FO Modding Questions

[Rifraf]

So I wiped the registry off the textures on the Dawnstar and in the picture you'll see I have a problem with the light just below the bridge. It flipped straight up into space instead of lying flat on the hull as if it were lighting the hull.

How did editing the texture cause this to happen and is there a way to fix it?

 

[Majestic]

You could always use the Dawnstar that Jetfreak and I did, it has a blank regestry.

Dawnstar Download

 

[Rifraf]

Thanks Majestic. I actually already downloaded it the other day, but hadn't looked at the files yet. I haven't posted a rating either, but will once I check it out.

I found the cause of the issue with the texture though. It was because I edited the SOD. They can be so picky sometimes.

 

[Rifraf]

I've got all ships and stations for the Cardies, Feds, Klinks, and Romies in my mod and I've been looking through FO to fine tune some of the special abilities and such and from what I can tell only the Dominion and Federation scouts can detect cloak except the Borg Probe can gain the ability later with Intelligence Report. Are my findings correct?

From what I can tell the Klinks and Romies don't have this ability not that every race has to have it. If you happen to play a 1v1 with Klik v Rom how would the Klinks ever hope to detect the enemy since most of their stations and all ships can cloak? The Romies can plant a spy so that's their method and leaves the Klinks as the sole race out.

I don't want to just give every race the detection ability so was just curious.

 

[Majestic]

The Klingon sensor station aka scout station can detect cloaked ships. Cloak detection works a little differently in FO. They can ping an area of a map to reveal cloaked units.

 

[Dominus_Noctis]

The regular weapons of some Klingon ships (like the B'rel and Vutpa') keep cloaked ships targetable as long as those ships are being hit.

Similarly, EM Borg Modules reveal cloaked ships upon attack (or, via a special shield).

The Romulan Talon could be upgraded to detect cloaks (disables its own cloak permanently)

 

[Rifraf]

The Klingon sensor station aka scout station can detect cloaked ships. Cloak detection works a little differently in FO. They can ping an area of a map to reveal cloaked units.

Sorry Majestic, I should have specified "ships" able to detect cloak. I have my Cards, Feds and Klinks with cloak detect on sensor stations and was trying to find what stock FO ships used cloak detect. Since all the Rom stations cloak and its sensor station can deploy the spy and saboteur I've not given them cloak detect on their station.

The regular weapons of some Klingon ships (like the B'rel and Vutpa') keep cloaked ships targetable as long as those ships are being hit.

Similarly, EM Borg Modules reveal cloaked ships upon attack (or, via a special shield).

The Romulan Talon could be upgraded to detect cloaks (disables its own cloak permanently)

Thanks Dominus. Didn't know that about the B'rel and Vutpa. Good to know. I saw the bit about the Borg EM Modules in the FO strategy section after I posted.

I'm not using scouts for my mod am trying to determine who can detect cloak and how. My Hidecki is a destroyer with cloak detect, the Feds us the Nebula Sensor variant and I was wondering how or if to give Klink/Rom "ships" the ability too. I'll probably use the Talon with normal sensor range and cloak ping (weak and only serves that purpose) and then maybe give my B'rel's the option to cloak detect at the expense of losing their own cloak? A good compromise and makes them a bit different.

Does the AI in single play use the various cloak detect options properly?

 

[Rifraf]

I was digging through the FO odf's and found a Romulan spy satellite entry. They apparently have their own sensor station with cloak detect, but it's not used in game? This structure isn't listed in the FO Guide in the strategy section so it must be an old entry or just unused. That's good to know as they can at least match the other races if needed in that aspect.

Can someone explain how "all_tachyon_pingX" and "all_detection" work when they are both on a sensor station? Is one active and one passive? If so why would you need both? I can't really find reference to them anywhere.

 

[Majestic]

Can someone explain how "all_tachyon_pingX" and "all_detection" work when they are both on a sensor station? Is one active and one passive? If so why would you need both? I can't really find reference to them anywhere.

All detection is the the clickable feature that when used on a selected area of the map will reveal all cloaked units for a brief time. The all ping is the visible wave the sensor stations put out that detect all cloaked units within a set radius there are various different sized and each can be set up to only detect certain units. For example if you want one that can only detect B'rel's it's possible that have that.

@Dominus_Noctis is no doubt more knowledgeable than I in this and can probably explain it better.

 

[Rifraf]

Oh I see. In looking at the odf's, the all_tachyon_pingX references another odf, and so on, and basically the trail leads to the detection for all craft, but you can specify certain craft to not be detected. OK, think I understand that now. You explained it well Majestic

 

[Majestic]

Thanks mate, I plan to use this extensively in Yesteryears, as I explained in the Strikeforce conversation. I did some looking into this about a month back which is kind of beneficial to you now.

 

[Rifraf]

I think I've seen this posted several places before and can't recall, but for researching say weapon upgrades you can only have 2 levels correct? So you can't upgrade weapons 2% then 5% then 10% and so on, just twice right due to the A2 engine? Same thing with shields and life support and whatnot?

 

[Majestic]

You start at level 1, and can only have two upgrades (levels 2 and 3)

 

[Dominus_Noctis]

Actually, funny enough you can have as many upgrades as you want. It's just that you have to be careful of their tech requirements so that you don't overwrite the wrong one.

I.e. you can have 1a, then 2a, and then 1b, and then 2b... and so on.

 

[Rifraf]

Thanks Dominus. I have another question. For mining stations when it completes building and the freighter comes out and when docking to unload resources does the ship always enter/exit at the center of the model?

Is there a way just for example if I used the DS9 station as the mining station could I specify one of the pylons as the point where the ship is to dock to unload resources? I don't see how you'd specify a certain hardpoint for the ship to dock at?

