Posts by redeye

I´m a surprisingly frequent lurker.. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Its fantastic what is being done with the FL engine these days, I´ve always got this picture of MS/DA planners with a list of new features for FL2 on the wall, going on the forums each day and going : ´Bugger, those damn modders have cracked that one too, cross it off the list...´ Always regretted not being more open about what work I did with .surs, so if I can lend a hand to get them cracked for good then I´ll feel better about that <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

Manhatten project? 5 minute job compared to this monster <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> If there aren´t already too many cooks then count me in (as long as I can find my caffeine pills and eye drops...)

Lol. Its the (not so) age-old curse of trying to communicate via email / messenger / forums / text message issue that makes this thread seem controversial <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Smilies can never really convey the actual meaning of something the way an actual human face will. I´m sure no one here means anyone else any disrespect, personally I have seen the work all of you guys have done and it is all good stuff. As for the ´point and click´ modding thing, you are right, logically the more mods made, the more choice people have. Guess I am just bitter <img src=smilies/icon_smile_tongue.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> I am sure that between yourselves (Argh and Harrier) you will find it easier to write a GUI shell for Meshconverter, I havn´t used it for years and would have to learn from scratch. However if you are looking to do a complete re-write from scratch then I´d be happy to re-write the actual converting / filewriting code and hand it to you, although it would really have to be in C / C++.

Argh Hehe. Maybe I´ve got in a bit over my head here... I am obviously all for open source and sharing information. Regarding the whole destructable components / custom weapons ideas, I consistently posted all my working and step by step lists o

Argh If I had the sourcecode then I probably could stick together a GUI, however that along with all my FL modding stuff was wiped by a complete HD crash some time ago. Between that and moving I dont even think I have my FL CDs anymore. With a lit

So, 10 pages of sleep deprived scrawls and random bits of hex aren´t easy to follow now? <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Kids these days.... Just j/k, good luck in writing your tut, might wanna team up with Harrier, he seems to have his head round it too. I think you´ll probably end up having to write a nifty little GUI tho, although it is fairly simple once you understand it is hard to explain (i think <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>. Anyways the reason for this post is the age old guns with multiple HpFire nodes and sounds problem. As you have discovered as soon as you add a second HpFire node you lose the sound. Wanderer (is he still around?) got really into the custom weapon thing and he never got the sound to work either, although it pissed him off alot. AFAIK ´Vanilla´ FL guns with multiple fire points dont make a sound either, which always made me assume that it was an inherent code problem and could be fixed. Thats a bit of a defeatist attitude tho so kudos to you if you sort it.

Harrier seems to be on top of the overall issue, so maybe he´s the man to get the whole issue wrapped up in a util. Meantime, alot of the tedious hex editing can be removed by using <A href=´http://www.lancersreactor.org/t/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=21849&amp;FORUM_ID=30&amp;CAT_ID=9&amp;Topic_Title=Single+mesh+%2D%26gt%3B+Multiple+mesh+VMeshData%2FRef+converter+uploaded&amp;Forum_Title=Freelancer+Editing+Utilities+Forum&amp;M=False&amp;S=True´ Target=_Blank>this util</a>.

Yes, it will.... as far as i rememeber anyway <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> You should be able to feed it in a single mesh and it will calculate the bounding box figures for you. However i´m not sure if this was ever shown to give any sort of benefit, I only put the feature in ´cause of what that Arachno guy was saying and he never got back to me on whether it had any effect. Custom .sur files are still incredibly difficult. There are some stickied posts on the Editing Forum detailing th latest progress. The best i ever got was to modify nodes on existing .sur files - but if you look at the more recent posts they´re doing some crazy maths. Good luck to them.

Excellent work. Good to see some momentum going on this. As Wanderer said i´ve had a few ´setbacks´ i.e. the bearings went on my HD and i´ve lost all of the **** i had on it. I´ve just spend an absolute mint on a holiday to spain so i havnt even been able to afford a new one yet. Get paid start of next month, possibly get one then. I dont think theres too much i can offer up that you guys havnt already worked out. I´m just nipping on someone elses comp so i havnt properly read all of the posts so sorry if this has been covered but there seems to be a wee bit of confusion as to the structure of components within the .sur file. The individual .sur files for ships components seem to do bugger all. Try removing them from any of the game ships - as far as i can see they behave in exactly the same way. Each component has is own mesh entry within the main ships .sur file which starts with its the FL CRC of its name as defined in the .cmp file. Sub-meshes have their own sections too which seem to start with some sort of FL CRC although i never got as far as working out what the CRC is based on. Hex searching for the FL CRC of ´port_wing´ etc will get you to that components section in the .sur file. This was why the components in the Battleaxe (ship w/ destructable components) had to share the names with components of the Kusari Blood Dragon (which i stole the .sur file from) - otherwise they wouldnt take any damage an thus would never have been destroyed. As someone mentioned once a component has been destroyed it section within the .sur sems to be switched off. This is also why any .sur file works with any ship - the main hull is always called ´Root´ so when you give ship you have made a game ships .sur file it simply adopts the collision detection of the ´Root´ component of that .sur file. I see you are working from the Eagle/Falcons .sur file. Thats pretty ambitious, i was working with the crate_white/crate_blue .sur files (or something similar). One is a cube and the other is a hexagonal cylinder. It makes it possible to plot out all the vertexes yourself by hand and get your head round it. I had managed to create a few custom .sur files simply by moving the vertex locations. Good luck with cracking the rest of it, hopefully i´ll get back in the game soon <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

