There is an easier way to make any engine any color plus you can change engine color and cruise/contrail color.

Easieast way is to open up Engine-Equipment.ini

find your ship engine and look for the line "flame_effect="
Put the flame effect of any engine in the whole game their to get it on your ship.

To change the cruise color/trail color find the line "trail_effect=" and "trail_effect_player=" these two lines have to be the same and will only work if the effect you insert ends with _trail

Heres an example from my liberty cruiser

[Engine
nickname = cruiser_engine_01
ids_name = 263887
ids_info = 264887
volume = 400.000000
mass = 10
max_force = 300000
linear_drag = 3125
reverse_fraction = 0.100000
flame_effect= gf_ng_largeengine01
trail_effect= gf_br_transport_engine01_trail
trail_effect_player= gf_br_transport_engine01_trail
cruise_charge_time = 5
cruise_power_usage = 20
rumble_sound = rumble_cruiser
rumble_atten_range = -5, 0
rumble_pitch_range = -25, 25
cruise_start_sound = engine_li_cruise_start
cruise_loop_sound = engine_li_cruise_loop
cruise_stop_sound = engine_li_cruise_stop
indestructible = false
outside_cone_attenuation = -3
inside_sound_cone = 90
outside_sound_cone = 270

Regarding the "Why are there wing contrails?"

You're all overlooking a much bigger set of questions. It's really quite irrelevant to justify the inclusion of this physics defying special effect when

a) The scale of the game is RIDICULOUSLY inaccurate.
b) Space seems to have friction (Okay, you can glide, but I should be able to keep accelerating).
c) Er, I can't think of a good (c) right now but I'm sure there is one.

My point is (yes, I do have one) that it's a GAME, it's what looks good in a GAME, and it's what makes a playable GAME. None of the above are "bad things". Would Freelancer look as good without those little trails? Maybe. But you'd never be able to see anything as it zips past you at cruise speed.

Right, I'm done now. Do I know how to change the colours? ...no. But I'll look into it.

Many people are irritated by the lack of reality in the game. Is it a good game? Hell yeah! I love this thing! Do I feel like they did any research whatsoever into, you know, space? Uhhh, no. Sure, it's big, and black, and 3d, but those are really the only things similar. That thought can be bothersome to certain individuals. It's still not a big issue, though.

Actually, the most likely reason you have the trails coming from your vehicle is so you can tell what direction you're traveling in when you kill your engines.

The only non-realistic thing that really bothers me about the game is how you gradually slow down when you kill the engines. That really shouldn't happen unless you ... well, you know ... hit something.

are the contrails the white stripes off the sid of the wings cause i wanted to hchnage them if they werent important

Mess With the Best Die lIke the Rest

And here I thought this would be one of the easier parts of modding. Actually, this can be easy, as described above - IF you want to use the existing data for your engine color and trails. If you'll notice the Corsair trails, the NCP models have trails from BOTH the engine and the wingtips. The easiest way to change this for your ship would be to edit the engine_equip.ini for your custom ship, and change it to the Corsair engine setup.

However, if you are like me and just aren't satisfied with the current selection of engine colors and effects (why couldn't they just have a dark blue ), then you'll most likely pull your hair out trying to figure out how the "effect_crc" system works in the engines_ale.ini to produce various effects (especially when it comes to choosing an entry in the corresponding .txm (texture ) file and how THAT relates to color selection ).

Did the above make any sense to anyone? If so then good! I think, just like there are ways to created your own custom ships based on the information already there, you can also create your own custom engine effects (only instead of using DLLs and ini's it uses encoded texture files and ini's ). The only thing throwing me for a loop right now is the method used (after all, every programming language has a logic to it ).

RogueNewbie

EDIT: ****

Okay - for your folks wanting a trail, quite easy, and the costomization/color feature makes it even better. Just click here to find out how to do it. Being I don't want to change ALL the blue-hued engines to my special color (after all, this is a SPECIAL engine), I'm still stuck as to how to get the effect across.

Those who forsake freedom for security neither gain nor deserve either - Thomas Jefferson

Edited by - RogueNewbie on 02-06-2003 03:05:53