Simulator implementation

Dark Angel

Spaceman
Hello everyone!

I'd like to know if it would be possible to somehow implement the simulator, like it was done for the original SO? I know it's planned, but according to the website, it might take a while... The SO simulator replaced the killboard, which I didn't mind... I just thought it would be nice to have such a pre-release simulator in Standoff also, at least before it gets fully implemented. Would it be somehow possible to make it? I'd really love to try out all those ships that, according to the Standoff website, are completed, but not implemented in Episode 1, but I'd like them with the cockpits, and according to this forum, the ships can't be transferred to SO with the cockpits. Or can they?

Thanks a lot.
 
There will be problems trying to import the ships into SO indeed, but I'm afraid you're just gonna have to wait for the next episode... The simulator missions are actually part of what's holding back Episode 2's release (the storyline missions are all done), so there's no way we could release a Sim patch earlier. :) All the work on Episode 2 is going as planned... trying to rush things or re-arrange our schedule at this point would probably just delay us.

For the record, the flyable ships in the Simulator will be the Hornet, Ferret, Stiletto, Epee, Talon, Rapier, Wraith, Morningstar, Sabre, Gladius, Raptor, Crossbow, Broadsword, and Tarsus. The Sim will come with 10 missions from the start (unlike Prophecy's), bringing Episode 2 up to a total of 15 missions.
 
Wow! That sure fuels the fire of anticipation for Episode 2! But I guess good things come to those who wait. By the way, I like the fact that you included the Tarsus. It's a nice touch.
 
Hehe, you might not think so any more after you get to fly it. The Tarsus is a lot like the Lamprey... it's neat to be able to select it in the sim, but you won't want to fly it more than once :p.
 
Wow! I've always wanted to fly those WC1&2 ships again! Thanks a lot for the heads-up, I guess I'll eagerly wait for it :) . And BTW, I didn't want to rush you, I was just asking.
 
Hmm, I guess I've changed my mind about the waiting... Please, could you tell me the following things? Just for my own use...

1. What's the name of the directory in which missions (Standoff E1)are stored in the .TRE file?
2. What's the name of the first (or any) mission's .mis file.
3. Are the names of ships used in the mission .mis (decrypted) identical with the names that'd show up on the HUD? E.g., if I'd like to use WCP Pascal to edit one of your missions?
 
1- Missions are always under the \mission folder, be it in WCP, SO, UE, or Standoff.
2- I believe our missions start at stp_m1.mis
3- I don't think it's possible to edit our missions at all without having access to the .pas source files.

I should note that if you have no experience altering any of the files in WCP or SO, replacing Standoff's campaign missions is, to say the least, a bad starting point. :p
 
The missions and all this is packed in the .TRE file and I have no means of getting inside, which makes it impossible to even think of editing them ;).

I was rather thinking of replacing the missions - Placing a mission of the same name as one of the Standoff missions in the \mission subdir. The last thing I need for doing that are the names of the ships to put after 'obj:' in the .pas file.

Anyway, files in subfolders get priority before packed files, isn't that so? (That's why I asked for the mission names in the first place.) If yes, it's really simple to go back if I mess up, isn't it? I won't even have to reinstall Standoff again, I guess... Anyway, I'll probably want to revert back to Standoff again once I've at least tried - the battles are quite nice, I'm just afraid they might get repetitive before Episode 2 gets released. Anyway, I don't like fighting Nephilim ships (they're ugly to look at, at least for me, and it "just doesn't feel WC"), so the original's out of the question, at least for now. Unknown Enemy is fine, I just can't cope with those damn cockpits. Flying a Ferret's nice, the Piranha cockpit ruins the experience, though... The Ferret's just an example, think of it as a "[insert your ship here]" placeholder. But now I'm seriously off-topic in the Standoff forum, though.
 
Dark Angel said:
I was rather thinking of replacing the missions - Placing a mission of the same name as one of the Standoff missions in the \mission subdir. The last thing I need for doing that are the names of the ships to put after 'obj:' in the .pas file.
The object names are the names of the files in the \ships folder of our TRE files (eg: stileto), you can check these filenames out and extract the files with Treman.

Replacing missions might work, but the campaign structure, the fiction, etc. will all be broken. Basically you might get Standoff to run your mission, but it'll crash if you click the fiction viewer, and after the mission it'll either crash or show you the game over screen and you'd have to start a new pilot just to try your mission out again.... I *think* replacing missions will work, with these restrictions. Campaign missions are really the most complex type of file around, and the one who most dislikes unplanned modifications. :)

Also, any savegames you had used during this edited mission run would not be compatible with "real" Standoff anymore, even after you deleted all your modified files... and if you tried to test your mission using a pilot that had been used in the real Standoff campaign, your mission might crash even if it had no errors in it. Basically, you'd have to keep different savegame folders.

