[wesp5]

In the game, pay attention to the shooting from the bottom rotating turrets of all ships that have them. Seems that their barrels rotate in the other direction not where the turret base is directed.

How could we fix that? I took a quick look at the EA Hyperion and whatever the "normal" value of the turrets means, the bottom ones have other values than the top ones...

[den5]

I'll look later. I'm going to sleep now. Maybe someone else will figure it out sooner.

[0rph3u5]

The normal value of a turret is the vector that is used to define the referrence frame for its attributes.

In a multipart turret (which is seperated into base and barrels) it is effectively the barrel line before any rotation is applied

[wesp5]

The normal value of a turret is the vector that is used to define the referrence frame for its attributes.

In a multipart turret (which is seperated into base and barrels) it is effectively the barrel line before any rotation is applied

Okay, so if this value is set wrong, the issue that den5 reported will be the result? In that case I need some concrete examples to look at! I checked the lower turrets of an EA Hyperion in The Battle of the Line and the lower turrets had the barrels in the correct direction when firing...

[den5]

I'm sorry, I probably explained it wrong. The barrels are directed on the target, but the turret base in the other direction.



I found out the following lines fix it for bottom turrets

Code: [Select]

$uvec:0, -1, 0
$fvec:0, 0, -1See how it is in pof tools

[wesp5]

Okay, I fixed the Nova and the Hyperion and also many more errors and warnings in the latter. Any others that have this problem? I will go through all models and fix pof-tools warnings anyway...

[Trivial Psychic]

I'm not sure if this is something you would want to pursue with any further updates, but when I was playing through Raider Wars, and some of the other campaigns, I was disappointed that the primary icons in the loadout screen were always the same.  It made it difficult to tell what I had selected.  I decided instead to borrow the primary models from the MVPs, and rotate them through the various player-accessible primaries.  Something else I've experimented with, but oddly have had no success with, was to import the turret sounds from the MVPs.  I've had success importing them into other FS-based mods, but they aren't working for TBP for some reason.  I don't get any error messages, just no sounds.  Perhaps you'll have better success should you pursue it.

[wesp5]

I decided instead to borrow the primary models from the MVPs, and rotate them through the various player-accessible primaries.

I actually never used the loadout screen before, but if you upload your icons and models I will add them to the patch!

Something else I've experimented with, but oddly have had no success with, was to import the turret sounds from the MVPs.

What are the MVPs and what is the problem with the turret sounds?

[Trivial Psychic]

The Media VPs (MVPs) are updated models and graphics created by the community for the main Freespace campaigns, available through Knossos.  It contains both the primary weapon model files & textures, as well as turret movement sounds.  The MVPs contain sounds that are generated when a multi-part turret turns on its base, or when the barrel elevates.  For it to work, you need the audio files, properly formatted sounds table entries for each sound, and properly formatted entries for each turret on each ship you want it to apply for.  The MVPs contain a number of different sounds, each for a different size of turret.  For big turrets, there are longer, lower-pitched sounds, while for smaller ones, there are shorter, higher pitched ones.  All this stuff is in the MVPs (Media VPs).

[wesp5]

The Media VPs (MVPs) are updated models and graphics created by the community for the main Freespace campaigns, available through Knossos.

This seems like it's beyond my modding knowledge right now, but would you be willing to share your updated icons and models for the patch?

[Trivial Psychic]

I'm afraid that's too much data for me to transfer, but I can talk you through it for you, and provide the tbm file I created with how I assigned them to the various weapons.

STEP 1: Activate Knossos and download the latest versions of the Media VPs
STEP 2: Also download the latest version of the FSPort Media VPs (you may need to download the fsport itself as well).
STEP 3: Using VPView32 or your VP viewer of choice, go into the folder for the Media VPs (Should be MVPS-4.6.8 for the latest) and open the VP file called MV_Assets.vp
STEP 4: Within that VP file, go into the models subfolder, and find all of the files that begin with "wep_", and extract these into the models folder for your TBP install.
STEP 5: Also within that VP file, go into the maps folder, and find all of the texture files that begin with "wep-" that ALSO have the same name as the model files you extracted, and extract them into the maps folder of your TBP install.  This includes any glow or shinemaps.
STEP 6: Again using your VP viewer program, go into the folder for the FSPort Media VPs (should be fsport-mediavps-4.6.7 for the latest) and open the VP file called mv_fsport_46x.vp
STEP 7: Within that VP file, go into the models subfolder, and find the two files that begin with "wep_", and extract these into the models folder for your TBP install.
STEP 8: Also within that VP file, go into the maps folder, and find all of the texture files that begin with "wep-" that ALSO have the same name as the model files you extracted, and extract them into the maps folder of your TBP install.  This includes any glow or shinemaps.
STEP 9: Download the tbm file I've included, and place it in the tables folder of your TBP install.
STEP 10: Enjoy

[wesp5]

Wow, that looks like much more work than I anticipated! Also if this it too much data to transfer for you, the same problem will exist for the patch which right now is rather small and easy to update. So as I don't really understand yet what this is all about, can you please post some screenshots before/after so I can see if this justifies the effort? After all we are talking about a very niche game here that only very few people play...

[Iain Baker]

Thanks, fixing great games that are not exactly mainstream is kind of a hobby of mine .

