Thankyoumuchly Victor. Now I can make formations without having it crash the game <G>

Another question, unfortunately. I'm doing a Wing Commander mod and want to change the names of the system "spaces" (i.e., Liberty Space to Sol Sector, Rheinland Space to Enigma Sector, etc.) So far, I haven't been able to figure out how to do that. Any sort of pointers would be appreciated!

How can i change the appearance of the Reaver guns to that of the Vengeance mk. II?

Looks like I found my home for the time being...
1. When you tga for a ship skin, I know it has to be square, but any size limitations?
2. Does the cmp file hold the texture mapping info? It looks like the only things I would end up with is my mat file with the tga embedded, and the cmp by its lonesome.

Thx for the thread!

And God said,
E=mC²
And there was light.

First of all, thanx v.much to Victor and TheJKWhoSaysNi for answering questions while my comp's been down for several days.

First, Chips

I have the same prob as you, no matter what i try i cant get patrolling ships to dock at stations. However, they only seem to be able to dock/undock at the end/beginning of their patrols respectively, so if you started a patrol at the location of a base the ships may undock from that base to start with.

To create bounty hunter gunboats !!:

Right at the bottom of DATA/MISSIONS/faction_prop.ini there should be a scetion of text for the bounty hunters, "nickname = gd_bh_grp". At the bottom of this section add these two lines:

npc_ship = rh_n_rh_gunboat
formation = gunboats, gunboat_rh_n

This allows the bounty hunters to use gunboats. Now, in your system add these encounter parameters, if you havent got them already:

[EncounterParameters
nickname = area_gunboats
filename = missions\encounters\area_gunboats.ini

In the zone you want these ships to appear add these lines:

encounter = area_gunboats, 12, 1.000000
faction = gd_bh_grp, 1.000000

Thats it! Change the last number on the first line to a lower number to decrease the chance of the gunboats appearing, and change the second-to-last number to adjust the difficultyu of the gunboats.

Bob McDob

Not completely sure what you mean, but the names that are displayed during flight e.g. "PLANET MANHATTEN, NEW YORK SYSTEM" are contained in EXE/nameresources.dll. Youll need a dll editor to access them, such as Fled-Ids or ResHacker.

These names begin at resource table 3938, resource number 63000, if you are using ResHacker.
If you are using Fled-Ids the names start at IDS number 259608

HistoryBuff

To change the appearance in game of the reaver you have to open DATA/EQUIPMENT/weapon_equip.ini and search for the string "gd_bh_gun01_mark05". In the section of text underneath this change the line:

DA_archetype = equipment\models\weapons\li_laser_beam.cmp

to this:

DA_archetype = equipment\models\weapons\li_heavy_ion_blaster.cmp

Edited by - Accushot on 10-07-2003 11:25:12

Imagine

1. No real limitations except the obvious scaling problems: too small and you get a horrible stretched mess, too big and you get a horribly squashed up mess!

2. The .cmp contains info about the meshes and hardpoints on the ship, but not the texture info. The .mat files contain the texture info and you have to link them to the ship by editing the .cmp files with a prog like UTF Edit.

Well, as I've made a mod with couple of bombers, launching trios of torpedoes, it would be nice to have some targets for them. I've tried to enable battleship formations to appear based on existing versions in MISSIONS/ENCOUNTERS, but it was crashing. Then I'd found that way to make it on Editing Tutorial, but that wasn't working (to be exact: it was crashing) still. When finally was that tutorial released, as a "Battleship Encounter mod" in pack of FLMM 1.2, I've reinstalled whole game and then installed the mod. I don't know what kind of demon is there, but when I reach visible range of Manhattan, instead of shiny Dreadnought I see an exploding Battleship Wotan - but that's my desktop...

So, the mod isn't working. At least for me. Has anyone encountered same problem with battleship encounters as me?


Für Rheinland!

Accushot : I mean the thing at the end of the inflight stuff. For example, when you launch from Manhatten and it says "NEW YORK SYSTEM, LIBERTY SPACE". i want to change the "LIBERTY SPACE" to something else. It's not contained in the NameResources.DLL, either.

Ty, Accushot!
I'm 2/3 of the way thru making a ship and now I'm stuck...wondering if you could find any mistakes in the procedure.
1.Got a ship in milkshape, it has all hardpoints finished, and also 2 torpedos(wondering if that was ok).
2.The texture tga is flat grey 500x500(I wanted to know how to make the ship work before I painted it).
3.Applied the texture in milkshape and then exported to cmp (I'm asuming that the cmp convert caught all the hp orientation data and that I didn't need to mess with this in utfedit)
4.assumed I didn't have to edit the rotation ranges for the revolute hardpoints
5.Used utfedit to make a mat file with the tga embedded
6.assumed I could plug the cmp and mat files into fl now
7.created own folder in ships folder and dropped cmp and mat in there
8.decompressed shiparch.ini (assumed I could sneak my model in) and edited the Patriot's entry. (Edited only the da_archetype and material and hp data to include all my hps)
9.ran freelancer and it crashed when I finalized buying ship (I could not see the model in the little rotation window, either)

I've dug through this forum and the tut forum and gleaned and pieced together info from here and there, but what we really need is a modding help forum like this thread.

also, do I need FLEd-ids.exe?

Thanks for reading this mess and for help in advance.

Edited by - Imagine on 11-07-2003 01:16:35

Caid

There are thousands of things that can, and do, go wrong with battleship encounters - mine still crash every ten minutes or so. Try looking through Wanderers original battleship tutorial - if that doesnt help ask again and ill post my edited .ini s for you.

Bob McDob

I trawled through all the dlls searching for "Liberty Space" but couldnt find it. It may unfortunatley be hard-coded but try resources.dll, which I havent tried yet.

I need help changing level requirments and current worth. I can't find the file to edit!

Okay - website nearly ready - have left off parts for cloaking and other ubers as not sure to the wiseness of putting them up - what do people think - don't want to cause major probs. Also - my skill at system creation and modding SUCKS so if anyone wants to help out there with some things - would be appreciated. One more thing - how the hell do you kill uber hulls in MP? Is there a way if the admin made one gun server side that had hull damage value of the uber hull, that we could then all utilise - would this work (ie, we then have to mod our guns to the same value?)
Will post addy once running smoothly!