STA2 Classic mod issue

posted on July 16th, 2013, 10:55 pm

I finally found the STA2 classic mod the other day and installed it as a FleetOps mod. Love playing Armada 2 with proper Widescreen resolution. Makes it look way better. My problem is this. For some reason, I can't save a game in single player mode in the mod. I know the save feature is there because I can save in an Instant Action game. Anyone know of a way to fix this? Is it an issue with the mod or with the FleetOps core?

--
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world:
those who understand binary and those who don't.

posted on July 16th, 2013, 11:00 pm

Yes, the visual display of the save button is something we broke in 3.2.7 - in our next release the feature is restored . For now, to save in a Single Player Mission, just hit Ctrl+S. You can access the menu by going into Instant Action and loading the game.

posted on July 16th, 2013, 11:10 pm

Oh great! I'm glad that'll be fixed soon and that I can still use the keyboard shortcut.

Ok, on to my next question. Does anyone know how I can use the FleetOps high quality models, textures, effects, etc in the Armada 2 mod? I'd like to make Armada 2 look even better while I'm playing it in widescreen.

posted on July 16th, 2013, 11:27 pm

Replacing the models (renamed to match stock) and textures (not renamed to match stock) should work, though you'd need to edit the hardpoints in the odf if you don't want phasers firing out of the middle of a nacelle or anything...

posted on July 17th, 2013, 2:44 am

I suspect the last part is a bit beyond me. I'm mostly interested in making the ships and planets and moons and things look better, though I don't know that there are any planet models in FleetOps...

posted on July 17th, 2013, 9:30 am

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, planet models are "fixed". I've tried changing the 3d models used for them, but it doesn't seem to have any effect. It seems that the sphere shape and it's lods (my main complaint; up close they look fine but the lods kick in if you zoom out and they look clunky) are hard coded.

If you look in the planet odf files, the textures are assigned through the odf. This is totally different to usual 3d models that have the texture assigned in the SOD file itself.

Moons, Asteroids etc however are editable.

posted on July 17th, 2013, 11:59 am

I suspect the last part is a bit beyond me.

The 'edit hardpoints' part? It's just more copy & paste; open the odf of a ship, find the part where the weapons are listed then copy the hardpoints into the stock ships odf in place of the default hardpoints.

posted on July 17th, 2013, 4:05 pm

Easier said than done. I don't even know what I'd need to do that? A text editor? Something fancier?

posted on July 17th, 2013, 4:12 pm

Easier said than done. I don't even know what I'd need to do that? A text editor? Something fancier?

odf files are plain text just with an extension that's not txt.

notepad can open them fine. i personally use notepad++

posted on July 17th, 2013, 4:20 pm

I have something called Textpad, but I need to reinstall it. It's pretty cool. Has contextual highlighting for a lot of things.

posted on July 17th, 2013, 4:43 pm

I suspect the last part is a bit beyond me. I'm mostly interested in making the ships and planets and moons and things look better, though I don't know that there are any planet models in FleetOps...

Just my two cents, but you'd probably be better off by downloading one ship or station mod or something like that into your base ST Armada 2 game (not the classic mod) from say http://armada2.filefront.com or Armada Fleet Command to give you an idea of which files go where and which files need edited. Always install them into an empty folder and do the work manually so you don't over write base files. It's pretty easy and once you do a couple they're simple. You'll probably find that the midnite universe 2.0 mod is the best available to change the space backgrounds/planets/moons. I also installed high resolution planets made by Don Quixote from that same site which makes the planets much better still.

Once you get the basics down then you can start taking things from other mods and putting them into your own game if you like how they look. I have completely changed every single thing in my stock A2 game to make it all look better. Once you do that then you can use the instructions in the guide on this site to make your own mod in Fleet Ops using the Classic A2 mod as a base which is also very simple. Food for thought. Gotta start somewhere. Also, I too use notepad++ for my text edits.

posted on August 5th, 2013, 7:00 am

Speaking of the STA2 CLASSIC MOD is it possible to modify that with other mod content to play inside FleetOps?

posted on August 5th, 2013, 2:50 pm

What? Dude, it's already a FleetOps mod.

EDIT: Wait, do you mean is it possible to make a mod that uses STA2Classic?
Yes, it is. Go to the modding guide and you'll see you can make a mod that uses STA2Classic as a parent mod, and you can easily specify that in the info.ini file.

EDIT 2: This leads into something I was just figuring out this morning. I think I can just make a mod dependent on STA2Classic to replace the ship models, so that I'm not replacing any original files. I like this system. Thank you FleetOps for making a modification system that's truly modular. I've only seen this in a few other games, such as the old Escape Velocity titles from Ambrosia SW.

EDIT3: What a mess the SOD files are in the original A2. No wonder FleetOps redid the naming conventions. FO makes much more sense. I wonder if I can mod the STA2 classic mod to use FO naming conventions instead. What a disaster area. No wonder Craptivision lost the Star Trek game license after only 2 games.

posted on August 7th, 2013, 1:22 pm

Well I mean use the Classic mod as a platform for a stock Armada2 mod already in existence.

I tried the converting a stock mod to FleetOps in the guide but no it continues to crash... Help please!!!

posted on August 7th, 2013, 3:55 pm

On that, I don't know. You might want to start your own thread for that. You probably can do it, but back up your original files and be careful.