Adding New Ships

posted on June 22nd, 2010, 8:55 pm

U should still use the !alpha tag for material settings I belive...The pic you show tells me that there may be a mesh issue as well as I see the nacelles versus the nacelle glows are skewed from one another...

Things to check.

Make sure all mesh nodes are centered in the model..use move command in "absolute" mode
Do the same for the "lights" Node.
Make sure that The mesh nodes are linked to the scene root and not to other nodes as this can be quite hillarius the outcomes sometimes.
Make sure your groups and mesh node names match.
Make sure you copied over all the needed Texture files.
Make sure the original sod had the corect material settings and copy those settings.

The sods that FO uses are exported from 3dmax I belive so reusing the joint hirearchy in ms3d may be buggy.

[dEjavU]

posted on June 22nd, 2010, 9:45 pm

Last edited by dEjavU on June 22nd, 2010, 10:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

out of curiosity, what program are you using? I got that from CV sometimes

I'm using milkshape3d(1.8.4)

Yeah, it shouldn't be a problem with FO.  I've gotten that issue with making a model before because the ambient lighting, and other settings there about.  A straight model port from a2 should work in FO.  I haven't had any problem with Majestics work over at MSFC, nor any other ship ive tried to add.  The only one that didn't work for me was the Dawnstar, and that was in 3.0.4, so I"m sure it works now.

Frak now why didn't I think of that, I should've done this from the beggining. See people this is what happens when you think too much about something. 

the sods that FO uses are exported from 3dmax I belive so reusing the joint hirearchy in ms3d may be buggy

Thanks for the tips RYDERSTORM, and yah that would explain how their able to name all the glow nodes the same.

I find that the game is un affected if you add a node suffix. Basically an underscore after the node name followed by numbers or letters can help get around that

yh you just need to add the tag to the end (eg s_Warpglowspriteblue6_1, s_Warpglowspriteblue6_2 etc
and ur best getting this
Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations - Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations - Index
as my fo section is very uncomplete but its here anyway
Star Trek Armada Modding Wiki

Ah there it is, okay thanks Blade and I tried what the both of you suggested and yes that seems to have done it, the joints were not centered right when I merged them and the heirarchy itself was buggy. I went back to the original a2 SOD of the Excalibur and added the glows again with the suffixes this time, exported it and ran my FO game and sure enough..



....I can't really tell if the glows were working as I only added two just to test her out but she flies just fine. Textures too were okay, I had to add a specular version and add this extension(_bump)to each of them. I honestly thought that was part of the problem but yah as it turned out it was the joint set up. Now just not sure how to go about doing the build buttons and wireframes, can anyone please enlighten me a little on this last part?

posted on June 23rd, 2010, 12:47 am

Build buttons work the same way basicly in FO as in stock.....you just need to create the tga image..I suggest copying and edting one of the included button panels from all_interface_buildbuttons. You will then need to add the entry to gui_global.spr. also wireframes are just single image now in FO and those I belive go in miniimages.spr. The cool looking system interface tga will need to go in the systembackgrounds.spr and for the lil icons on the system display those are located in systemimages.spr

OK here is a tip.....I highly suggest when u make the system interface background graphic that you also make yourself a template to locate your system icons such as weapons and special abilities. One thing that drives me insane is getting the lil graphics lined up just perfect on the graphic but once you make a graphical template you can kinda normalize your weaponxiconpos values. I hope that made sense. Or at the very least helps you have less trial and error asigning the positions to the lil icons.

The actual making of the buttons is out of my realm that I feel qualifyed to explaine but Adm Zaxxon is a pro at it IMO.

posted on June 23rd, 2010, 2:31 am

I have some experience making different kinds of build button images I'm sure I'll find my way, I just needed to know the integrating it into the FO set up part(which you pretty much covered)thanks allot RYDERSTORM.

Do you(or anyone)by any chance know the name of the odf file for the drydock that makes the Sovereign or the Phalinx class?

posted on June 23rd, 2010, 2:37 am

fed_eraudi_yardY or fed_eraudi_yardZ

posted on June 23rd, 2010, 2:48 am

 Thx Ryder.

Yeah, so like he said, buttons are the same, just with transparency, wireframes are now miniimages, and just a single picture.  The system background is the top view of the ship you get when you select a single ship, in the systembackgrounds sprite file.  The most advanced part is the systemicons or the weapon icons.  these are defined in the systemicons.spr and may be defined for any weapon you choose they will show the animation of the reload time.

