Posts by AestheticDemon

  • What the hell is that?!?!

    Looks like one of those 'download the graphics fies to print covers for your peer-2-peer warez' sites, ya know, dl an illegal dvd rip, burn to a blank dvd, print your matching disk label and box cover so it looks nice on the shelf with your paid for dvds...


    I once found a site claiming to sell an official EA/Maxis Sims2 'Bondage Expansion Pack', lol, complete with a faked cover

  • Battefield 2 anyone?

    Not a big fan of the ju-87 myself, too slow, and the payload is light, unless they do a p varient, with the 37mm pak cannon pods, great for tank hunting. Dive bombing, gotta be ju-88...


    ;D

  • Moving to C4D

    Ok, first off, c4d uses a different co-ords system to milkshape, sooooooooo


    if making ships/stations etc for export to milk fo9r export to fl, point the nose pozitive z axis, and flip the ship upside down before export, also you will have to select all faces and reverse vertex order once in milkshape, as the difference in co-ord handedness means milk thinks the winding order is the wrong way round.


    You have various ways to model in c4d, you can point to point if you have the mental stamina to stay awake that long, but box modeling and the various nurbs based options are a better bet if you are sane.


    Check the pdf manual that comes with it, its better than most, full of usefull examples, for 'low' poly modeling, simple box modeling methods, and the symetry tool are your friend, remember to use a separate mesh group for each material, milkshape needs that anyway, and c4d has a history of problems with exporting multi-material groups in obj files, google for a free c4d plugin called 'riptide' which sorts the problem nicely on the newer builds of c4d.


    Dont make triangulated meshes, use quads, it's faster and easier, triangulate when the mesh is finished, critical areas by hand (use the knife tool, with 3d snapping, then the auto triangulate for the rest.


    UV map parts as you go, c4d is pretty reasonable at interactive mapping/texturing, especially if you went for the bodypaint addon, dont finish a 30k poly mesh THEN try and uv it, map as you go, bit by bit, makes life soooo much easier.


    You wont do a 'dave' and take 2 hours to finish a station mesh, but... you wont have 20 hours of messing with it afterwards to regroup and uv it.


    Realistically, the manual is your best friend, ask if you get stuck and I'll help if i can...


    Oh.. I know, hang on a sec...


    Aes ago somebody asked me how I made weapon props in c4d, so I sent em some sample scenes...


    Here, grab a copy, nothing fancy but might help you get to grips with stuff

  • Patriot light Liberty Fighter

    Unfortunately milkshape, despite being far from the best 3d app on the market, is the only way to import and export freelancer fileformats, short of a copy of MAX 9 or later and the new (and still slightly experimental) plugins.


    For C4D users like yourself (and myself) thats just how it goes, fortunately milk isn't that expensive.


    Erm, this project, will you need to import and export a lot of fl ship models or just the patriot? Maybe somebody here can import the cmp and export as an obj for you if it's not too many meshes that you need.


    Just the patriot?

  • A non-existing entry causing a crash (???)

    Hmm, ok, I'm assuming your mod is an ini copy mod rather than a flmm scripted mod???????


    Which sdk are you using, 1.3, 1.4, 1.4 advanced, 1.5?


    Ok, deactivate the mod... clean fl install time, 1.1 patch, unofficial sdk patch of choice.


    Hard to know what to advise without knowing if its ini copy or scripted...


    Compromise...


    start copying the recent gun additions into a separate scripted flmm mod, check the spelling carefully as you go, DONT use the custom dll you made, use the script generate resource code, see if all the new guns work that way, if they do, then carefully re add them one at a time to a new ini copy mod, just for the guns, so only one ini to copy, the weapons ini, only one gun to check at a time, nothing actually using those guns, limit the possible areas of conflict, if you can get the game running with all the new guns added since it last worked, in place, then carefully cpy the tested code into the old mod after in place of the versions you have now, same for the custom dll, use new res numbers and temp names "my_new_gun_2b" in place of "my_new_gun", you can go back and edit the dll string later, first you need to get the res numbers working, never mind what they say, once all the new guns are working, with all the new res numbers, you can go back and kill the old numbers and reuse em for something else later.


    Sounds like a complete pain but, at this stage, tedious is the only way you'll fix this short of blind "hey there the nasty is" blind luck.


    If you ARE doing an ini copy mod, once you have a version of it that runs without crashing, take a backup, then activate it, then use a temp scripted mod to add new bits to it, a few at a time, means deactivating both parts every time you do an edit, then reactivating both parts, and ignoring those 'mod conflict ' messages, but... easier to find bugs in 2 or 3 new entries in a temp script if it goes runny, where the errors will be plain english typos than hunting through 20 odd new weaps with 20 odd new ammos all with hex res codes, and once a batch of updates check out, you can add them to the working copy of the ini mod.


    Slow, painfull, but for a one modder mod team, it beats the hell out of going blind staring at hundreds of lines of code over and over, trying to spot the error you made.


    Sorry Poly, for the bad tidings, but stick with it huh. You'll get there in the end.


    EDIT:


    Sudden thought...


