Wow. That is bizarre. That must be some plug you have loaded....

Thing is, I only have the one plug loaded. And I definately do not have Fed. Auroran Cruisers or polaron IDA Frigates.

Well, latest part of my project: my first ship (drumroll), the X-wing! (I'm a bit short on imagination right now, so send me ideas, please.) But it is complete with laser cannons that can be fired single, double, or quadruple, and proton torpedoes that can be fired one at a time or two. I might just have a starwars plug with tie fighters, interceptors, defenders, bombers, scimatar bombers, x-wings, y-wings, k-wings, a-wings, b-wings, e-wings, e-9 vigilance, coralskippers... I'm sort of crazy right now, by the way. But please, feed back!

Okay, another problem. I have the crash because of the spin 895 can't find pict thing. I think that it's actually shan 895. I think the problem is that it doesn't know to look for rled 304 and 306 (the X-wing and its engine glow). Instead, I think it is looking for picts 304 and 306. So my question is: how do you tell it which of the three (rled, rle8, and pict) to look for?

895 is the escape pod - you have an X-Wing for an escape pod? Still, if the shan is set correctly you shouldn't be getting the error. You don't need to tell it what type of resource to look for, just make sure everything in the shan is valid. Unused effects should be set to -1.

This post has been edited by Guy : 26 September 2007 - 04:20 AM

Okay, I turned off the engine, and have also switched the shan and ship ids. Decided that having a x-wing escape pod wasn't such a good idea right now. So turning off the engine works, but now I don't have engine effects. Could someone tell me how to tell the game to use rled for the engine effects?

Okay, now it works! That is really weird.

Anybody interested in testing a small part of my plug? It's just the X-wing, and all the weapons connected to it. I'll send it via email to anyone.

Okay, another problem: how do you tell the game what ship desc to look for? It doesn't say in the bible.
Oh, by the way, due to development problems, the shield generators aren't working properly, and so will go away.

That's quadrupal posting. I don't care, personally, but some here do. Use the edit button instead.

Set the id of the desc to either 14xxx, with the x's being your id number for the desc. 13xxx is the hire desc id number.

For example, 14000 is the shipyard desc for ship file 128. 13000 is the hire desc for ship 128.

Shlimazel, thanks for the info, but it's not all correct. 14000's are the hire desc numbers. 13000'as are the purchase descs.

Edit:
New problem: How do you assign shipyard and targeting pics to a ship?

Edit 2:
Has the idea of you being a fighter pilot involved in big space battles been taken? (Think the battle of endor, the part outside the death star.) My idea is to have planets be carriers, and have a bunch of small fighters and escorts fighting.

This post has been edited by 101181920 : 03 October 2007 - 07:30 PM

@0101181920, on Sep 29 2007, 08:35 PM, said in Missile ammo troubles:

Has the idea of you being a fighter pilot involved in big space battles been taken? (Think the battle of endor, the part outside the death star.) My idea is to have planets be carriers, and have a bunch of small fighters and escorts fighting.

Well, I've done some experimenting with being able to simulate flying a carried ship.

Basicaly, your limited to pre-designed, non customizable ships.
IF that is acceptable, you can:

1. make it seem like you can launch yourself in a fighter from a carrier (or pilot the carrier)
2. choose different fighters to pilot when in the carrier.
3. if you die, and end up in an escape ship, you can re-dock with the carrier and hop back in another fighter. (requires a new carrier to warp in, though)

Having either the fighters or carriers become customizable ships causes problems when you die. (even if you end up in an escape ship) Mainly because there is no way to keep outfits upon getting the escape ship, and no practical way to reconstruct what you had.
Now you can simply eliminate the escape ship mechanics, but then you can't continue the battle in a new fighter if you go down.

As far as planets are concerned... you can't continue a battle when landing on a planet. You could make the carrier look and act like a planet, but this will cause strange things to happen when you are in your escape pod and need to call a new planet to come pick you up.

