Help with a mod

posted on March 23rd, 2014, 11:44 pm

Could you provide a link? I might find it easier than the SOD viewer.

posted on March 23rd, 2014, 11:47 pm

Here you go SJ. It's in the external modding resources under the guide here. It's the CV tool. For me it only shows about 1/4-1/2 of the models I tried with it. I quickly abandoned it as did most others.

http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/modding ... -resources

posted on March 23rd, 2014, 11:49 pm

Thanks I'll give it a go. Something new is always fun.

posted on March 25th, 2014, 11:12 am

So has anyone tried opening any of the .sod's?

Anyone with Max8 (or higher) managed to take a look at the scene itself?



EDIT:
Making mhoar progress. I've ditched all stock weapons and decided to re-organize everything. A more sane naming scheme ensures that there are no duplicates (as in, two ordinances with same damage, but different name) and that one can easily change and balance ship loatouts without ever leaving the ship .odf file.


The launcher name contains the race identifier, fire rate and ordinance used, and ordinance name hold damage info (for torpedos may add speed, bu it doesn't seem necessary ATM)

posted on March 26th, 2014, 7:13 am

Managed to got the SOD Viewer working (thank you virtual keyboard!) YAAAY!!!

And I found out none of my .sods work in it.

Still got more experimenting to do. But it would be nice if someone could actually look at the max scene. Would probably save me a lot of time.

posted on March 26th, 2014, 4:09 pm

I got some interesting results.

Imported the Galaxy model in max, added a hardpoint, exported - doesn't work, doesn't show up in SOD Viewer.

Imported the Kerchan model, added several hardpoints, exported - works, but both in-game and in the SOD viewer all the normals are fliped.

...

posted on March 28th, 2014, 7:24 am

This is ...maddedning.

The only ship that (kinda) exports so far is the Kerchan, and it has a structure that shouldn't work at all - it lacks c_tm_ nodes for textures.
So I tried to mirror it's setup for the galaxy but it again didn't work.


I recall that a few years ago, when Armada 2 was relatively new, I did a mod similar to this (which I never released, and I lost), and got suck at the exact same spot - SOD exporting. I quit in frustration given that no one helped me back than.
I wonder if history will repeat itself.
So many talented modders/modelers here and still no help.... I am dissapoint.



EDIT:
Why do people release models with just a few poorly placed hardpoints? Now I feel like I need to fix other peoples mistakes.

posted on March 28th, 2014, 11:01 am

If you like, I can take a look at your Galaxy model, and any others you might be having trouble with. I don't use 3dmax (my version doesn't work with my current graphics card for some reason) , I use Milkshape and I've had no problems exporting models.

To answer your (possibly rhetorical) question, hardpointing can be a long and tedious process. Most people will only export models with hardpoints they are likely to need.

posted on March 28th, 2014, 2:15 pm

Well, the problem can't be in the mesh, it has to be in the scene setup.

I personally want to add as many hardponts as possible on a model. It's not that hard, just clone it and move it around.

I like to have multiple points to get that realistic phaser coverage and look.
Plus, having a few extras is good if people want to add more weapons to your ship.
I'm running into this issue with many klingon/romulan ships. Apparently, many people are convinced that they only have a front disruptor and torpedo launcher.


That said, I finally finished going trough all the ships and I made all the weapons. A few more tests and tweaking of missions and I'll release the first version.

Now, if I could just get the models fixed...