Couldn't you make a command line option like 3dwarp that uses the model (which should be in mv_core) and the HTL rendering code?
No. The point is that using the HTL method makes it impossible to use the original model. You can use or not use -3dwarp and it works fine regardless. Using the HTL rendering method for the original jumpnode model would either crash (very likely) or just not render anything at all. It's a feature that officially breaks retail data compatibility and that's not acceptable. This isn't something that can be covered over by a simple hack (already tried
) as it needs a whole new capability to make it work properly (see below).
The whole point of putting that model into MV_core was to allow the jumpnodes to be drawable with HTL rendering code in the first place. In fact, that's the only reason I even made it. If it's not achieving that, then it should be removed. Why it's in mv_models now is beyond me, as it was never supposed to go there.
And I've asked for it to be removed for the past 3 MediaVP releases in fact. It's still there though, just slowing things down.
If that were the case, the old node would have to be permanently added as a hard-coded data structure within the game engine itself. I'm thinking the chances of that flying are next-to-nil.
The new node POF would have to permanently added to the code in order for the rendering path to go HTL actually. I already coded everything up when I was working on the new HTL wireframe view but that basically makes it impossible to use the original model, or to even supply your own for that matter. Trying to figure out if it should get rendered with the HTL or non-HTL path was buggy as hell (to say the least) so I never added that code and decided to just leave it with the non-HTL path.
What is likely needed is a jumpnode tbl (probably just added to one of the hud tables, or a ship specific thing) so that a model and rendering type can be specified. This would allow easy use of many different jumpnode model types. It's unlikely that every race would have a jumpnode indicated the same on the HUD so this would allow per-ship/species setting of how to indicate a jumpnode location in space. It's possible to do without a ton of work, but time is short and this is an extremely minor feature as far as I'm concerned.