Posts by crymson

I agree with BP this whole thing has gotten out of control. We certainly would be better off working together than chewing each others tails like this. Hehe anyway since we aren´t all exactly on the same team I will at least make my contribution by droppiing this subject entirely and getting back to working on my SL ship project which will hopefully be just the first contribution I hope to offer this fine game. Yall have fun now ya hear? Crymson

Never said you must have stolen it Harrier. Just that it seemed unlikely anyone would spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on 3dsmax just to make models for free. The point about cost does however stand, when two programs are so outrageously divergent in cost they cannot really be compared on that basis. It´s alot like comparing a Mercedes to a Pinto they both get you to the same place one just does so with alot more style. 3dsmax6 currently costs $3995 in US dollars and personally I think it´s about $3945 too much. I don´t think everyone on the forums is penniless and I´m happy for you that you are well to do Harrier but I´m sorry to hear you spent that kind of money out your own pocket for a program you apparently dislike so much. Crymson

Umm I never said "MS3D is a worthless program" or anything like that. I said I prefer 3dsmax and find MS3D to be very hard to use. Yes it is entirely a matter of preference and I personally did start out using 3dsmax as back when SFC2 came out it was the only program with a plugin to import and export te models. Anyway I didn´t set out to "bag" MS3D I merely meant to pass along some information to my fellow 3dsmax users that it was terribly easy to HP a ship in 3dsmax before sending it to MS3D. Oh and I don´t care how good a workman is he´ll still cry the blues when his saw has no teeth. I´m sure if MS3D was all I had to use it would seem just fine but 5 minutes with 3dsmax and it´d be clear which is the superior product. Price is not a viable issue for debating these two products. I will guarantee that 99% of fan modellers either a) got their copy for free b) got it from or for work or c) got it for a college course at a academic discount. Very few people are truly insanely wealthy enough to pay $1500 just to make free models for the community. Enough of the soap boxing I agree that if MS3D was my only option I would be happy enough with it and would be grateful to have it. Crymson

Hey Harrier Thanks for the info, I do know how to scale the ships to match freelancer tho. My main question was whether I should scale the ships to freelancer sizes regardless of the cockpit sizes or should I go ahead and use the cockpit sizes as they stand. Currently I am scaling based on comparitive cockpit sizes. Alot of the ships in FL are actually pretty luducrously small when you consider the cocpit to ship ratio. The Patriot for example is basically a bubble canopy strapped to an engine. Meanwhile the SL Phoenix cocpit is titny in comparison to the rest of the ship. Even if you assume it´s one of those WW2 style "head above the rim" style canopies it appears to seat two pilots at least and if the Phoenix is scaled to this size it´s about 4-5 times the length of a patriot. Anyway Unless I hear some resounding opinions I´m planning on scaling them this way as it looks pretty awesome even though most of the SL ships are a good bit larger than the FL ships. Crymson

Hey all I know I had promised to have the SL ship pack out late this week. Well it´s late in the week but due to an unfortuante HD failure my home system has been down a couple days now and I could get nothing done. Luckily it was my primary drive that failed and my secondary(where all my work is stored) is still running like a champ. Anyway I will hopefully have the SL ship pack completed and uploaded over the weekend. Crymson

Very nice work and I second parabolix you do work very fast.

Well I for one am all for this idea. It´s nice to see a community where people aren´t rabid copyright fanatics. The SFC(stafleet command) coomunity got to the point where you practically needed a signed contract just to include someones models in a mod even with full credit and glorious praise for the modeller. Anyway I like the idea 100% and will contribute anything I can. Crymson

Hey Bucka thanks for the mesh that will really help as the cmp importer for milkshape crashes entirely on me with vesion 1.7.1 so scaling has been a matter of trial and error to get the sizes to match even somewhat. Thanks Crymson

Yeah when Hobbes releases the cap ships and with any luck the coalition ships too I will be happy to hardpoint and convert em. Funny thing is just before Hobbes released the first batch i had just spent several days unsuccessfully looking for a working converter to convert .shp´s to 3dsmax. So as you can imagine I was a very happy camper when Hobbes made them available. Crymson

Heh my bad Crymson

Hey cool glad it works for you Champs. Unfortunately for me Milkshape crashes on launch as long as the importer plugin is present in the folder. Crymson

