Future wars models

posted on March 5th, 2017, 4:52 pm

thank you for the link, but I already have the mod. it doesn't answer my question

posted on March 5th, 2017, 4:55 pm

If you want to upload some and send me a PM with them, I'll take a look. Not wishing to step on anyones toes or anything, I am just curious from a technical standpoint how they did it.

posted on March 5th, 2017, 5:08 pm

Squire James wrote:If you want to upload some and send me a PM with them, I'll take a look. Not wishing to step on anyones toes or anything, I am just curious from a technical standpoint how they did it.

So you want me to upload some of the sods?

It seems to be that every sod in that game only works in Future Wars.

I'll send you one.

On MODDB someone else said they had the same exact problem, that the sods just showed up as a white box.

posted on March 5th, 2017, 7:16 pm

So far, no problems. They import into both UU3d and MS3d with no issues, and the geometry and hardpoints all seem fine. I'll try testing them in the 3d viewer.

posted on March 5th, 2017, 7:19 pm

Squire James wrote:So far, no problems. They import into both UU3d and MS3d with no issues, and the geometry and hardpoints all seem fine. I'll try testing them in the 3d viewer.

really??? What about in game though? I try viewing them in map editor and got nada.

posted on March 5th, 2017, 8:15 pm

How very strange. They don't want to work in the 3d viewer. Hmmmm. I'll see if I can isolate what is causing it

EDIT: Appears to be an issue with the way they are hardpointed. Not sure exactly what is doing it. I'll see what I can figure out. Exporting them without any hardpoints etc works fine. (but obviously you lose all the hardpoints, emitters etc).

DOUBLE EDIT: I think i've fixed it. You lose the emitters, but, keep the hardpoints. I think the reason they don't work is that Future Wars likely adds new emitter references. So, in Future Wars, the models work fine because they use emitters that exist. In regular A2 or any other installation without those emitters, crash. But, I will continue to experiment.

TRIPLE EDIT: Yep. If you remove the e_steambase emitter, or rename it to something found in stock, it works. There is your problem.

posted on March 5th, 2017, 9:03 pm

Squire James wrote:How very strange. They don't want to work in the 3d viewer. Hmmmm. I'll see if I can isolate what is causing it

EDIT: Appears to be an issue with the way they are hardpointed. Not sure exactly what is doing it. I'll see what I can figure out. Exporting them without any hardpoints etc works fine. (but obviously you lose all the hardpoints, emitters etc).

DOUBLE EDIT: I think i've fixed it. You lose the emitters, but, keep the hardpoints. I think the reason they don't work is that Future Wars likely adds new emitter references. So, in Future Wars, the models work fine because they use emitters that exist. In regular A2 or any other installation without those emitters, crash. But, I will continue to experiment.

TRIPLE EDIT: Yep. If you remove the e_steambase emitter, or rename it to something found in stock, it works. There is your problem.

Thank for doing this for me!

however, I am lost what is the e_steambase emitter? I am not a modeler

posted on March 5th, 2017, 10:08 pm

You know the gas that vent from damaged ships? Those are emitters. They are defined in Ms3d with a prefix of e_ (same as hardpoints are h_ and mesh nodes are m_)

Clearly Future Wars has added a new emitter, called steambase (the "steam" emitters are the bluish ones I believe). I have downloaded the mod and I'll have a nose through it. It should be easy enough to add new emitters, i've just never had cause to do it. Once I can find the emitter entry, you can add it to your game and bam, these models will work without any alteration

If you think of it like a weapon file. In a mod with say "FPhaser2.odf" a ship ODF reference it will work fine. If you put it in a mod that doesn't have that weapon, it will crash. You *can* remove the entry from each file, but it's easier to just add the weapon file. Same here. You can hex edit SOD files and change the name of the emitters (easiest way to do it really), or you could just add the emitter to your game

posted on March 6th, 2017, 1:15 am

Ok cool! I look forward to hearing how to do it. You really made my day, now that I know I will be able to use these models

posted on March 6th, 2017, 1:53 am

Follow up question, how to hex edit the sods to add to FO?

posted on March 6th, 2017, 3:38 am

Last edited by Squire James on March 6th, 2017, 4:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

Sorry, took a while. Apparently the Future Wars Installer requires you to have the A2 CD in the drive before it will run. My CD is in my storage shed. Haven't used it in years (original release of A2 too. Better go rescue it from the damp actually).

So, I had to use my cunning and wile to get it to run. Anyhoops. It's installed now.

The only problem far as I can see with hex editing the models is that in my experience, hex editing requires you to replace an entry with an entry of the same number of characters, or you corrupt the file. So, for "e_steambase" you'd need an emitter with a name of exactly that number of characters.

Much easier to just add the emitter to FO instead. I remember seeing them defined in a sprite file somewhere. As I said, it's not difficult to do I just had no need to do it for KA2 (emitters are a pain to rotate properly on 3d models so I usually didn't bother)

I'll tell you how to do that once I know for sure.

EDIT: Alrighty, wow. This mod is badly put together. Anyhoop. The clue is indeed in emitters.spr.

Code: Select all: @emitter steambase type=spray pixel=(0.6,0.8,1.0) sprite=ventgas expansion_rate=1.0 firing_period=0.15 lifespan=1.999 velocity=8.0 spread_angle=5.0 @end_emitter

Copy that, and put it in your emitters.spr after the existing steamxl entry.

Those stations you sent me SHOULD now load. Of course, there are other emitters and such that other models may use. But, you can find them in the same file. Should be easy to copy them across too. Just compare your emitter file with the Future Wars one.

posted on March 6th, 2017, 4:26 am

Squire James wrote:Sorry, took a while. Apparently the Future Wars Installer requires you to have the A2 CD in the drive before it will run. My CD is in my storage shed. Haven't used it in years (original release of A2 too. Better go rescue it from the damp actually).

So, I had to use my cunning and wile to get it to run. Anyhoops. It's installed now.

The only problem far as I can see with hex editing the models is that in my experience, hex editing requires you to replace an entry with an entry of the same number of characters, or you corrupt the file. So, for "e_steambase" you'd need an emitter with a name of exactly that number of characters.

Much easier to just add the emitter to FO instead. I remember seeing them defined in a sprite file somewhere. As I said, it's not difficult to do I just had no need to do it for KA2 (emitters are a pain to rotate properly on 3d models so I usually didn't bother)

I'll tell you how to do that once I know for sure.

No need to apologize, I greatly appreciate you doing this for me.