Bit of a prob with ships multiple skins

Sat Mar 05, 2005 6:38 am by Mace_166

Hi guys, hope u can help with this one. I do have a solution, but its a pretty nasty and unfriendly one so hopefully u can think of an easier way.
The problem
Working on a mod and i`ve added 6-7 different skins for the civillian ships. The new skins have all been to replace all of the ships, not to be usable separately. So, when the ship appears in the game and is the first one seen its ok. But, then any other ships that spawn all use the same skin, not the one they are meant to be using.
I`ve looked into the mat files using UTF and seen the tga`s that the MATs use and they all have the same file name even though its actual mip0 data is different. Is there any way of making this work other than rename all of the tga in every mat file and change the CRC/Hex thingy that was taught in the creating new ship icons tutorial. I`m not even sure if the this would work anyway.
I have added separate entries for all ships into shiparch, each with their own entries for the mats and i`ve added the ships into mshipprops.ini as well which i had hoped would be enough.
If it comes to it then i will remove the new schemes from the mod, which would be a shame cos it looks pretty good having GMG blackeagle`s going around.
Any ideas?

Sat Mar 05, 2005 9:03 am by Glock36

In order to make this work, you will have to re export several cmp files of the same ship but make sure that the primary CMP node for each is unique and then make sure that the names of all textures are unique to each ship.

Thats the situation and there is no way around it.

Glock36
"No Comment"

Sat Mar 05, 2005 9:20 am by [HoTa]ConQUesT

It is correct that whenever you create a model of any type within the game, keep its object groups uniquely named - for the simple reason that FL will grab at the wrong resource if for example..

you have 4 ships and all use a texture which you have name "maintexture.tga"
the files can become cross-referenced and wrong one shown in-game.

This can also apply to object group names too

which exlains why if you put 2 ships for sale within a station - one may have the same object group name as the other - FL will default to the last one it reads, hence two of the same ship will appear in the sale room.

I tend to keep the format as something like = shipname_objectname

Hope this helps

Sun Mar 13, 2005 10:39 am by Mace_166

I`ve been trying to import the cmp of the ships back into milkshape and then save a unique cmp and mat with modified names but the ships mat won`t show up. I`m not sure if the mat exporter from milkshape is ok, does anybody else know if it is? I know its the version 1.0.
I`m trying to avoid the changing the crc entries if possible.

Sun Mar 13, 2005 10:15 pm by silvik

1.The texture names must be unique not to each ship but unique in the game
2.The mat exporter is OK (tested many many many ...times

)

Mon Mar 14, 2005 8:31 am by Argh

Mace, what Glock and Conquest are saying... is that to do what you want, you have to have CMPs with new name references in the VMeshes.

MAT names aren't just stored in the CMP/MAT's Dt_name entry in the UTF, unfortunately. Which is why every texture and CMP in the game must have a unique name- the CMP's internal structure refers to the Dt_name... the entry in the UTF is a label that helps the engine get a match between the requested MAT data and an appropriate texture.

In short, you can't do this with stock FL ships without doing a large amount of hex-editing. There is no other way. Sorry... but it's one of the not-so-fun things about the way that FL was designed.

Mon Mar 14, 2005 12:55 pm by Mace_166

Cheers for the help guys, i`m pretty new to the ship creation side of things. I think I get it, i did have it so that u can import the new cmp and its new material works ( but not the old one). I guess that I could export the model for each ship and do all of the hardpoints and entries again. But, its a lot of work for not a great deal. I`d rather spend my time making totally new ships.
Cheers for your help again.

Mon Mar 14, 2005 3:03 pm by [HoTa]ConQUesT

No probs dude.. its a bump i have had on a few instances

especially when 3 individual ships of mine all showed up in the shop as the same ship until you purchased it :S -

<<< stupid here used similar object group names ~sigh~

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