Ship's collision box editing

posted on January 3rd, 2012, 8:01 pm

In stock armada 2, I downloaded a ship but sadly, the collision box is WAY too big for the model, and it has alot of trouble pathing. I've already searched the forums and the guide.

I tried the addon folder using the model's sod and a slew of other model's sods, but every time I did it the model came out with spraying the exaust like when it's engines are taken out.

It's very frustrating, I could use a hand here.

I do have a hex editor for sod editing, though I know practically nothing about how to modify sods, and I lack ms3d or any program of the sort. I'm hoping this issue isn't something completely out of my control.

I'd really appreciate any info you guys could share with me. Thank you.

posted on January 5th, 2012, 6:56 am

I think that the only effective way to change a models collision box is via the addon folder -> the spraying exhaust stuff is I believe because you've nicked a joint, but I have close to zero knowledge about how to set up joints that do that stuff. It's probably a matter of putting those special thingies at the root of the model (though that might screw up your animation when they are damaged).

AvoidanceClass and collisionRadius are apparently commands in Armada, but I have no idea how they function as of yet - perhaps you can try experimenting with them to see if you alter anything. If you do get results there, please post back on those

posted on January 5th, 2012, 8:21 pm

First off, thank you for replying to my post! I was starting to lose hope lol.

Well, that explains why the addon folder method didn't work, I don't really know how I would get past that though.

Method number two is what I'm going to experiment with next. If my findings are successful, I will be sure to post as detailed info as I can. (I'm actually pretty excited that I might be able to provide some useful information here!) 

posted on January 6th, 2012, 1:23 am

So far no luck with AvoidanceClass and collisionRadius. The game crashes when certain numbers were put in, but otherwise they have no effect. I'll keep working on it though. Am I missing something with these commands? I'd use another model as refference but I can't find anything with AvoidanceClass or collisionRadius.

posted on January 6th, 2012, 3:03 am

What values did you input to get a crash?

posted on January 6th, 2012, 4:00 am

I did a scalesod of 0.90, in combination with a collisionRadius of 0.70. that caused a crash but when I changed it to 0.80 it didn't crash, but it also had no obvious effect, I then tried a combination of multiple numbers, from 0.40 all the way up to 2.70 with both AvoidanceClass and collisionRadius...But other then random crashes, it didn't have any results.

I don't understand why it's doing that. I'll keep trying but I don't think I'll be able to get very far.

posted on January 6th, 2012, 4:43 am

Ah, I see - I have a feeling that avoidanceClass merely affects how ships path around it, but I so far have not been able to determine a real relation. Values up to at least 1000 are able to be input there.

As for CollisionRadius, I only know that it is a float, but I do not know what its upper or lower bound may be to exert an influence - it is only seen once, in Armada 1, in a single file, and it may simply be a leftover from previous versions of the engine (although it is referenced by the A2 executable). I was not able to reproduce a crash, but that is quite interesting.

I assume you are only trying to change the collision box of this single vessel, and not of many others. If the latter, there are configuration commands to do so (documented here: Miscellaneous Configuration Elements - The Hitchhiker's Guide to Fleet Operations), but that affects ALL parameters, and nothing specific.

There is one other way to affect the collision box, but it might create other issues for you: shieldPad changes the size of the shield, and the collision box of the ship. By changing this value to be quite small, you can decrease the collision box. However, as that decreases the shield size (assuming your ship has a shield), it probably will not look good 

posted on January 6th, 2012, 9:41 pm

Ok, I had a bit of success, with a scalesod of 0.90, and the AvoidanceClass, collisionRadius, and shieldPad set at 0.60...It seems to have done the trick. No crashes or anything! The only problem left is the grey/white oval around the ship when you put your cursor over and/or click it. That oval is still much too large. Is there a seperate command for that also?

I think that the combination of all three is what makes it work. I will have to keep testing it.

I'm sorry for the confusion, I'm only working on this one ship at the moment, Once I get this one to work I will expand to other ships just to make sure it works on other things as well.

posted on January 6th, 2012, 10:40 pm

My guess there is it's just shieldPad that's having an effect - I assume the grey/white oval is your selection sod -> you can change the size of that by changing the selection sod itself

[JR_109]

posted on January 6th, 2012, 11:10 pm

Last edited by JR_109 on January 6th, 2012, 11:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oh no...Lol...I'm terrible with SODs. But I will try that and see if it works. I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be looking for in the SOD file though.