Dark Angel said:
And if not, would you be so kind and post the source, please?
I think they're a little more complicated than that. There's inter-referenced files everywhere, so we'd have to put together a full source package, which seems like an awful lot of trouble just to allow people to modify a game which we're still trying to finish. :p

(Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see people using Standoff's ships and basic structure to make "mission packages", and I plan to make that as easy as possible once Standoff is out and encourage people to try it by writing a tutorial or somesuch... but at the moment we're busy enough trying to finish up our own set of missions, and encouraging people to make half-working modifications on our half-finished game doesn't sound to me as something that could work to the benefit of most players. We'll make Standoff easy to patch and put together a tutorial once we're done messing with it ourselves.)

Dark Angel said:
Anyway, files in subfolders get priority before packed files, isn't that so? (That's why I asked for the mission names in the first place.)
As I said in the other thread, that's the case in Secret Ops. In Standoff you have to remove the first line from your stan_1.cfg file to make that work.

Dark Angel said:
If yes, it's really simple to go back if I mess up, isn't it? I won't even have to reinstall Standoff again, I guess...
As I said above, that's the case as long as you don't mix the savegames. Running any mission other than ours will probably corrupt any games that were started with our original mission set, and trying to run our mission set with a savegame that was created while using the altered mission set will not work either. I'm definitely not the most knowledgeable person on the team when it comes to mission editing, but I believe that's at least a semi-accurate explanation of how it works. :p

Reading the tutorials on KW's site and trying to modify a simulator mission in UE or WCP is really the recomended way to go about getting started with mission editing. There's also the UE source code which you can take a look at, and after doing so you could certainly modify UE's campaign missions (and it'd also give you a much better and more practical explanation of why it's hard to edit Standoff's campaign missions than this post did :p).
 
Thanks a lot!

There's one problem though - Treman and all other utilities from HCl don't work under my WinXP (see my thread on that in the editing forum - I've even repeated the error message there)! So I guess it's bad luck with the names. And, BTW, are there any ships not seen in E1 but already implemented in the game?

Please, post the list of the object file names for the ships... If not for all of them, at least for the flyable ones and a few Kilrathi ones.

As for the saves, I guess that won't be a problem, as I'm intending to create those missions for testing purposes only, well at least at first. You should've kept that debug simulator in the lower right corner... It would allow us to avoid this discussion entirely :D .
 
Dark Angel said:
but I'd like them with the cockpits, and according to this forum, the ships can't be transferred to SO with the cockpits. Or can they?

Thanks a lot.
Actually, I've gotten them (most, anyway...some, namely almost all the Kilrathi ships, still are lacking meshes) to work, complete with cockpits. First, get Treman (here, scroll down to the bottom, in the "files" section) and WCPEdit (here, download WCPEdit 1.8 and WCPEdit 1.8 TE). Install WCPEdit. Now, the fun begins.

First, using Treman, and option 3 (extract one or multiple files), extract the necessary files from stan_e1.tre.

Example:
Select 3 - "extract one/some files from the TRE"
Press "M" for multiple *without the quotes*
Type "ship" *again, without quotes* and press enter
All the files in the ships folder will be extracted.

Repeat this, placing "mat", and "mesh" in place of the word "ship" in step 3. You may or may not have to also use "pal" as well, I don't remember if I had to or not.

After you have all these files, pick which resolution you run Secret Ops in. If it's just the default version, use Treman on stan640.tre. If you use the high-res patch from HCl, use Treman on either stan800.tree or stan1024.tre

Using the same process as above, with option 3 "extract one or multiple files", type "cockpit" in place of "ship". All the cockpits, with the correct names for the ships, will be extracted. You can then copy and paste the cockpit/ship/mesh/mat/(and pal if you extracted it, if not, don't worry about it) folders into your Secret Ops folder. Windows will give you a little box about "Folders of those names already exist, do you want to overwrite..."yada yada yada...just say ok, the most that might happen is you'll have a Broadsword tailfin design on the side of the SO Excalibur :p

Then, run WCPEdit, and let let it find all the ships you've just installed. Then, just swap them with whatever ship you want (example: Rapier II for the Panther BLB). If all is well, clicking "Launch" will take you into Secret Ops, and presuming you swapped a ship with one that's involved in the current mission, you'll hopefully see one of Eder's models swooping around.

If SO crashes, you've got a couple of things to check: #1, try not to swap any of the Standoff Kilrathi ships, except the Gothri, into the game - the meshes for the ships aren't present, and that causes a crash. The Gothri is present, however. Also, don't know how much experience you've got with Secret Ops, but swapping a standard ship into the slot for the Skate (both the standard ship and the joined version) or the Stingray causes the game to lock up, since it can't reconcile the difference between a model of, for example, a Sorthak exploding and turning into 3 Darkets.

The other thing to check...the weapons on your new ships. Because of the different types, most of the Standoff ships will end up with either Tachyon guns or Charging Mass Drivers. Just use WCPEdit to change them to the correct type of gun. Also, changing them to another type, and then back again, has solved more than one crash for me when using Standoff or UE ships in Secret Ops.

