[flipdark95]

Hey there, are there any basic templates out there for making a custom ship's table file? I've been on the wiki and gone through the tutorials and pages on there, but I'm still kind of lost about which files I actually need to make to add the ship and its properties into Freespace. I've been told that you need a .tbm file, but there's also .tbl files as well.

Can I get some assistance, please?

[Strygon]

.tbl files are basically the complete assortment of data for a specific part of a mod. ships.tbl would basically be all the ships that the mod sees and recognises. By default, ships.tbl is all FS2 ships. If you want to make a Total Conversion, make tbls because that gets rid of the FS2 stuff. Otherwise, don't touch them and don't make .tbls.

.tbm files are Modular Table files. You can use those to attach extra stuff like new ships, weapons, etc. without getting rid of everything else. It's like an addon, basically. Remember that when writing a .tbm you need to add a suffix into the filename when making it, depending on what you're adding. Since you mentioned ships, the name would be <yourship'sname>-shp.tbm . For weapons it'd be -wep.tbl, etc. etc.

The rest that you need is a .pof that is then dropped into your mod's "models" folder, textures that are dropped into the mod's "maps" folder and the tables get put into the aptly named "tables" folder.

If you want a template, just grab any table entry from any table or use the one I handily provided in the attachment. Feel free to delete or change entries as needed for whatever you want it to do.


Of course, I am wholly assuming you already have a .pof and its associated textures at the ready. You do, yes?

[attachment deleted to save space]

[Colonol Dekker]

There is a fantastic modding wiki accessible from the site menu some pretty all-inclusive, comprehensive tutorials pinned in the modding forum for just such an occasion as this.   I heartily encourage forum exploration in addition to Strygons fine advice.
👍👍

[flipdark95]

Thanks for the help guys. I did actually go through the wiki on a few occasions, but I admit it takes me a while to read through some of the tutorials. All the same thanks regardless

[flipdark95]

Of course, I am wholly assuming you already have a .pof and its associated textures at the ready. You do, yes?

Yep, definitely do. I think I have all of the weapon and engine points set up properly, and it has a camera node placed as well. I think that's the basics needed for a working ship in-game according to the tutorial, but here's a link to the .pof file and its textures, in case you guys want to take a look directly. I have it set up according to how Knossos handles mod file structure, so hopefully that's correct as well.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VMP4-h48FpHrzkwVypm8cPRaD7PIvZy0?usp=sharing

[Strygon]

well first ya gotta remove that pesky "you must request access to the file" thing in order to make it easier on us to give it a look 

[flipdark95]

Ah bugger, I always forget that google drive does that . There, now it can be opened 

[The E]

A few comments:

 * Your model has a null moment of inertia. PCS2 can recalculate it for you; leaving it at 0 introduces weirdness into the physics system, and the engine will warn you about it.
 * Your model has smoothing errors:



See those dark parts there, on the rounded bits of the engine pods? Those are smoothing errors (someone who knows the modelling program you use can help you fix them); they will cause lighting to misbehave in those parts.
* Your textures are not following FSO naming conventions, leading to them not being used correctly.

A quick primer on the FSO material system:
FSO can use several different type of texture maps. The most common ones are Diffuse, Glow, Normal and Shine maps (or, for PBR models, diffuse, glow, normal reflectance and ambient occlusion). Since the pof model format comes from the late 90s, where fancy multitexturing was not yet done, it can only assign a single texture, represented by the filename. To make our fancy additions work, we append suffixes to the filename of the base texture (which will always be the diffuse texture). In the case of this model, "V-19_Chassis_D" is the base diffuse map for the chassis subobject. To add the normal map (which, in your case, is V-19_Chassis_N), we need to rename that texture to "V-19_Chassis_D-normal", only then will FSO be able to pick up that this normal map exists. In your maps folder, there are also _M and _R textures; it is not immediately obvious to me what these are used for, but they do not fit into any of the conventions we use for any of the other types of texture map.

Also, be aware that as currently set, this mod is untestable by anyone not part of the FOTG beta.

[wookieejedi]

Looks like folks beat me to answering! Yeah, I'll note that this model/ship is not a part of the FotG beta, so in theory it should be accessible and testable by anyone. 

[flipdark95]

Looks like folks beat me to answering! Yeah, I'll note that this model/ship is not a part of the FotG beta, so in theory it should be accessible and testable by anyone.

Yeah, definitely not haha. Anyone can feel free to access it and test it though once I've got things started and can put the initial mod together on Knossos. Also I mainly just named it after FOTG, because I figure the best thing to do for the mod in general is to just make it a sub-mod or something. Don't know how that'll hold up later on though.