Cockpits?

Maj.Striker

Swabbie
Banned
Eddie, how hard is it/would it be to implement a cockpit system? (Ala Wing Commander 1 / 2). For example, if I created a cockpit mesh could I simply import it and use that instead of the default there now?

P.S. I have a suggestion, I imagine it will be extremely hard to do now but it would be nice with the next release of Flight commander that you organize everything into folders. For example, all sound fx are in a sounds folder, all images in an images folder etc. I guess it's pretty difficult to do now but it sure would be helpful...
 
Maybe it's not exactly what you're asking, but i've added 2 cockpits to FC. See:

Foil.jpg

dagger.jpg

do the mesh, texture it, convert it into obj or mesh.bin and modify the xml of the ship in the cockpit section.

The cockpit have to be little (around +/- 1). Get the exact measure by trial and error...
 
Venom said:
Maybe it's not exactly what you're asking, but i've added 2 cockpits to FC. See:

View attachment 1759

View attachment 1760

do the mesh, texture it, convert it into obj or mesh.bin and modify the xml of the ship in the cockpit section.

The cockpit have to be little (around +/- 1). Get the exact measure by trial and error...
Wow, that's the first new cockpit I've seen yet! Venom, looks like you've done some very cool modding, can't wait to see your package!
 
Maj.Striker said:
Eddie, how hard is it/would it be to implement a cockpit system? (Ala Wing Commander 1 / 2). For example, if I created a cockpit mesh could I simply import it and use that instead of the default there now?

P.S. I have a suggestion, I imagine it will be extremely hard to do now but it would be nice with the next release of Flight commander that you organize everything into folders. For example, all sound fx are in a sounds folder, all images in an images folder etc. I guess it's pretty difficult to do now but it sure would be helpful...

As you've seen above, yes, any .obj mesh can be used as a cockpit. I'm not going to implement folders, despite the requests. It's tedious boring work for me with no visible improvements to the player. I'd recommend just using windows explorer's sort by file type instead.

In addition to customizing the 3d cockpit, you can also extensively customize both the hud colors, and its icons. Just look at either default.hud.xml or red.hud.xml. The red one is a completely redesigned kilrathi hud, shown below.

flightcommupdate7.jpg
 
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Because they have meaning: blue is friendly, red is enemy, gray is neutral. If the colors have meanings, I don't want to change them.
 
Eddie, got another quick question for you. I replaced the stars background in the sim.sector.xml with a different picture of my own (I used stars.png). It looks nice however it doesn't completely cover the entire "sky" on four sides (or perhaps its really only two sides) there is my background but on the other two sides I just have blackness. At first I was using a 1024x1024 image but I changed that and made sure, my image is 512x512 just like bluepurplenebula that is defaulted in the sim.sector.xml. Is there some reason my background shouldn't be covering the entire "sky"?
 
Yeah, I only texture 4 sides. It's just really difficult to create a sky with seams that match up, so I make it easier, since only 2 sides have to match instead of 4. I'd recommend using planets to decorate the remaining 2 sides. The prophecy textures look really bad if you try to put them on all 6 sides.
 
Well that's actually only a problem if you want to use a nebula background (or something that overlaps the sides). My background (sorry I don't have it here at work to attach) is very similar to a WC1 background in which it would match all sides seamlessly. Is there anything I can do to make it work on all six sides? I imported a slight better sun/star for the sim.sector.xml and it looks really good I think. Quick suggestion on the sun/star for next release...is it possible to do what you've done for the lens effect for the actual sun itself (i.e. as the player points his cross hairs closer to the sun it get a little bigger). Would be a neat and fairly easy effect to implement I think.
 
Maj. Striker said:
Sweet. Well done. What if not everything has a texture on .obj, does it throw an error?

Not exactly, it fills the uncovered parts with an ugly plain white...

Lt.Death100 said:
Nothing like low-res. :p

Right! Using original cockpits images from WC2... Ferret for the 1st, Epee for the 2nd... But they still are WIP..

eddieb said:
Wow, that's the first new cockpit I've seen yet! Venom, looks like you've done some very cool modding, can't wait to see your package!

Sorry, these are not finished yet... They will be used in the mod, in the ship pack you'll find the Shrike(Prophecy) and Vaktoth(Mine) Cockpits, also them still WIP...
shrike.jpg

vaktoth.jpg
 
When I try to import Howard Day's Hornet model (converted to .obj) I keep gettting a message that material can't be found, unknown material at - Default "" something like that...the texture is already a .bmp not sure why I keep getting that message. How do I map my space background to the two "empty" sides of the cube?
 
Maj.Striker said:
When I try to import Howard Day's Hornet model (converted to .obj) I keep gettting a message that material can't be found, unknown material at - Default "" something like that...the texture is already a .bmp not sure why I keep getting that message.

There have been already several hornet conversions, ask around, I'm sure someone will send you one. You can try the one in WC1 remake if you like. Look at your .mtl file in a text editor, and make sure every material has a texture file associated with it, and if not, add a dummy one.

Maj.Striker said:
How do I map my space background to the two "empty" sides of the cube?

You can't, for the time being.
 
Maj.Striker said:
P.S. I have a suggestion, I imagine it will be extremely hard to do now but it would be nice with the next release of Flight commander that you organize everything into folders.

Yeah, I've asked multiple times myself.

I believe, though, that the lens effect is something that can be done just by editing the sector.xml. I think it is the diffuse light in which there you can select a point from which it comes.
 
Maj.Striker said:
Quick suggestion on the sun/star for next release...is it possible to do what you've done for the lens effect for the actual sun itself (i.e. as the player points his cross hairs closer to the sun it get a little bigger). Would be a neat and fairly easy effect to implement I think.

Would be possible, but I'm busy with jumps now. I'm going to have to put it low on the priority list :(.
 
I can understand that, let me say thank you upfront for the work you've done and are continuing to do. What would be really nice though if you or sounds like Venom might be able to even do is show how (step by step) to import .obj files into Flight Commander. I read the instructions for extracting ships from WCP but I'm not wanting to do that, I'm wanting to import original models. I'll hunt around and see what I can find, if I figure it out I'll try to make a tutorial.

Just to clarify again though, there is NO way to map anything to those two "black" sides of the sky cube in FC? They will always have to be black? (i.e. I can't map my background to the four walls and then separately map them to the two sides?)
 
Maj.Striker said:
I can understand that, let me say thank you upfront for the work you've done and are continuing to do. What would be really nice though if you or sounds like Venom might be able to even do is show how (step by step) to import .obj files into Flight Commander. I read the instructions for extracting ships from WCP but I'm not wanting to do that, I'm wanting to import original models. I'll hunt around and see what I can find, if I figure it out I'll try to make a tutorial.

There's no need to do any special conversions, just use an .obj file name directly. Just make sure the obj file has textures for every material, and that both normals and texels are present.

Maj.Striker said:
Just to clarify again though, there is NO way to map anything to those two "black" sides of the sky cube in FC? They will always have to be black? (i.e. I can't map my background to the four walls and then separately map them to the two sides?)

Correct.
 
There is a convertor though, to convert an object with a single texture into a mesh.bin file, but it is very limited (ie only one texture).

The only problem, though, with using .obj is that it slows down the game (ie requires more system resources)--or at least it did with Cyb's Rapier 2 model.
 
No, obj's do not require more resources. They may take slightly longer to load, but once loaded it's not a problem. The rapier 2 model was slower because it had more polygons.
 
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