Well, actually, I was planning to have it a bit simpler. You have an invisible planet under the carrier on each side. The carrier has a speed of zero, because we don't really want you docking in the middle of space. You launch from the planet, but it looks like you are launching from the ship. There is an enemy carrier a couple screens out, with the same principle. You choose what ship you want to fly at the begining, because you usually stay with the same fighter throughout your whole career, except for upgrades. When you launch, you are in the fighter you chose. You fly this around blowing stuff up. You cannot dock at the enemy carrier on missions, except if you are in a troop carrier and supposed to capture the other ship. When all the enemies are destroyed, you go and dock back at your ship, and get transported to the next mission. This would mean that there are no outfits, because you usually do not upgrade government owned fighters. If you have to eject, then you would be in an uncontrolled vehicle for a few seconds, and then that would die, and you would spawn back in a recovery ship, which you get to fly back to the carrier, and get a new fighter, of which there is only a certain amount. BTW, is there a way to have the game store what is happening, and then load it back after you launch from the carrier again? I would prefer not to have all of the ships start back at the carriers at full health when you re-launch. There would be several differant fighter options, such as: a bomber pilot, which would be a heavily armed fighter, but fairly slow, an interceptor, which is very fast, but without much heavy amerment, a gunship, a very strong ship, but not really in the fighter catagory, and a troop transport, for missions where you get to capture enemy ships.

Quote

Shlimazel, thanks for the info, but it's not all correct. 14000's are the hire desc numbers. 13000'as are the purchase descs.

Sorry. I thought that's how it was...

Quote

New problem: How do you assign shipyard and targeting pics to a ship?

Okay, this one I'm absolutely sure as to the answer. I had to learn how to do this back when I modded EVO, and I still remember all the details

For the target pic, make sure its resolution is 128x64. Then, set its ID to 3xxx. For ship 128, for example, it would be 3000.

For the shipyard pic, make sure its resolution is 200x200. Then, set its ID to 5xxx. For ship 128, it would be 5000.

This post has been edited by Shlimazel : 04 October 2007 - 09:55 AM

@0101181920, on Oct 3 2007, 08:44 PM, said in Missile ammo troubles:

BTW, is there a way to have the game store what is happening, and then load it back after you launch from the carrier again?

Not unless the requirement is to "dominate" the enemy carrier/spob. This only happens when dominating planets. For missions, the effect varies. If you land, the enemy ships refuel/rearm/repair, but I believe the destroyed ships stay dead. If you are jumping out and back in (no landing) then the enemy ships stay dead/down.

How about there being a supply ship in addition to the carrier? This ship would jump in and be disabled by an invisible ship. The player would board the supply ship, which would have 1 crew, and the player would have a big crew, and this would allow the player to suck energy and ammo and such from the supply ship. Then the supply ship would die (deathdelay of 1, mass of 1 for a fast death) and a new supply ship would jump in and be disabled for the player.

The supply ship would be triggered by an invisible self-aborting mission with no goal. The ship would be an auxilary ship, not a mission ship. It would have its own government, and there would be another government for the invisible ship that. Those govts need to be mutual enemies. The supply ship's ship resources would specify that the mission to send in a new supply ship would be triggered when the supply ship died.
The invisible ship would have a graphic of a 1x1 black pixel. It would be untargetable, have an always-on cloaking attributes (all of them), have a speed, accel, turn, shield, and armor of 32000 (NOT 32767 because then it might outrun/dodge the beam, just guessing here)
Both ships would have a self-destructing disable-and-not-destroy turreted beam with a range of 32767 and no damage. The beam would be minimum width and would be black.

The player would be instructed to board the supply ship if s/he needed to reload/refuel, and then destroy it. The desc would say that the ships are robotic one-use supply ships designed to sit and wait for friendlies to use them, and then be destroyed as they are expendable and cheap.

Did I miss anything?

