Hard Light Productions Forums

Hosted Projects - Standalone => The Babylon Project => Topic started by: darkmaster on May 13, 2008, 10:31:52 am

Title: Jump drive questions
Post by: darkmaster on May 13, 2008, 10:31:52 am
Hi, I have some questions:

1> Can anyone tell me how to make an activated jump hole without ship jumping in / out ?
2> Can anyone tell me how to keep a jump hole open even when there is no ship to warp in or warp out ?
3> Does TBP support different jumping methods beside the conventional jump hole and the shadow fade in / out ?

Thanks in advance !
Darkmaster
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: IPAndrews on May 13, 2008, 10:50:38 am
1> Can anyone tell me how to make an activated jump hole without ship jumping in / out ?

The warp-effect SEXP.

2> Can anyone tell me how to keep a jump hole open even when there is no ship to warp in or warp out ?

The warp-effect SEXP.

3> Does TBP support different jumping methods beside the conventional jump hole and the shadow fade in / out ? Darkmaster

We only have the standard jump in/out warp effect.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: darkmaster on May 13, 2008, 11:02:43 am
Thank you. Will definitely try this.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: Vidmaster on May 13, 2008, 11:23:27 am
Jumpholes and especially gates in TBP are just clever (in the good cases) fakes  :lol:
The FS2 engine has its limits.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: darkmaster on May 13, 2008, 11:46:22 am
I wonder how star ships jump in/out in Freespace2 (I've never played Freespace2 before). Can we reuse this jump effect for TBP ships ? It would be nice to have a different jumping method for special ships like those of Thirdspace.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: 0rph3u5 on May 13, 2008, 11:57:13 am
I wonder how star ships jump in/out in Freespace2 (I've never played Freespace2 before). Can we reuse this jump effect for TBP ships ? It would be nice to have a different jumping method for special ships like those of Thirdspace.

well the jump in/out effect of TBP is basicaly the same as in FS/FS2... but TBP uses a different model for the warp vortex...
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: Skullar on May 13, 2008, 01:37:53 pm
The jump-vortex is a SEXP under the category SPECIAL

Notes :
ORIGIN is the CENTER of the entire vortex ( not the opening only )
LOCATION is just a point in 3d-space where the opening points to.

The SIZE applies to the entire vortex. The proportions are always constant

Use a blue vortex for jumping in
Use a yellow vortex for jumping out
Use two vortexes at the same coords ( a blue AND a yellow one ) for a thirdspace vortex.

The ship editor lets your ships appear or disappear using a jumpgate vortex, this is no necessity.
Note that ships that arrive WITH a vortex have a pretty high inertia.
Ships that arrive ( later ) without vortex start with speed 0.

For rather common jumpgate effect use a warp-effect approx size 1000 at same coords as jumpgate.

Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: darkmaster on May 16, 2008, 12:54:52 pm
Hi, I know this is off-topic but ... can anyone tell me how to modify the speed of a ship? I launch a transport ship and want it to go 10 km/h but it goes 40km/h making the mission complete too fast. I need to know which SEXP to do it. Thanks.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: karajorma on May 16, 2008, 01:24:50 pm
cap-waypoint-speed will do it for non fighters/bombers.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: darkmaster on May 16, 2008, 01:43:49 pm
Yeah I know, it is mentioned in the FAQ  but ... I can't find it.

Edit: sorry, I found it. In the "Special". Thank you a lot.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on May 16, 2008, 01:45:56 pm
It's under special.
Title: HELP! There is a white sun in hyperspace !
Post by: darkmaster on May 16, 2008, 07:39:06 pm
HELP! There is a white sun in hyperspace ! I don't know why the hell it gets there but I can't get rid of it. I have used :

 "Full Nebula"
 "Poofs : Nothing-Nothing"
 "Pattern : Hyperspace"
 "Lighting storm : hyperspace"
 "Skybox model : hyperspace.pof"

No bitmaps and no suns of course.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: terran_emperor on May 16, 2008, 08:10:42 pm
The reason for that is that you cant have a design mission without a Sun
If you dont place a Sun using the Background Editor, then a White Sun is automatically placed

To remove:
Select Background Editor
Insert a sun
Change to one of the amient_colour options

ambient_red or ambient_none are the best options
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: darkmaster on May 16, 2008, 09:16:39 pm
WORKS !
Thanks a lot.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: terran_emperor on May 16, 2008, 10:58:32 pm
Glad to beof service
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: darkmaster on May 17, 2008, 12:46:20 am
Well, I have just finished mission 5/8 of my campaign, only 3 left. At this rate it can be finished and moved to beta testing in 2 weeks. I'll include the name of all who help me here to the credit  :D.

I'll need someone to correct my grammatical errors and someone to play testing (or feedback or bug correction ....),   is there anyone who is willing to help me ?

Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: captain-custard on May 17, 2008, 08:17:55 am
ill bug test the game if you want , as for the grammar if its blatant i can help but if not im not that good , and yes english is my first language i know but was never that inteested by the written word...... :P
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: Vidmaster on May 17, 2008, 08:21:52 am
seems like it :lol:

what's your campaign about? If you manage to hook me with a thrill-and-major-battles-promising plot, I might spare some time  :)
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: darkmaster on May 17, 2008, 10:29:37 am
The campaign is about the tale of a Primus class battleship, and it takes place in 2268. The plot shouldn't be posted here, but I can send you guys PMs if you are interested. Personally I think that knowing the plot by playing  through the campaign is a lot more interesting than knowing it before playing, but it's up to you.

