It must have to do with the custom cmp file I'm using. My best guess is something other than shiparch.ini is referring to the original. But can I find it - nope.

Right, I've merged all my changes into the original CMP files as additional nodes and referenced these for my ship variations in shiparch.ini, I'll give this a try tonight and see if I have any more joy.

btw, has anyone out there figured out the coords for the 3 unused harpoints on the Dromedary?

Hmm, I am having a similar problem but with a different goal. I am trying to make the non-turret weapons have fixed (facing forward only) posistions. I've read hardpoint tutorials 1 and 2, wich gave me a good starting point and has helped somewhat. But the axis and min/max settings in the ship .cmp files seem to be getting overwritten by something.

Furthermore, I have tried editing each gun's .cmp file thinking that it might be the culprit, but no soup. Is there some other file overriding ship and gun .cmp files. Or am I fighting some kind of hard coding that I will never win against ?.

you only need to edit the .cmp file of the ship you want to add/change hardpoints on and update the entry for that ship in shiparch.ini. No other files need to be involved in the process.

I actually have already activated the 3 unused hard points, would you like me to email you the cmp?

Okeydokey,

All my new hardpoints now work. Something somewhere other than that line in shiparch.ini was still referencing the original cmp file for the ship I'd cloned when in space. It's the only explaination I can come up with for the fact that it works with the new hardpoints in the original cmp file and doesn't when using an alternate cmp file - it's just the changes I'd made that would get lost.

Now if only I could figure out why my new ship name does not appear in the character list when joining a multiplayer game - it appears correctly everywhere while playing though. Odd.

ok after MUCH trial and error, I beleive my problem lies somewhere other than the weapon and ship .cmp files, does anyone know of any other files that dictate rotation values ?.

Keep in mind that my goal here is to stop the non-turret weapons from following the mouse arround and simply face forward in a static posistion.

Hey Bulk,

Yes please ... my addr is [email protected]

Ta.

Lost??...

Are you using a duplicated cmp file as I was? If so, in the original cmp try adding new weapon nodes at the same coords as the existing ones and set your min/max restrictions on these. Don't forget to use unique names and reference them in shiparch.ini - worked for me.

Lostxj
Instead of trying to make your guns immobile by using the min/max under revolute hardpoints, move the nodes under revolute to fixed...get rid of the min,max,and axis nodes under the weapon hardpoint and use only the orientation and position from the original.

Moosehead if you can, please elaborate about duplicated .cmp files and referencing the shiparch.ini. Are you saying I should copy the .cmp file of the ship I am trying to change, rename it to something new, and then change the entry for the ship I am editing. Or should I be making an addition to the shiparch.ini like a patriot mk 2 and then just make manhatten sell the new ship ?.

And ScrapIron, I have tried your idea with no results. What I have been doing to date, is putting the liberty light fighter (Patriot) .cmp file in an identical folder in my mod's folder (using FL mod manager 1.1) and then editing it, first I tried to leave the hardpoints where they were and simply edit the min/max/axis, then I moved them into the fixed heading with only orientation and posistion.

the latter menuver completely set the guns free so they all operated like 360 degree turrets. So then I went into the weapon .cmp files wich also have hardpoints that dictate rotation. But still nothing. I am hoping Moosehead is onto something.

Moosehead, they are sent.

lost, what exactly are your settings in the max/min nodes? If I were going to try to get guns facing forward only, I think i would set them to max of .00001 and min of -.00001 just in case it for some reason also interprets 0.000 as being null, as if it were not there at all. Also, i believe there is a setting in constants.ini that sets the offset the gun can fire at when it is not directly pointed at the target. I believe the default is 10, which i think means it has 10 degrees of play in what it can target. From what i read in one of the tutorials, lowering that may be a bad idea as it could keep the guns from firing at all.

lostxj,

No, what I was saying is that unless know way more than myself on ship editing (not hard), do _not_ duplicate the cmp (copying it to another filename and referencing that instead) as I'm convinced that somewhere other than shiparchi.ini references the cmp (in the shipped ones anyway). This is what I was doing to avoid making changes to the original cmp when tweaking my cloned ship but as I found things are never so easy. So for any nodes I wanted to change I added a new node at the same coords with a new name and referenced that in shiparch.ini for my clone instead.

Nope - it doesn't read any better even after the 3rd rewrite. Damn this language. Ah well...