As far as there being limited ships available in each mission, you would need to have multiple identical ship ersources. In each onBuy field a bit would be set, and that ship would require that bit to be unset for it to be available. This way, it would appear that as you waste your own fighters, the number available decreases until you run out of ships and fail the mission somehow. Every now and then the carrier would refill/rearm (between missions) and an invisible self-aborting mission would unset all the player's used ship bits.

If it works I want this posted in the Cool Nova Hacks thread. Remember to credit me.

EDIT: I forgot to say that in the desc explaining how to use the supply ship, the player will neet to be told that these ships have a 25% chance of exploding during reloading, due to some design defects that were overlooked in the rush to production. The second version has been put on hold as the engineers are assigned to other projects which are deemed to be more important to the war effort.
You can make it up, this is jus twhat I thought of.

This post has been edited by LNSU : 04 October 2007 - 06:53 PM

Just so everyone knows, I am still developing these, although it may be several months before all the ideas here are released (note: several months is incredebly optimistic).

@lnsu, on Oct 4 2007, 10:19 PM, said in Missile ammo troubles:

How about there being a supply ship in addition to the carrier? This ship would jump in and be disabled by an invisible ship. The player would board the supply ship, which would have 1 crew, and the player would have a big crew, and this would allow the player to suck energy and ammo and such from the supply ship. Then the supply ship would die (deathdelay of 1, mass of 1 for a fast death) and a new supply ship would jump in and be disabled for the player.

The supply ship would be triggered by an invisible self-aborting mission with no goal. The ship would be an auxilary ship, not a mission ship. It would have its own government, and there would be another government for the invisible ship that. Those govts need to be mutual enemies. The supply ship's ship resources would specify that the mission to send in a new supply ship would be triggered when the supply ship died.
The invisible ship would have a graphic of a 1x1 black pixel. It would be untargetable, have an always-on cloaking attributes (all of them), have a speed, accel, turn, shield, and armor of 32000 (NOT 32767 because then it might outrun/dodge the beam, just guessing here)
Both ships would have a self-destructing disable-and-not-destroy turreted beam with a range of 32767 and no damage. The beam would be minimum width and would be black.

I assume this set up is supposed to have the one ship disable the other nearly instantly?
If that's the case, it's probably easier to just have the supply ship simply warp in already disabled.

You can also have the player "call" for a supply ship, as opposed to already having it available. Use an active mission that starts the supply ship mission when it is aborted. When the player needs supply, he opens the mission box and aborts that mission. (To remove the missions, just abort both. This works because the latter is aborted before the ship can warp in.)

You could use this to trigger a mission upon boarding to give you a new ship if you are in an escape pod or something. This would preserve the state of the battle.
Note that this functionality is similar to the carrier situation I was describing above.
The difference being, that you board the ship to trigger a mission, as opposed being able to abort (start) a mission if you are docked (carrying the disabled ship)

But they both use a ship to warp in and then require you to board it while disabled.

I don't know of any way to preserve the current battle state if you land, which is why I was using a carried ship that appears to be your carrier. This lets you continue the battle if you die or want to switch/rearm fighters.
Since switching you into the ship you already have effectively rearms it, you wouldn't need supply ships, but the two ideas are compatible and you could use both.

You might look at the fly your carried ship thread for some background, evolution, and problems of this idea.

I've read that thread, and I like the idea. I like your idea of giving the player a new ship better when they dock with teh supply ship. An identical ship without outfits that carries the player's outfits over would be good. The purpose of this would be to allow the player to be a fighter for a carrier with many fighters, the carrier being a spob. This would be similar to Freespace 2 style fighting, where the player is launched off of a carrier, docks with a resupply ship in the heat of battle, and subspace-jumps back to the character at the end of the battle.

Things are going pretty well, most of my main plug is done. There is still a couple things I need to finish, but not much. Just one little bug, redo my ship graphics, redo the missile graphics, and it should be ready for release. After beta testing of course. Anyone interested?

I think I figured out the problem with the shield generators. Nova apparently uses random bits scattered throughout the 9999 that we have, and I was using the bits 9999-9987, which I think the game uses.