This and VTMB, any other cult classics we should know about?

Either way, you are doing God’s/the First One’s/The Dark Father’s work 😎 thank you 😊

[den5]

Something else I've experimented with, but oddly have had no success with, was to import the turret sounds from the MVPs.  I've had success importing them into other FS-based mods, but they aren't working for TBP for some reason.  I don't get any error messages, just no sounds.  Perhaps you'll have better success should you pursue it.

Code: [Select]

+Entry: largeturret_rot.ogg
+Entry: largeturret_elev.oggBut the sounds themselves are in wav format. Maybe this is the issue?

[wesp5]

This and VTMB, any other cult classics we should know about?

You probably know "The Dark Mod", a Thief standalone game running on the Doom 3 engine. It is well supported even today, but has some minor issues in my opinion so I made an Unofficial Patch improving some of the gameplay and realism. What you probably don't know are the two lost gems from Ukrainish developer DeepShadows, namely "White Gold" and "The Precursors". The first one is a prequel to "Boiling Point" and the second one a really great space-combat-first-person-shooter-RPG mix that might be interesting for people who like FSO space combat games. I made Unofficial Patches for both, but sadly "The Precursors" was released with the real ending missing and there is no way we can restore that at the moment ...

[Vidmaster]

I don't know what other missions you have done, but I really love your Dark Children !

My much younger self wrote Dark Children, the Fortune Hunters trilogy, the Achen Schooling Flight (a tutorial for the game) and Operations, a sort of black-ops mission pack intended for coop. Furthermore, several multiplayer missions when that was a thing. I do no longer have any of the files, which is mostly a shame as about 60% of the entire Fortune Hunters trilogy was already voice acted. FUBAR-BHDR was hosting the SVN and I do not know what became of these. On the other hand, considering the frequency of grammar errors and typos, that loss might not be that terrible 

EDIT: It seems lke some download links still work ? I just tried to download Operations (from a thread linked here) and I did get a RAR file from a server at 'http://fubar.org'. The page itself gives me some cryptomine-**** but 'http://fubar.org/TBP/Vid/Operations.rar' does produce a VP-file...   
Maybe this all of this stuff still exists, because the filehoster backup these things endlessly? In that case, you might wanna grab while the stuff while it exists from 'http://fubar.org/TBP/', there is more there than things from me (subfolder 'Vid')...

EDIT 2: Holy **** , there is a lot of stuff...     The old multiplayer packs, the old DVD, some campaigns, different versions of ZATHRAS, ...   not everything, but a lot.

EDIT 3: This is weird. Really weird. Emotional but I am not sure in what way exactly. I am confronted by early work, something half a life away and have this weird feeling of being like some sort of contemporary witness...    Anyway, if you have questions, feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer, as I have done below.

P.S.: Maybe one of you knows this, I always wondered if the Earth Minbari War demo was supposed to be expanded into a full campaign one day, which will never happen now, or if it actually was intended just as a demo to show off the possibilities of modding in TBP?

While this was way before my time, I do know: It was indeed planned be expanded into a full campaign at some point, but TBP as a whole was way way before organized mod development.
During my time, nobody who worked on that was still around. We did talk about doing restarting this again though and I clearly remember discussing that we should alternate between the human and minbari perspective, contrasting the power fantasy with the consequences and focusing on an anti-war message through gameplay. Innovative stuff, actually, but potentially not the most fun video game. But alas, not much came of it.

Some general context about how TBP worked:
People came and people went away or ghosted. People made half-finished contributions, those got put into the release (because content trumps all) even if giant holes were in the geometry.
I was one half of the project for a few years but I just got the job because I wrote some campaigns that someone else liked and who wanted out and the project was pretty dead at that point. Officially speaking, it was done.

We agreed to keep the release as it is (as the project was done), so all of our fixes originally became the ZATHRAS mod as a workaround for that.
I had no idea how to run any project back then , I was young but together with FUBAR, we managed to get some things done anway.

To this day, I am listed as a the moderator of this forum because no matter how often I complain, nobody wants to take over 

I cannot tell you how weird this all feels to type.
I am 35 now. A Software Engineer, a project lead, a person shipping products that people pay lots of money for and that makes other people, myself included, have a job.
And I look back half a life and find that this utter mess is still there and someone is bashing his or her head into the brick walls that other people built. And some of the stones there were mine.

[wesp5]

My much younger self wrote Dark Children, the Fortune Hunters trilogy, the Achen Schooling Flight (a tutorial for the game) and Operations, a sort of black-ops mission pack intended for coop.

All these are already part of the Knossos version of TBP and while there is some stuff on the site you posted, I wouldn't know the difference and hope that the latest versions are already in the game !

While this was way before my time, I do know: It was indeed planned be expanded into a full campaign at some point, but TBP as a whole was way way before organized mod development.

Interesting, so the people working on the In the Beginning campaign could indeed use this to make a full Earth/Minbari war campaign. Although it seems they decided to not do it because it's too different.

[Vidmaster]

Well, from your changelog it is clear that you have made both real fixes as well as changes suiting your preferences, like keeping Mind visible when phasing in and out of Hyperspace in Dark Children M3. And I am totally okay with that 

In short, what we have today is probably better than what we had in 2010. I mean...   we have a cockpit for the Starfury now!