Hopefully I didn't forget any part of that :p

Edit: Must have started typing this the instant you were posting...the error message you get from Treman is simple to get around (I'm on XP as well). Rather than trying to run Treman itself, right-click on the tre file you want to work with. Pick Open With, and then click "Browse". Go to the directory where you put Treman, and select it. Then, double-click that tre file, and it should open up directly to the Treman interface.

As for your next question, almost all the non-Kilrathi ships are included in the stan_e1.tre file. Guess we'll have to wait for the Kats in Episode 2 ;).

And finally, you won't need a list of the flyable/useable ships. Once you copy those folders into the SO installation, WCPEdit will identify them based on their names in the ships folder. And thankfully, Eder & co. was kind enough to name their ships by their real names, so a Ferret is actually called a Ferret, instead of something bizarre such as "Ship 182948".
 
Thanks, SabreAce, but Treman still shows up the 16-bit MS-DOS Subsystem error, so I guess I'm just out of luck. I guess I'll stick to my original plan of replacing Stadoff's 1st mission with my edited one ;) . I understand it might crash the game, but as long as I get to play my mission, it's fine by me. And I guess some trial and error will get my problems solved in no time when it comes to object names :D .

EDIT: I've tried my replacement plan. It works... It works! IT WORKS!! I could still use the object file name list, though - Treman doesn't work and it seems to me that some ship names must be misspelled or something. Trial and error's too tedious here :confused: .
 
Dark Angel said:
BTW, are there any ships not seen in E1 but already implemented in the game?
There's the ships that appear in the object viewer, and a few Kilrathi fighters. Not all Confed capships have all the necessary files to work in missions, though.

File names are ship names limited to 8 characters. Bengal, Connie, Crossbw, CVE_FK, Dorkathi, Drakhri, Sartha, Talon_P, Venture, Mstar, Loo, Jut_LT, Stileto, Ferret, Hornet, Epee, etc. You can get most right by guessing. :p

Dark Angel said:
You should've kept that debug simulator in the lower right corner... It would allow us to avoid this discussion entirely :D .
That'd be hardly indicative of a polished game. :p
 
Takeoff/Landing Sequences

How do I make takeoff and landing sequences? I understand it can be done, the functions for it are in WCPPas... Could you please tell me the exact usage of these and what the parameters mean, please? I'd like to have a takeoff sequence in my mission.

I certainly wouldn't be able to figure out Jut_LT (for example) if you didn't tell me :) . Another thing that baffles me is the Rapier - what the hell is the name of that one? It's sure less than 8 chars... Is it there at all?

Otherwise I'm starting to get the hang of WCPPas ;) ...

And BTW, WCPPas seems to have a menu option to decompile IFF files (.mis, .eng and such), I haven't tried it yet, though (my Treman still doesn't work no matter what I do - see my thread in Editing...).
 
Dark Angel said:
How do I make takeoff and landing sequences?
I'm not sure... I think you either have to use a command to set a given capship as the player's mothership first, or maybe you have to run the takeoff command with the mothership's name as a parameter. In either case, I think it only works with the Lionheart. If you want to take off from another capship you have to code the cutscenes by hand (using camera commands, etc).

UE's takeoffs were all coded the hard way, so a look at the source code of any of UE's missions should show you everything you need to know about that.

Dark Angel said:
I certainly wouldn't be able to figure out Jut_LT (for example) if you didn't tell me :)
Well, you can't expect me to do Treman's work for everyone who asks politely, and you certainly can't blame me for Treman hating your computer. :p You should try to figure out why HCl's apps aren't working for you, because you can't get into any serious editing without them.

Dark Angel said:
Another thing that baffles me is the Rapier - what the hell is the name of that one? It's sure less than 8 chars... Is it there at all?
The Rapier is not in Standoff, only the Rapier II is... its name, believe it or not, is Rapier2. :p

Dark Angel said:
And BTW, WCPPas seems to have a menu option to decompile IFF files (.mis, .eng and such).
Yes, you can edit mostly anything with WCPPas, but some filetypes decompile into uninteligible stuff. Missions decompile into a decompiled IFF file, not into a nice and readable .PAS source.
 
Thanks a lot and sorry for being such an inconvenience :) . I'll try asking around the Editing forum with the takeoffs, I understand that's not a Standoff-specific problem.
 
Generic Takeoff - works for any capship

GOT IT!

I found a function ( MS_GenericTakeoff(tag) ) for a generic takeoff sequence. I guess it works for any ship with landing bays. It doesn't need any parameters - the tag can be set to any number, I guess, 0 works fine. It works for any capship that's present at the mission's starting waypoint :D . Well, at least for Standoff, that is (haven't tested it in UE). The only catch is that you'll blow up if the capship doesn't have landing bays (but, still, the correct capship will show in the cutscene of you blowing up). Now, please, could you tell me the filename of the Gilgamesh-class carrier from Standoff E1, please? "Gilgamesh" works, but it doesn't have landing bays.
 
Yeah, GenericTakeoff works with any ship, even one without a launcher or a landing bay (it was basically created to allow Casey to take off from the Relay Station in WCP).

As for your other question... well, gee, I wonder what the filename name for a ship named the Lionheart could possibly be :p.
 
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