1. What is a UTF file?
2. What is it made of?
3. Planets
4. Planet Groups
5. Planet Subgroups
6. Planet Resources
7. Subgroup header "Atmosphere"
8. Hex? Dont hex me dude!
9. Byte Size
10. Float Array
11. Change Nav Map Background By Gibbon
12. Making Giant planets
1.
What is a UTF file?
UTFs is a Library or index where you store information on an object, files with the extensions ".SPH" and ".Mat".
2.
What is it made of?
There can be many different entries in a UTF file
3.
Planets.
Lets look at a planet:
"Planets are cool, and we'll be looking at planet_desored_1500"
4.
The planet has a 1 "Group" when u expand the tree
(just click it)
This group is called "Sphere"
"So its a sphere! Wow! i kinda guessed that dude"
5.
awright, but now we have subgroups
(just click "Sphere" man!)
6.
Now you see alot of bottle like icons, this means that we cant expand anymore
and it also means that now were looking at the Resources a.k.a
data on the object, u should be looking at:
M0, M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M6, Radius and Sides
Ok, lets left-click these guys n see whats what.
Try the M6 resource:
7.
Now to understand what were looking at we look to the right side of the
Utf editor, here we are told by the friendly program that (Mr. Colin Sanby wrote for us)
that this is the data on the planet atmosphere!
This we can jump to conclusions on on the wild guess that the
"planet_desored_atmosphere" header means just that
"Atmospheres are so cool Ras! Ya dem atmosphea rock mon"
(the header is placed after the ASCII, which means "American Standard Code for Information Interchange"
, so what? its code? now u tell me! time for some concrete football"
8.
When u see where it says hex, dont freak out, ur comp is not trying to do a vodoo hex on you
..though that would be cool, this is actually a reference to the hardcode inside the program
(we dont know much about this since were complete noobs over here)
And it has to do with communicating between this object and the Freelancer hardcode..
...yes thats the one we try to hack and find out that our IQs are a bit lower
than we hoped for.
9.
Now were told that the Byte"Size" is 32, this is very reassuring, i personally prefer this to 42 and
find that this number should also have its own button placed right next to my "Dont panic button"
, this means that the broken "I WIN Button" has to go but what the hell, we'll never get around to
fixing that anyway.
10.
Now we get to the "Interpret data as" setting and were told that this data entry is interpreted
as a "Float Array" this seem reasonable since its a free floating object we're dealing with,
all the Resource entries i stumbled on untill now are "Float Arrays"
in this context meaning a floating data structure, ok lets move on.
11.
Gibbon did this one on changing background on the Nav i added a few more
lines to it, so us noobs can "get it" too.
A.
Find a picture of space u think rocks(try the Hubble Space Telescope site)
B.
open it with a Image editor that can save as targa (TGA)
C.
Manipulate the picture to ur hearts content, 256x256 image works well
D.
Save it as a targa and call it Fancymap.tga
E.
locate this file.
, DATA\INTERFACE\NEURONET\NAVMAP\NEWNAVMAP\av_prettymap.3db
F.
Open it with the UTF editor, expand the tree and go down to the texture library section.
There you will see the fancymap.tga texture and if you expand this, you will see the MIP0 section.
This is where your new texture will go.
G.
Click the MIPO so its "Marked" then click "IMPORT" on the right side center,
close and save, and you got a new backgroud.
You can do this with the Nav_zoomedliberty.tga as well doing it the same way.
12.
Giant planets, originally done by someone else, i added a bit to it.
A.
Locate this file: DATA/SOLAR/PLANETS/planet_earth_3000.sph.(Could be any planet really)
B.
First thing to do is make a copy of the planet_earth_3000.sph file,
and rename it to the size of the planet that you want, we'll call it "planet_earth_40000.sph",
C.
Open it with the UTF editor, expand the tree and find the "RADIUS" entry and modify this as a float array and
change the number at the top to your new radius, in this case 40000.
D.
Close and save the SPHfile.
E.
Now u have to make the solar entry, and the system.ini entries(Object,deathZone,maybe Exclusion),
but this is about UTFs, theres heaps of tutes out there on modding systems if you dont know how yet.
Note: u might wanna leave the solar.ini size as is for a more easy to use map, i did.