Questions from J

eddieb

Vice Admiral
Some questions from email:

Great, here goes...

1. I've noticed that I'm still not able to add ships to the game, that is bring entirely new ship.xml files into the game. Whenever I would, say, copy over an Arrow V, and specify in the Mission 1 file, run the game, I'd get a model, but the behavior of the model is extremely erratic; rotating wildly, moving around wildly etc... So far, I'd edit existing files to take on the attributes of whatever fighter/capship I want, and its working. Is there a way to just add the ships on top of the existing ship load?

2. Is there a way to set certain ships on a patrol?

3. Is there a way to edit pod/thruster physical locations in a 3d modeller?

4. Whats the polycap of models imported into game?

Thats all I have for now, thanks again!
 
My answers

1)
Yes, you can add new ships to the game. But maybe their speeds or other stats are messed up. Start off slow. Copy an existing *.ship.xml file that you know works to a new file name. Change the ship name, the mesh, leave the rest alone. Try it. Then move on to editing stats.

2) What do you mean on patrol. That they autopilot with you? Yes. That they have to move to a certain location. Check the scripts page, don't remember off the top of my head. Probably not.

3) I'm not good with 3d modelers, sorry.

4) No limit. Whatever your graphics card can handle.
 
To clarify question two, say I want to start off at a Nav point that houses an Outpost. I'd like it if there were capships moving around, as well as formations of fighters zooming around -- making it so the nav looks "busy".



As for question three, I see that the blue thruster exhaust is pretty much spot on where they're supposed to be. It usually takes me about an hour editing the ship.xml portion getting the radius, and position right so it doesn't look... sloppy. I was wondering if there's an easier way to do this.

Also, I haven't gotten too deep into the scripting, but having ships jump in at certain times in a mission, possible? Like, I'm fighting some kilrathi, and I'm about to scratch the last cat off my screen, when a Dorkir jumps in...

Some more questions:

4. Is there the possibility of capship engagements?

5. Is there the possibility of fighters launching from capships?

I was able to pick up a Saitek X45 flight controller from a secondhand shop today, it brings new life to Flight Commander. Looking forward to playing with it some more! Thanks again!
 
So you can set scripts to have a certain velocity, but no, you can't pre-program a path for them to follow.

Yeah, I see the problem with editing the radius and position. The right way to do it is to have a model in .obj format. Then you can open it up in some 3d program. Using the editor, you could figure out what points and radius to use. Write them down, then put them in the XML later. Flight commander can read the .obj 3d file format. There's no way to go from .mesh.bin to .obj.

Yes its possible to have ships jump in at certain times in a mission, you need scripting to do that.

Capships don't fire just yet, no ai.
You can spawn fighters from somewhere near the capship, yes.
 
On the subject of Flight Commander questions, are there any plans for any new updates to the core FC pack in work? :)
 
On the subject of Flight Commander questions, are there any plans for any new updates to the core FC pack in work? :)

Don't put this on the news. But for the casual reader, I looked through the bug databse, and here's what's already done for 1.7.

Lots more comms and the AI to use them. AI tells you when firing a missile, says nice kill, and more.
Display shield flash when hitting shielded part of cap ship
Music changes on Torpedo run
Change shield color (can make kilrathi shields red for example)
Can play movies after the debriefing.
In-game lua console for script debugging
Use names for weapons xml tag

Stuff that's partly done:
I'd like to get the comm work finished up before releasing a 1.7
Also in the works is a new mission editor with a cleaner user interface.


The following items were supposed to be done before releasing a 1.7, but have not been started
Missile rear aspect
Settings support for choosing a joystick
Add a timer with a callback for scripting
 
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