you more, but it was mostly the tris on the hull; they all got the crosshatch effect, almost like a second mesh had been copied onto/into them...

About the hull; it's embarrassing to admit, but I couldn't actually work out how to give it depth. I think I may know a bit more now to be able to do it so I'll have to keep you posted on that one. But yes it would be FAR better to have a hull with some thickness....

As for those silly sweeps; they were a last minute addition to make the hull more complete, in part to fix what the problem above had created actually! I noticed the excessive faces and ran optimization on them to within 5cm (I believe it was) and it looked like It had worked in reducing them down to 10 or so; but it's possible I didn't apply or save it or something as i'd not used the optimization feature before. You live and learn

Thanks for having a go with that; I'll have to give it another try then. It's just me getting to grips with Maya causing most of these problems!

 

[Robert Nutter]

So an update on all this. Sorry to be inconsistant these days but real life pokes its ugly head in...

I've addressed the model issues (funnel/origin point/overly enthusiastic sweeps) and had a bash at changing the engine speed and adding some locators too. Reduced her by 10k tris just by optimising everything now I know how, so we're now at 24k!

@Pieter Boelen , the engine speed seems to be determined by the '/10' and not the Engine power line; I changed that to all sorts and it did nothing, but changing the multiple had drastic effects. I've settled it on '/6' as that's a good speed for my boat; about 10kn without sails, though I don't know how the frigates will deal with this...probably not well I'm guessing. Manoeuvrability is at a premium too, though I wouldn't say it's game-breakingly bad.

@Armada ; I did exactly as you said in Maya for the gun locator but no cheese I'm afraid. Perhaps it's me, but I placed a new locator at the tip of the gun called '_1', then grouped that under 'cannonf', then placed that group under the main locator (locator_1). Should this have worked or did I forget something? Obviously I have no deck view as I havn't done the path so my only way of testing the gun is by getting into a battle and pressing space bar when pointing at a ship...is it possible I didn't place the locator in the right direction? (d'oh!) Ie it's pointing upwards or something hence not responding? Also had a bash at the mast...but so far it's not even appearing in-game so I'll need to revisit that one.

Regarding your Guide, I notice at 7.2.1, you were going to enter further detail with regards to doing this all in Maya. Did you make any notes for it that I may be able to see? If not I'll just have to not be so lazy and work it out in TOOL. It's only a flag and flagpole I have to do for goodness sake! Just makes me respect the complex rigging on some ships all the more...

 

[Armada]

I did exactly as you said in Maya for the gun locator but no cheese I'm afraid. Perhaps it's me, but I placed a new locator at the tip of the gun called '_1', then grouped that under 'cannonf', then placed that group under the main locator (locator_1). Should this have worked or did I forget something? Obviously I have no deck view as I havn't done the path so my only way of testing the gun is by getting into a battle and pressing space bar when pointing at a ship...is it possible I didn't place the locator in the right direction? (d'oh!) Ie it's pointing upwards or something hence not responding? Also had a bash at the mast...but so far it's not even appearing in-game so I'll need to revisit that one.

Can you see the locators on the model in GM Viewer, if you tick Show Locators and Show Labels? If you can, check the list of locators in TOOL to make sure they match all the right settings in the Locators Guide. If not, they didn't export correctly, and you might just have needed to select all the locators before exporting. Having only Locator1 selected will export that one by itself, without its children.

Regarding your Guide, I notice at 7.2.1, you were going to enter further detail with regards to doing this all in Maya. Did you make any notes for it that I may be able to see? If not I'll just have to not be so lazy and work it out in TOOL.

I don't have a 'cheat sheet' for this, unfortunately. I just memorised most of the important stuff and didn't get round to writing it up, yet.
The best reference is the complete Frigate1 model included in these help files, which has all its locators in the proper hierarchy.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The "power" line is just the percentage of maximum power that you can set with the engine control keys.
Indeed that shouldn't need to be changed.

Ideally you should get the ship do approximately the same speed in the game as her speed rate indicates.
Is that the case?

I'm not surprised on her bad manoeuvrability; actually, I expected that.
A ship turns best at "battle sails" and worst at "no sails".
But your ship is meant to have NO sails. So we need to figure out a way to simulate a permanent "battle sails" situation.
But that will require some experimenting.

Once you're sufficiently happy with her, post the files and I'll try to help with that.

 

[Robert Nutter]

Thanks @Armada for the tip, I'll have to try that when I'm next at my workstation; havn't had much of a chance these last few days. Will also check out the frigate; is it the vanilla version? That method does seem odd to me though, as I only exported the model originally by selecting the locator1 with a collapsed hierarchy, and that I must now select the locators with the hierarchy open in order to export more seems somewhat illogical? I don't by any means doubt you on this as that'll most likely work, it just seems weird to me that doing so could make a difference, no?

@Pieter Boelen ; Ah, that would indeed make sense! However, I don't think it's doing the same speed as indicated. I currently have /6 as my mulitplier alongside 15.0 in ships_init. Yet my current speed is definitely a flat 10-11 knots (or whatever the game's unit is) in all weathers on all swells.