 The position of them...is not so advanced.  the position of the icons is defined in the ship odf and is placed on a skewed x,y plane.  because the plane is the systembackground, itis a rectangle.  this means that the each unit of x is greater than y.  if you understand, if x = 50 and y = 50 then the icon will be in the center of the background, and that, because the 100 units of y is actually about half as much as 100 units of x then you should understand how to position the icons about the ship image.  just know that if you add 10 to the X coordinates, it will move alot further than adding 10 units to Y


I don't know if this is what everyone else does, but to make all these images, I just put the ship in a stock a2 install, and use storm 3D viewer to position the ship and take the pics.  I then use GIMP to take the pictures, add shadows, ect, and just past them onto a blank button(included in the last of the series of Stock buttons)  the rest is pretty straight forward.

....I can't really tell if the glows were working as I only added two just to test her out but she flies just fine.

Dunno, but maybe you could make the glows bigger?  I am not sure if you are using the same ones that are already in FO, but if you are, you should be able to make them bigger.


//Edit: Nin'jad

posted on June 23rd, 2010, 3:45 am

...just past them onto a blank button(included in the last of the series of Stock buttons)  

Thanks for metioning that cuz thats something I did not know 

posted on June 23rd, 2010, 5:28 am

Yeah, it was added in in the last patch because it was harder to recreate these buttons than the old ones.  Its a new feature

posted on June 23rd, 2010, 6:28 am

Okay you know what I'm going to have to get back to that with the build buttons and wireframes, right now I'm having trouble getting the ship to show up in-game without having to replace an existing unit. The GUI_global file is no longer recognizable to me to know what entry I need to add for this ship. I got the bit with the tech1 file but that's about all I now what to do. I tried to edit the shipyard I asked for earlier but there are two(fed_eraudi_yardY and fed_eraudi_yardZ)I don't understand why I need two files of the same shipyard much less know which one to edit. Help anyone?

On a side note though I did however finaly got the glows done had to add 76 nodes all together to the h_lights joint(took me forever)but I think this will do....



..this is replacing the Descent class though.

posted on June 23rd, 2010, 3:13 pm

The different yards are for the different avatars. The Z and the Y suffex is for Mayson and Risener. I dont know which one is which but check the eraudi yard for the phalanx to see what one build what ships. If you are wanting it to be a warpin ship however that is a different animal. If you want to do that id suggest coping the descent files.

posted on June 23rd, 2010, 4:58 pm

Yeah, that is what I do, though I"m pretty sure Z is mayson.


Those glows are awesome btw.  I wish I could do something like that for my ships, or better yet, my BSG mod.

One thing I would suggest though, copy all the decent files, and name them Dscent2 or something.  change descent 2 to your ship, and work on getting it in warpin.  that is the best way to have something accessible from both avatars. 

the reason for this is because of techtree errors.  Because there are two separate techtrees, one for each avatar, if your ship requires tech to be built it won't work for both avatars.  this is because each avatar has completely differety tech that is reaserched(its a different odf anyway)

So, the best way to ad a ship into FO would be to add it(your new ship) to warpin(or a new yard).  I can explain how to do this if you need me to.

[dEjavU]

posted on June 24th, 2010, 12:55 am

Last edited by dEjavU on June 26th, 2010, 11:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks, as I play with this ship I notice more and more that the glows are kind of weak compared to other FO ships. So I made the glow nodes stick out just a little bit more.. ....



..I think this is the settings for the glows I'll go by from now on  and yes the new ship yard idea I think too is the best way go about this, can you(or anyone)please break it down for me?

posted on June 24th, 2010, 9:30 am

Added another ship with the glows on it(only 38 nodes this time)but still having to rely on replacing existing units to get them in-game though....

posted on June 24th, 2010, 2:56 pm

Nicce!!  That is an awesome ship   I hope you get to the point where you can release some of these here on the forums.  There is a section here where you can attach or link to any mods you want to share with the community.   Most of whats there is out of date, 'cause alot of stuff was changed in recent patches, but new ones would be awesome!

The best way to add a station is...well, the same.  there shouldn't be anything different than from stock   I would just copy a yard's odf, rename it, and give it a new sod.  It shouldn't be too hard.  You will just have to add all those other sprite entries.


However, if you just want to re-use an SOD, you could just copy the odf, and add the basename line at the top with the name of the original station.  it would reuse the SOD, and all the sprite entries.  all you would have to to is add it to the Techtree, and a builder ship.

posted on July 2nd, 2010, 11:57 am

Looks very nice, but isn't it a DJ CUrtis ship? He prohibited the porting of his ships, so I wanr you not to release it for public use. I doN't want anyone to mess around

By the way, I didn't use glowing effects at all in my mod. It looks nice, but hte game runs faster if there are les glowing objects on the screen and I prefer using higher poly models instead of lower poly with glows.