 

[Majestic]

dockhardpoint = "hp# is what you use mate. Same as A2 Stock. I used it on the YY mining station so they use the yard arm attachment.

 

[Rifraf]

Thank you much. Didn't realize that could be used on the mining station. Although the ship was still going through the middle of the model. So once again I just rotated the model and the scene_root and now it looks proper.

Although, the ship is in the correct place now it's a tiny bit in the station when it docks. Would I have to push the hardpoint out a little past the station to make it look like it's not crashing through the edge of the station?

 

[Rifraf]

Never mind the above question. I tried moving the specific hardpoint out away from the station a bit and it worked. Thanks again though. Until the next question.........

 

[stardust]

Apologies for bumping an older thread, but am wondering the same thing. I have the Prometheus and Typhon SODs in my game files for Fleet Ops, and am curious how to go about enabling them...

 

[Terra_Inc]

Apologies for bumping an older thread, but am wondering the same thing. I have the Prometheus and Typhon SODs in my game files for Fleet Ops, and am curious how to go about enabling them...

No worries, we don't mind thread necromancy

The SODs are just the model files, containing the 3D model for a unit. They should come with a set of textures (TGA files) and ideally one or more ODF files, which contain all the information for the unit. Unmodded A2 uses only one ODF for a given unit, Fleet Ops usually uses a few of them per unit for things like leveling up. I haven't modded FO itself much, to be honest, so someone with more experience there can probably tell you more about how FO uses ODF files. Anyway, you need those.

Once all of that is in place, there's two more things to be done... add your new unit to whatever is supposed to build it, be that a construction ship or yard. Their build lists are in their ODFs, easily found. Then, add your new unit to the tech tree so that you can actually build it.

If you've never modded ODFs and/or tech trees, the FO Guide is a good reference: http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/modding
It also has a very useful crash/error correction checklist, which helps a lot with finding the causes of errors in your modded game.

I hope this helps. If you have any more questions or need help with modding your game, just ask. There are a few people here who have worked a lot more with FO than I have, they can probably also contribute.

 

[dvatreknerd314]

Apologies for bumping an older thread, but am wondering the same thing. I have the Prometheus and Typhon SODs in my game files for Fleet Ops, and am curious how to go about enabling them...

I'll caution you and let you know now that the Prometheus in that folder is an older model with textures that aren't up to par with the rest of fleet ops. The devs might have been looking to retexture it later but never got around to it.

The Typhon I believe is a new model, but the texturing process was never completed. It has a texture, but mapping and details are incomplete.

 

[stardust]

Thanks @Terra_Inc !

On a possibly related note, I have been struggling off and on for years to get Future Wars to work. It seems to start okay, but ass soon as something loses shields, the game crashes. Makes it hard to do anything when you can't get anywhere past the three minute mark! Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[dvatreknerd314]

Thanks @Terra_Inc !

On a possibly related note, I have been struggling off and on for years to get Future Wars to work. It seems to start okay, but ass soon as something loses shields, the game crashes. Makes it hard to do anything when you can't get anywhere past the three minute mark! Anyone have any thoughts?

Future Wars was buggy as hell. I was able to get about four missions into the modified campaign before it crashed on me. It's a pain, but you might have to add ships unit-by-unit into a fresh install of Armada to create a separate, working version of Future Wars

 

[Terra_Inc]

Yeah, with buggy mods there's sadly not much you can do other than diving in and trying to hunt down the bugs yourself.

From what you said, your description sounds like a missing effects for lost shields. Perhaps the SOD for the effect is missing? That's where I would start looking, if you want to try and fix it yourself.

 

[stardust]

Yeah, with buggy mods there's sadly not much you can do other than diving in and trying to hunt down the bugs yourself.

From what you said, your description sounds like a missing effects for lost shields. Perhaps the SOD for the effect is missing? That's where I would start looking, if you want to try and fix it yourself.

Is there an easy way to tell, when looking at the ODF files, if it;s referencing a file that doesn't exist?

 

[dvatreknerd314]

Is there an easy way to tell, when looking at the ODF files, if it;s referencing a file that doesn't exist?

Nope, other than going back to the main A2 directory and doing a file system search

 

[Terra_Inc]

Is there an easy way to tell, when looking at the ODF files, if it;s referencing a file that doesn't exist?

As dvatreknerd314 already said, sadly no.
For what it's worth, I believe the SOD file for the lost shields effect is xshlddie.sod, so seeing if that file exists and is useable might be a good first step. Though I'm not sure how a stock file could go missing, to be honest.

If I may ask, are you installing the mod over a standard stock A2 install or the GOG version?

 

[dvatreknerd314]

Is there an easy way to tell, when looking at the ODF files, if it;s referencing a file that doesn't exist?

Also, something else you might want to try is looking through the screen that pops up when the game crashes. Occasionally it will let you know which ODF it's having a problem with, either under the "processes" or "call stacks" or "threads" tabs I think

 

[Terra_Inc]

Also, something else you might want to try is looking through the screen that pops up when the game crashes. Occasionally it will let you know which ODF it's having a problem with, either under the "processes" or "call stacks" or "threads" tabs I think

That's a very good point, though that applies only to FleetOps if I remember correctly. The Fleet Ops crash menu has a stack dump that can sometimes tell you what file the game was looking at / tried to look at last.

 

[K_merse]

Whenever I try to debug the game I play around with the map editor, spawning a single ship type and using it. Let it move, fire at things and be destroyed by another ship. It will tell you if there is a problem with it. Then go on to stations. If all these work fine and the game still crashes then the problem will be most likely in the .cfg files, the AIPs or the techtree. Although the techtree usually clears up earlier as usually leads to a crash while the game is loading the map.

EDIT: On a side note, it would be interesting to try and tidy up the Future Wars mod as a side project