PantherX Yeah I really debated redoing the cockpits but after much consideration decided against it. The reason is primarily that the starlancer ships are of several different scales. and while on the small fighters it might look cool on the bigger ships esp the phoenix the cockpit would be so small I didn´t feel it would be worth the effort. Also I have the ships in the game and they look pretty darn good. Eh guess it could partly be that I never much cared whether a ship had a see through cocpit or not. Anyway I will be scaling them to the freelancer universe using their cocpit windows as a reference for scale. The Phoenix and Wolverine are quite large as fighters go but they look great in the game. Crymson

Actually Panther not all models can be opened properly in milkshape when using .3ds If you have used mirroring or agressive smoothing it almost always makes a mess of the model when imported by milkshape. Of course sometimes it will work fine and other times it will totally frag a model for no apparent reason. Anyway if you have the plugin and it works for you the better question would be why not use it and avoid any possibility of troble whatsoever? Crymson

I am currently working on a three part release of the starlancer models recently proveded so graciously by Hobbes. The First part will be a vanilla "modders" ship pack with simple scripts ready to be modded and used by any mod maker. The Second part will be a full blown "players" ship pack with all specifics laid out and ready to be installed by any player. The Last part of the release will be a complete addon pack for Evolutions 1.28, of course that´s assuming Chips gives it his blessing. Also I would like to note that these ships will come with a few extra features. The CMP´s will all have 3 shield HP´s, 5 miscellaneous HP´s, 3 Thruster HP´s, and an abunbdance of gun turret and torpedo HP´s This should make them all very modder friendly as they will have room for just about anything you want to set them up with. Oh and they will come with a handy graphic HP chart which will display where the HP´s are located so there is no need to guess. Anyway look for them later in the week. Crymson

AFAIK there are no working importers for milkshape 1.7.1 Unfortunately I am in the same boat with you so I´m restricted to creating scratch new ships although I´d love to modify a couple of the in game ships. If anyone ever comes up with a new CMP importer it´d sure be nice. Maybe if we´re lucky ColinS will be inclined to make one, his CMP and MAT exporters are sweet! Crymson

Hrm not sure about Gmax but the plugin authors website lists several versions and one of them might wrok since gmax accepts some of 3dsmax´s plugins. Sorry I can´t give a more definitive answer. Crymson

Hrm do you by chance have 3dsmax 6? That´s what I´m using now and the 1.10 version of the 3ds2ms3d plugin from here on TLR crashed my system when I used it too. However the creator has a new version 1.12 on his site that works smooth as glass. If that doesn´t help I sympathize cause buggy plugins can be a major headache. Crymson

A much easier way to get models from 3dsmax to milkshape is to download the 3ds2ms3d plugin from this site. http://www.mds.mdh.se/~elt01mcg This plugin works wonrderfully as it translates the model straight from 3dsmax to milkshape as a native milkshape file. Hope that helps people. Crymson

Heya DD good to see ya doin FL models. You can really do the texturing in 3dsmax and then export the whole model to milkshape just make sure to change the textures from BMP to TGA when you do the move since max is ususally a pain the butt aout tga´s. I haven´t found a .ms3d exporter that works with 3dsmax 6 yet but you can export it as either a .md3 or a .3ds file. Crymson (former founder of the SFC Scrapyards)

Regarding moveable powerplants. I am working on a modification to Chip´s excellent Evolutions 1.28 (strictly for use amongst our local gaming group). I wanted to add an alternate upgradeable power system which can be added on to ships for an exorbitant cost. Kind of like adding a turbo charger or intercooler system to a car. Anyway Some of the upgrades are intended to be useable on fighters and others on freighters etc. To do this I gave the powerplants a volume greater than zero, this has been done many times in a number of mods but I made mine highly restrictive. The basic light fighter in this mod has 10 cargo, hf/vhf have 15 or so and supremes have 18 cargo. So my basic upgrade takes ten cargo, the next takes 18 and from there on up they are far too large for the fighters. So basically the player has the option to mount a power upgrade above and beyond those which are intrinsic to most of the ships and thus lose most or all of his cargo space, or he/she can do without and still be able to pick up loot. This somewhat solves the problem as it makes it impossible to mount a larger powerplant on a smaller vessel however it is very restricive and rather granular as doing more than a few such powerplants would require redsigning the cargo settings extensively. Hope this helps at least a little Crymson