DefianceIndustries
Rear Admiral
That could work. you'd have to give them enough hit points to take a few HARMs or one light torpedo each, but you could still create a nice destroyed mesh for them.
Wing Commander Prophecy: Secret Ops Model Update Pack
- Thread starter DefianceIndustries
- Start date
That could work. you'd have to give them enough hit points to take a few HARMs or one light torpedo each, but you could still create a nice destroyed mesh for them.
DefianceIndustries
Rear Admiral
If anyone is interested in trying this out (I don't currently have the time or mission scripting skills at this point) I had a destroyed Concordia-class lurking around from when I thought I was going to do some work in FS2. I tweaked the destroyed mesh (cut off half of it so it's only about 1,200 tris) added some hard points and created a quick destroyed texture and a victoryd ship.iff (might need some changes I quickly removed all the component and turret chunks). I bundled it in with the Victory model off of Killerwave's page since it's already in Vision Capship form. You can find the zip here. The ship is called vic_hulld. If it does work, please post a video or screen caps. I'm curious to see how it works.
Boom:
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Lt.Overload
Rear Admiral
Tried it, and everything went wrong.
The ships file has two files, victory.iff and victoryd.iff. Victory.iff is Killerwave's, without modification. Victoryd.iff, I assume, is your modified version, but it doesn't work. Trying to load it crashes the game with a fatal, "CapitalShip::loadComponents invalid component type". I did, however, get it to work by taking the Fralthi's ship file, and replacing the original mesh call with "vic_hulld".
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
*splutters* A red paintjob like the other UBW ships, a problem? Goodness gracious, that's even better! And it does look good, although I see you're taking a few liberties with it to integrate WCA ideas into the game's model.
What I'd really, really love, would be if you were to adapt it to the realities of the Border Worlds. Thinking about it recently, it occurred to me that the only reasonable way I can see Confed would pass a Bengal to the UBW, would be if it were basically incapable of serving as a proper strike carrier, and instead was limited to being little more than a glorified mobile naval base, capable of supporting a decent amount of aircraft, but lacking in offensive equipment (big-calibre weapons) or even launch tubes.
Righto, downloaded. Not sure when I'll find the time for it, but if I can, I'll check it out.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Just had a quick look at the files. From what I can see, in all likelihood, the problem is the absence of a COMP form - there may not be any components, but the game probably still needs to know about it. It may be that a TURT form is also needed. Both of these are present in the Fralthi II wreck.
Also, an important additional detail: the Fralthi II wreck has a very specific EXPL form, with the TYPE chunk containing 0,0,0. These values mean that when the Fralthi II dies - as it does every time the player arrives at the navpoint for the first time - there is actually no death explosion (funny, I thought I recalled an explosion - I guess it was just the alien relay station).
Lt.Overload
Rear Admiral
When you made the destroyed Intrepid, did you take the Fralthi wreck file and repurpose it or make it from scratch?
I wonder if there's a way to make the hull model change without making it a component when the capship is dead. Some sort of if/then flag, if capship dies, switch mesh, or something. I dunno.
Either way, Defiance's Victoryd.iff was simply missing the COMP form and TURT form. And I guess the correct EXPL form to avoid the initial explosion.
Did all this while watching Starship Troopers (which I've never seen before). The only good bug's a dead bug.
DefianceIndustries
Rear Admiral
I'm not surprised it blew up, I just copied the original ship.iff and removed the turret and comp chunks.
It does look properly blowed up though.
It does look properly blowed up though.
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DefianceIndustries
Rear Admiral
Aaaah! Rico! You know what to do!
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Goodness, what a question. That was fifteen years ago
. I probably did use the Fralthi wreck as a base, but who knows...Well, that's basically what we're talking about - having a script that deactivates the original capship at the moment of death, and replaces it with the wreck version.
Lt.Overload
Rear Admiral
Had a thought, and sorry for derailing the thread from super amazing models in-engine to destructible capships.
Alien capships had this shield emitter mechanic, where components would be undestroyable until the emitter is destroyed. The component would be labelled in blue, instead of the damage-dependent green/yellow/red. What if, we repurpose that in some way? We make a "hull" component, targetable as a subtarget, but blue/invincible? Pretty sure AI bombers won't even try to torpedo blue components, so you won't have wingmen wasting missiles on an undestroyable object. Make it so the capship itself doesn't have a basic mesh. Instead the component takes up the rest of the capship model and has two versions, hull and hulld (destroyed). You'll never be able to destroy the hull yourself, but when the bridge/engines are destroyed and the capship self-destructs (remaining turrets, hangars, launchers, plasma weapons, blow up when both bridge/engine(s) are destroyed), the hull switches from "hull" to "hulld". The only problem is, you'll be able to target the hull as a sub-target of the capship. Unless you can make components unselectable, which I don't think you can.
