Engine Glows, what are they?

posted on October 28th, 2009, 3:29 pm

First I was wondering about the Glows that are around the FO ships, what are they? Are they renamed hardpoints
Secondly if they are is there any way to edit them without the use of the Sod importer

posted on October 28th, 2009, 7:31 pm

They are sprites. You can change them with a hex editor.

posted on October 29th, 2009, 3:25 am

So they can be added to the models with a hex editor? A little help here i dont know how to do that.

posted on October 29th, 2009, 3:43 am

They can't be added, but they can be renamed to different sprites. Use Storm3D to find out the names of the sprites used for the engine glows, then use the search function in the hex editor to find the sprites on the model. Once you find them you just type over the name. The name has to be kept the same length though or the coding gets messed up and the model won't load, causing a ctd. The name of the model node is the sprite that it uses. For example, if the name of the node is 'BlueEnGlow1' and you change it to 'BlueEnGlow4', it will now use the sprite 'BlueEnGlow4'.

posted on October 29th, 2009, 4:22 am

well thats what i was looking for so that all of these wonderful mods that people are putting out could fit in better.

posted on November 4th, 2009, 5:39 pm

exactly where is the referance for these? Because I would like to put engine glows on ships but I dunno how... and also where to look for names.

posted on November 4th, 2009, 9:53 pm

exactly where is the referance for these? Because I would like to put engine glows on ships but I dunno how... and also where to look for names.

Well unless you have a modelling program I doubt it can be done unless assimview will work....If I understand corectly all you have to do is add nodes to the sod hardpoint hirearchy named after the particular sprite used....problably the parent node to the glow nodes would be the lights node but thats just a slighly educated guess.

posted on November 4th, 2009, 10:53 pm

well to add the glows u'll need to open in summit like milkshape3d and then add the joints (or convert for 3dmax.  the references for the sprite names is found in fleetops.spr just remember th put s_ before the name in ms3d and place under the lights node (not realy needed just makes it look better wen building)