The battleaxe didnt use .3db files. As far as i could see they served no purpose in defining a ships components. Without them the components displayed correctly even when blown off the ship. It seems to be one of the many layers of redundancy in FL, tho iam willing to be corrected in this - an easy way to check it is to delete components .3db files from a game ship and see if you notice any changes. Various other items do use .3db files (my HD packed in about a month ago and i dont see me having the cash for a new one for a while so i cant check), if i remember correctly things like cargo pods and missiles use them. As has been correctly point out by others they are basically just simplified .cmp files. Reven raises an interesting point by saying that .3db files often include the textures. It is perfectly possible to incorporate textures into any .cmp file using the same method. The major problem remains to be .sur files. Although i am fairly certain i have lost all my FL stuff by a lucky coincidence i had been scribbling alot of notes on .sur files on scraps of paper so atleast i have those. I noticed tho that soemone else had posted a fairly good general layout of them. They are split into header, traingle then vertex sections. Each component on a ship/station has its own section within the .sur file which you can find the start of by calculating the modified CRC for the objects name then searching for it in the .sur file. This is why all .sur files are interchangable - the main component of any object in FL is always called ´Root´ so swapping the .sur files gives your new component the collision data for the ´Root´ section of the .sur file you have stolen - but no the collision data for any of that ships components. This means if you are shopping for a .sur file to steal it is useful to import potential candidates via Revens importer and check just the ´Root´ components shape to see if it will be suitable. Very simple components such as cargo boxes etc dont have split component .sur files and dont contain the ´Root´ CRC. They also have slightly shorter headers. They can still be used for complicated objects tho. I have succesfully modified cargo box .sur files allowing me to create boxes of any size, however this is fairly easy as it only involves changing the vertex coordinates. I got stuck at the triangles section. As well as the triangle number and a reference to each vertex in the triangle there is also a 2 byte signed int after each vertex reference which seems vital yet remains a mystery. I´m sure someone will crack it soon <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

Frontier ships are a possibiliy. I authored the Elite ships and i agree they are crap, i never fly them. I would argue tho that having the NPCs fly them isnt so bad. The problem i had was that the elite ships are super basic, about 20 triangles max. I did look at improving them but then they wouldnt have been the original elite ships and that would have defeated the whole point (also i was quite keen on the whole custom texture idea which required a flat ´net´ of the ships to be derived). However the Frontier ships are different. They have reasonably complicted shapes and atleast some of them could be converted into FL with the details being upped and still be recognizable as Frontier ships, while not sticking out like a sore thumb as a non FL ship. Someone else can do it tho cause the bearings have gone on my HD and i cant see me affording a new one for about another month <img src=smilies/icon_smile_sad.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

Although the original ship textures are labelled .tga they are actually in .dds format. The Nvidia website has a set of tools available for download to work with .dds files. Alternatively use Reven´s importer which will extract the .dds file (if you know the location of the .mat file containing them) to .tga .bmp .gif etc.

Strange. I´ve never had that happen. If you´re still stuck mail me the model+textures and i´ll take a look.

If you are using .tga files for textures you need to flip the .tga {around the horizontal axis) before importing into your .cmp/.mat file. For this reason a texture symmetrical on the horizontal axis will appear fine, this is possibly why one texture is wprking but not the others. If you convert your .tga´s to .dds´ then you wont have to flip them however you will have to correctly declare them as .dds in the .cmp/.mat.

Contrails must be declared in a ships entry in shiparch.ini aswell as being present on the model/.cmp file.

You need to give your ship a .sur file or it wont take damage from lasers/collisions. Pick a ship of roughly the same shape/size and copy its .sur file to your new ships directory,renaming to the same name as the .cmp file you are using.

Mesh data in .cmp files is stored in the VMeshData segment in the .cmp which you can export as a file via the UTFEdit util by HCl. The basics its layout are to be found <A href=´http://lancersreactor.org/t/editing/features/details.asp?id=8´ Target=_Blank>here</a>. There are a few errors in that description tho relating to start/end vertex/vertex reference numbers and multiple group objects (i.e. weapons/ships composed of multiple components). The data in .sur files is stored in a simlar format : File header, n x(object header + object triangles), vertex coordinates, file footer. Obviously no texture mapping for a .sur file and no vertex normals either. Interestingly both the triangle formations and vertex locations differ between a .sur file and the corresponding .cmp. While a difrrerent triangle formation would be expected as the .sur models are simpler than the visible component they represent, the dirrerence in vertex locations (not by much) suggests a different model was used to derive the .sur files.

The converter does most of the work, but you still need bits in the .cmp to join the barrels to the base. I have provided a template .cmp with the converter with these bits in place for a two object gun (base + barrel). Wait till you see Wanderers models. Those bad boys are fearsome <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

I think you´re being overly harsh on Ian Bell. He has the original version of Elite, plus source, plus ship models available for download on his home page aswell as files outlining the court battle between him and David Braben. IIRC Ian Bell did ´start´ the court battle by making some comment about lack of royalities. However it was Braben who instigated the libel action, which was later resolved with both sides paying their own costs and Ian Bell agreeing not to make any more comments about Elite copyright issues. To be fair to Braben tho he also has Frontier and FFE available for download from his Frontier develompents home page, along with a claim (not updated for about 3 years) that Elite 4 is in development and will be released for PS, X-BOX + PC soon. I say kudos to both of them for writing Elite. While Bell hasnt involved in writing Frontier he let Braben use the concept and Frontier is an excellent game. The only one i´m pissed at is Braben for ever releasing FFE which due to the fact it was so bugged and differed very little from Frontier effectively killed of the Elite franchise.

I had this problem before i had seen FL full speed. I played up till about mission 3 before i saw it on someone elses and realized why it took so long to go everywhere on mine. Anyway after i had reinstalled FL and Windows (grrrr) it still did it. A full defrag totally sorted things out tho and it has played fine since then. Could explain why your first install was o.k. but you have a problem with the second.