Alien capships had this shield emitter mechanic, where components would be undestroyable until the emitter is destroyed. The component would be labelled in blue, instead of the damage-dependent green/yellow/red. What if, we repurpose that in some way? We make a "hull" component, targetable as a subtarget, but blue/invincible? Pretty sure AI bombers won't even try to torpedo blue components, so you won't have wingmen wasting missiles on an undestroyable object. Make it so the capship itself doesn't have a basic mesh. Instead the component takes up the rest of the capship model and has two versions, hull and hulld (destroyed). You'll never be able to destroy the hull yourself, but when the bridge/engines are destroyed and the capship self-destructs (remaining turrets, hangars, launchers, plasma weapons, blow up when both bridge/engine(s) are destroyed), the hull switches from "hull" to "hulld". The only problem is, you'll be able to target the hull as a sub-target of the capship. Unless you can make components unselectable, which I don't think you can.
DefianceIndustries
Rear Admiral
No worries. I think that WCP cap ship deaths were always kind of a let-down. If we can solve it, it might make a nice addition to the MUP, or some future mod.
PopsiclePete
Mission programmer
Anyway, I think that game-enhancing mod should always keep the original game mechanic intact.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Most of the time, yes. I don't know if I would go so far as to say this should always be the case, though. Regardless, the big thing that's definitely not worth dealing with in this case is the need to edit the original missions, which would be a necessity for any capship alteration. Since we've got the original source for the missions, and the tools used to build them, I guess it is at least possible now to do this without destroying them in the process - but I'd still hate to touch them, myself.
A way of enhancing capship deaths for future projects, though - that is certainly an objective worth pursuing
.@Lt.Overload, what you describe actually sounds like a potentially viable way of solving the capship problem. Just as is the case with my idea, it wouldn't be doable without having specific code in every mission, to set that component invulnerable and so on, but beyond that, it could work. The catch is that a separate component type would be needed, and a very particular type - a non-vital component that normally blows up when the rest of the ship blows up. Unfortunately, we don't get to add new component types (at least, we never looked at that), all we can do is modify existing component types. This means that this new component type would have to be made from an existing component. There isn't many that fit the bill (cargo, launcher, hangar, not sure if there was anything else), and obviously they are all used by other ships and cannot be replaced easily.
DefianceIndustries
Rear Admiral
MUPdate (see what I did there?): My first foray into capshipdom has been something of a bust. I ran into a boatload of issues getting my Vesuvius to work in the game, everything from texture issues to realizing that when you dust off an old model not initially intended for game use, you probably weren't as concerned with things like mirrored object normals being flipped. It's all PEBCAK stuff, nothing really tools related. So I'm going to back it out and rework it some more. It'll probably be another day or so before I can post in-game shots of it however. The good news is that the new turret meshes look pretty good, I'll have to see how the perform in the game though before I declare victory on that one. If they behave like I expect them to, they will work more like WC3/4 turrets and not just a stick with barrels on them.
Here are some blender renders of the Mount St. Helens getting ready for her pleasure cruise around Proxima. What could possibly go wrong this close to Sol?
Here are some blender renders of the Mount St. Helens getting ready for her pleasure cruise around Proxima. What could possibly go wrong this close to Sol?
DefianceIndustries
Rear Admiral
I can take a stab at it; Though thinking about the time in which UE is set, a Bengal is woefully outclassed in its original form. It doesn't even have phase shields.
Ok so we can probably assume that it would've received that upgrade at some point, but it's primary anti-cap ship weapons are torpedoes and large laser batteries. The laser batteries at this point are probably considered laughable by WC3/4 standards and certainly by WCP where ships mount heavy particle and plasma guns as anti-shipping weapons, so Confed might just ignore them. Torpedoes are still potent but you can argue the tubes have been sealed/spiked or something. I think Confed would generally avoid making mass structural changes to it since it's surplus and more than likely headed for the breaker's yard. But tis easy enough to remove the turrets and I can make the launch tubes look like they've been sealed.
Lt.Overload
Rear Admiral
I'd be careful with the Vesuvius. It was really bugged in Secret Ops, even the textures were messy, let alone the interior collisions.