    The entry might be there and ok, it MIGHT be a 'bracket' problem...


    missing closing bracket on a section header or something, does your text editor feature a bracket matching facility, like notetab light, or a 'nesting' counter' or whatever, to check that all opening brackets have a matching closing bracket?


    If fl cant find a closing bracket, it might not recognise the entries for two se0arate things as being separate, so the perfectly correct res id for the problem ammo is replaced by the id for the following item cos the header tag on the secind entry isnt being read, fl thinks there are two id res entries for the same ammo and only uses the second, so the first isnt found in the database. Just an off the top of the head thought., checjk this first, might save you a lot of time.

  • A non-existing entry causing a crash (???)

    Possible typo in the projectile entry for a recently edited weapon? So it's trying to use ammo that doesn't exist?


    Did you change any weapons recently, Obvious question I know, but...


    Like that Sherlock Holmes quote about eliminating the obvious, what ever is left , however improbable is the culprit.

  • Need to edit 3 things

    Check out this thread...


    Request: New to Modding FL. Couple of Questions... - Freelancer Modding Tools - The Lancers Reactor


    The three things you mentioned are all entries in various 'ini files', on a default install, these are in a binary ini format, so you will need either a 'bini' converter to unpack the files into plain text format, and a good text editor, OR, you will need to install one of the unofficial patches, that contains unpacked and bug fixed ini fies, that you can then edit, again with a text editor.


    The entries for the turret will be in the weapons_equip.ini file, and the energy level will be set by the ships 'power converter' in misc_equip.ini, both of which can be found in the freelancer/data/equipment/ folder.


    Missile velocities are a combination of the initial launch velocity, which is a parameter of the 'gun' that fires the missile, and the acceleration listed for the missile's motor.


    velocity = launch velocity + (acceleration * flight time)


    The refire rate is also part of the definition for the 'gun' firing the missile and is entered as 1 divided by the number of shots per second, so, a refire rate of 0.25 in the file gives 4 shots a second in the game.

  • Utilities and Other Goodies 2011

    Quote from Sethernis

    Yes I remembered about a few tools which I forgot after I uploaded the pack - Total Conversion SDK is one of them among the wireframe tool (if there is one) and some other tools. Will make a list and reupload the pack in the future.


    There is 'makewire', a tool to convert a cmp into a vwire format, so you can export a simplified version of the ship (or the custom sur) from milkshape, as a dummy cmp, export the vmesh, convert to vwire, and then add to the real cmp with a utf editor.


    Dont ask me where you dl it, I cant honestly remember, might even be here, lol.

  • Collision groups on ship

    Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but when you say 'switch to wireframe' and talk about targeting, I assume you mean the wireframe subtargeting in the game, as part of the hud.


    If that is the case, then you cannot 'target' the collision groups on a ship, you can't target the wing on a fighter, or the conning tower on a cruiser, you can only target the equipment mounted on the hardpoints attached to the collision groups.


    If you shoot at a ship and the shots hit the wing, damage is passed to the main ship, the wing is just a damage proxy. When the damage taken by the wing excedes its hitpoints, the wing is destroyed, and any hardpoints on the wing, and the equipment mounted on those hardpoints are lost with it, but you cannot 'target' the wing itself.


    It might be possible to change that, don't know, never tried, but it's not default behaviour.

  • Intro Screen

    LOL, beats me, didn't have the non working tga's to look at, no matter, glad you're sorted now, and it only took a min to make up the vanilla style 32bit rgba's, no big deal.

  • Mod Idea

    I wont say this is a bad idea for a mod, as frankly, it's at least as good as some of the ideas for mods already out there, and better than some currently under development.


    Would it 'ressurect' FL, I doubt it, but you could do far worse as a starting concept. Some of it is already in the game, more or less, it would only need minor tweaks to bring it to the foreground.


    For example, the cardamine trade starts on a single remote pirate owned system, there are sales outlets, along the routes from the 'golden triangle' to the rich ubanites, and the closer you get to said urbanites, the higher the price. There is one 'space corner dealership' that has a write up saying they get the stuff from another faction who come there for that specific trade. And the drugs mule faction does run freighters to that base, but... None of the damm things ever carry the drug...


    Fixing that so each pirate smuggler ship carries a small quantity of primo grade along with its regular boring cargo is very easy to do, and I did so in my mod, because it just irritated me to see drug shippers who never shipped any drugs.


    Some of the other suggested features, however would be awkward to implement.


    Don't let Bob put you off, there is a possible mod in this, not as 'wow' as you might hope, but not as 'duh' as Bob might think. If you dont think you could manage the mod yourself, you might still find a modder here to help you with it, or information on learning to mod for yourself.


    Oh and just for the record, 1 I'm allergic to pot, so I never touch the stuff, and 2 I'm old and grumpy, ask Bob if you don't believe me...


    ;)

  • Intro Screen

    Ok, those files are the bmp's not the tga's but...


    I made a couple of 32 bit tga's using your bmp images, dumped em into my r&d mod, activated it, fired up FL, and they seem to work at my end, so I'm attaching a zip with the two tga's and the 2 bmp's, try dropping these into the folder and see if they work ok.