Will do! As you'll have gathered I still have paths and locators to do on her, but it'd great if you could help me fiddle with the code in the meantime, to see if we can get something working with that? As without a rudder we're a little lost...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If you post whatever you've got now, I can see what I can do.
But no promises on when I can find the time.
Still have sine other things to be done as well....

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@Robert Nutter: Did you try the Hoist/Lower Sail button yet on your gunboat? Do they work at all? Do they influence the manoeuvring?
If they don't work, please add a sail in some way. You can either hide it in the hull or we can apply an alpha map so you can't see it.

What I'll probably do is to automatically set Battle Sails as soon as you set the engine ahead and set no sails again when you set the engine to zero/reverse.
I don't know for sure if "having a sail" is absolutely required, so that will need checking.

 

[Robert Nutter]

Yeah the sail mechanic works fine; the dialogue appears in the top left and I get the sound effects play. She even speeds up and slows down accordingly; that's how I can judge how much worse the manoeuvrability is after striking all sails (though she *is* still steerable). So hopefully an extra sail isn't needed?

That sounds like an idea which'll work! Will post the model up later on today...unless you're happy using the one I posted for Armada, as that's much the same thing? Did you also want my ships_init?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Yeah the sail mechanic works fine; the dialogue appears in the top left and I get the sound effects play. She even speeds up and slows down accordingly; that's how I can judge how much worse the manoeuvrability is after striking all sails (though she *is* still steerable). So hopefully an extra sail isn't needed?

Indeed if is already controllable as if she does have sails, then no invisible ones should be needed.

Ideally the "fake sails" should do nothing for the speed, but I don't think we can do that.
So we will probably need to figure out the combined speed effect of "half sails + engine".
That will require some fiddling around.

Will post the model up later on today...unless you're happy using the one I posted for Armada, as that's much the same thing? Did you also want my ships_init?

I just need the input for the game; so GMs, TGA.TX files, ships_init.c and whatever other stuff you have already prepared.

 

[Robert Nutter]

Here she is:

Dropbox - Pieter

The model is the pre-correction one, as I havn't yet converted the corrected one into GM. But it's identical so long as you don't mind the transparent funnel and slightly higher poly count! The ships_init is also not finished, I still have a lot to do with it but it works for me just for actually making the model work in-game. You probably already know this, but it'll CTD if you try switching views.

Thanks in advance for any guidance you can give on this, and again I'll get back once I work locators out.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The model is the pre-correction one, as I havn't yet converted the corrected one into GM.

Is that also with the (0,0,0) point still in the wrong spot?

You probably already know this, but it'll CTD if you try switching views.

Agh, that may be VERY annoying. Is that because of a missing walk patch? I imagine so.

If you are able to sort out that CTD and make another export to GM that doesn't crash, that would probably help a lot.

There is no huge rush as it is quite likely that I won't be able to spend a lot of time and effort on this until the weekend.
Even then I cannot make any promises, because there are still some high-importance Beta 4 issues to be addressed too.
But this should make for a FUN side job!

 

[Robert Nutter]

I'll be honest I havn't made much preparation for the walk patch at this stage as wanted to get locators sorted first...but I understand it's not too hard so I'll give it a shot now.

Yes, that one is centered based upon how I wanted her to respond to swell. She'll still nose dive, but nowhere near as much because I moved it closer to the bow.

As you can imagine that suits me better as it gives me some time to sort the CTD

 

[Robert Nutter]

Is the walk tutorial still around? I'll have a look for it...

EDIT: Found it in Thagarr's manual.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'll be honest I havn't made much preparation for the walk patch at this stage as wanted to get locators sorted first...but I understand it's not too hard so I'll give it a shot now.

As you can imagine that suits me better as it gives me some time to sort the CTD

In the worst case, we can always "steal" a walk file from a similarly sized ship.
Then it might not match up, but at least it won't crash either.

Yes, that one is centered based upon how I wanted her to respond to swell. She'll still nose dive, but nowhere near as much because I moved it closer to the bow.

Excellent news!

 

[Robert Nutter]

Ok Pieter is this looking ok? Incredibly, they only appeared once I got the gun locator to work (thanks @Armada !) Though the user still crashes when switching.

How would I steal one? Just for now.

They run up and down randomly, occasionally jumping on and off the gun (like the one guy in this picture)

 

[Robert Nutter]

I can confirm the gun is working perfectly. Well, that's one less thing

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Ok Pieter is this looking ok? Incredibly, they only appeared once I got the gun locator to work (thanks @Armada !) Though the user still crashes when switching.

For clarity's sake, there are TWO things that can be called "walk files":
1. The .c walk file that controls where the crew go: This has to be made manually, but doesn't do any harm if left blank.
2. The walk PATCH that controls where the 1st person camera can go; this is the "*_walk.gm" file (or was it "*_patch.gm"?)
This DOES do harm when it isn't there because the game probably crashes when you switch to the deck camera.

So I mainly care about #2 there, which I imagine is explained somewhere in @Armada's tutorials.
You can copy such a file from another ship for the time being to at least prevent the crashing.

They run up and down randomly, occasionally jumping on and off the gun (like the one guy in this picture)