You may run into an issue with the whole model and the components. Since the bridge/engines/etc are separate models, your base model should actually end up looking incomplete.
Like that. Brigeless and Enginesless. And Hangarless, apparently.
In the files there's actually meshes for turrets that aren't actually used. That would be ccatu01, and ccatu01d, the destroyed version.
Pretty sure the Vesuvius was planned to come back wayyyy back in WCP with the TCS Eisen, but never was. Kinda weird how a capship planned so far back would end up being so poorly done when it finally got to the Vision Engine.
You may run into an issue with the whole model and the components. Since the bridge/engines/etc are separate models, your base model should actually end up looking incomplete.
Like that. Brigeless and Enginesless. And Hangarless, apparently.
In the files there's actually meshes for turrets that aren't actually used. That would be ccatu01, and ccatu01d, the destroyed version.
Pretty sure the Vesuvius was planned to come back wayyyy back in WCP with the TCS Eisen, but never was. Kinda weird how a capship planned so far back would end up being so poorly done when it finally got to the Vision Engine.
DefianceIndustries
Rear Admiral
Yeah I have the bridge, hangar, and engine clusters as separate meshes, along with their blown up counterparts. I'm also going to make new destroyed meshes for turrets so they don't just vanish in a puff of flame. Right now the base mesh has a number of issues that I'll need to fix before I do anything else. In this case I'm actually planning on making an entirely new ship.iff file for it, because it was so badly handled in the original game. I'm also planning on making the loadout accurate (or as accurate as I can be) to the WC4 stats since I can make mass driver and laser turrets.
DefianceIndustries
Rear Admiral
Sometimes when life hands you lemons (in the form of critically bugged meshes) you can use the opportunity to redo your work...because...yay! Here's the St. Helens v.2.0. This one is much more faithful to the original WC4/WCSo mesh; not as chunky and has more rounded edges. I also changed up the stern to make it more faithful. I was able to salvage the hangar off the original as well as some of the parts (mostly the small stuff like the turret sponsons) The best part: it imports without a bunch of missing faces! I'll post up some in-game shots in a bit - but to sate your thirst for all things Vesuvius...here are some new blender renders.
****Edit
Got the mesh in the game. There are a few oddities that I need to hammer out. Firstly, the game won't render the model at its full size of 1600M. I had to scale it down to about 800M to get it to show correctly in the viewer. (not sure why this is, I tried playing around with the model's origin relative to the center and a couple of other things but it's late and I need to sleep on it). At full size, the draw in is hideous. At 800 M it appears correct. And finally, the turrets are the originals and are just slapped onto hardpoints on the mesh to get it "working". This is very much a work in progress...
****Edit
Got the mesh in the game. There are a few oddities that I need to hammer out. Firstly, the game won't render the model at its full size of 1600M. I had to scale it down to about 800M to get it to show correctly in the viewer. (not sure why this is, I tried playing around with the model's origin relative to the center and a couple of other things but it's late and I need to sleep on it). At full size, the draw in is hideous. At 800 M it appears correct. And finally, the turrets are the originals and are just slapped onto hardpoints on the mesh to get it "working". This is very much a work in progress...
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Dark Sentinel
1st Lieutenant
This just asks for more alternative campaigns, following some other ships in their quest for bugshells.
gr1mre4per
Rear Admiral
As usual, great work.
Not sure on the underside AMG turret placements though. I seem to remember in WC4 there were none under the 'chin', but there was one each side of the engine intake then a further two to port and two to starboard?
Oh and by the way, if you want to add all 54 turrets as per the stats you'll have to hang fire until I can raise the current limit of 32 in wcpunl else you'll crash out with a max capship turrets error. I think I have done it (in Prophecy only atm), but I need to test it further as I had to change a lot of code, 34 places in all! I have a Midway with 200 laser turrets and 48 missile turrets for testing purposes (bit of copy/paste work). No crash so far
Not sure on the underside AMG turret placements though. I seem to remember in WC4 there were none under the 'chin', but there was one each side of the engine intake then a further two to port and two to starboard?
Oh and by the way, if you want to add all 54 turrets as per the stats you'll have to hang fire until I can raise the current limit of 32 in wcpunl else you'll crash out with a max capship turrets error. I think I have done it (in Prophecy only atm), but I need to test it further as I had to change a lot of code, 34 places in all! I have a Midway with 200 laser turrets and 48 missile turrets for testing purposes (bit of copy/paste work). No crash so far