For my English : I need just word and grammar correction, don't mind about writing style, formulation etc...

The campaign is aimed to all people, so the difficulty is not so high as Vid's campaign, but you must  use your wingmen well to win. You'll probably have time to look around, see how capship is destroyed, chasing enemy fighters ect... There are also ships that were never used before in other campaigns.

@andicirk: I'll send you a PM when I finish the last mission. Thank you a lot.
@vidmaster: Nothing better than the help of a pro. I will be very happy if you can have a look at it.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: Vidmaster on May 17, 2008, 12:27:09 pm
so now I am a pro?  :lol:

Half a year ago I was like darkmaster here, begging (in my case Orph) to test my extremely buggy new campaign. I even upset IP until he removed multiple post by me :lol:   I guess that's what's called career  ;7

Okay, I am gonna play it :) But be really sure it works, I remember the thing I send to Orph back then. Considering how many bugs I had to fix afterwards I would probably state now that it was a pre-Alpha or something  :lol: :lol: :lol:
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: darkmaster on May 17, 2008, 01:53:22 pm
Thank you, vid. And please take it easy on your new apprentice.  :D
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: karajorma on May 18, 2008, 02:39:34 am
so now I am a pro?  :lol:

Half a year ago I was like darkmaster here, begging (in my case Orph) to test my extremely buggy new campaign. I even upset IP until he removed multiple post by me :lol:   I guess that's what's called career  ;7

Six months continuous FREDding is quite a bit of experience actually given how easy FRED is to learn. After the first few months you probably know the basics fairly solidly and you're only really dealing with the more advanced topics and some of the gotchas that occasionally crop up.

Besides you've released more missions and campaigns than I have and they have included some pretty impressive innovation in them (Dark Children's special feature for instance) so I think you can wear that title with pride. :)
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: Vidmaster on May 18, 2008, 04:21:30 am
when kara says so, I really can  :lol: 
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: darkmaster on May 19, 2008, 10:29:43 am
Please help, I'm stuck again. The asteroid didn't move no matter how I tried. I want the asteroids to hit a specified ship, so I used AI-chase and kamikaze but the problem is that those rocks didn't want to move. At first I thought that it was because the things don't have engine system, but when I opened "the fortune hunter" mission to have a reference I noticed that vid used the same SEXPs, what's wrong with me ?
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: IPAndrews on May 19, 2008, 10:59:26 am
You can't make an asteroid move. None of the asteroid ship classes have a top speed. You would need to create a new ship class entry in ships.tbl using a .tbm file and create a new movable asteroid ship class. You might be able to persuade one of the modders here to knock one up for you.

Bad news is standard TBP has so many ship classes already you would need to force people to use the Inferno build with upgraded limits if you wish to add new ship classes.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: darkmaster on May 19, 2008, 11:31:52 am
But Vid managed to make them move in Fortune Hunter 2260 mission 10 ? And he just use the same SEXPs as me. Plus, he didn't put any ship.tbm in his vp ?

Edit : Ok, sorry. He just put them on the way of the ship, they were not moving. I think I must change my script now.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: karajorma on May 19, 2008, 04:26:18 pm
Making a single asteroid move is difficult but if you want to make a whole field move you can create an active field in the Asteroid Editor.

If you really need to make only one asteroid move you can use the set-object-speed SEXP to do so.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: darkmaster on May 19, 2008, 04:42:06 pm
Thanks, kara.

I decided to cut off the final battle ( a big battle  :D)  because it doesn't fit well to the story ( it takes place 10 years after the previous mission ). So the campaign will have only 7 missions (which are all done basically, it needs bug-fixing and play-testing now).

I must contact vid and andicirk now, thanks all who helped me in this topic.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: darkmaster on May 19, 2008, 05:22:06 pm
Well, now I have a strange thing here.

When playing as a single mission, everything is ok. But when I line them up to a fc file and play as a campaign, there is no weapon as all. Primary weapon : none, secondary weapon : none. Does anyone know what is going on here ?
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on May 19, 2008, 05:31:36 pm
Did you allow the weapons in the campaign?
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: darkmaster on May 19, 2008, 05:43:46 pm
Did you allow the weapons in the campaign?

Thx a lot, that's the problem. I was so stupid  :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

EDIT : SORRY I DID NOT WORK !! I ALLOWED ALL THE WEAPONS BUT THERE WAS NO WEAPON IN MY CAMPAIGN, WHY IS IT ?


Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: Shade on May 19, 2008, 05:57:11 pm
What exactly did you do? Did you use the 'Initial Status' dialogues in the campaign editor, or did you just allow them through the loadout editor in the mission? For a weapon to show up in a campaign, it needs to be both enabled in the team loadout of the mission as well as either in the list initial allowed weapons in the campaign editor or allowed through a mission event in an earlier campaign mission.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: darkmaster on May 19, 2008, 06:08:41 pm
I meant both the Initial Status and the team load-0ut. The weapon is the "particle array" of the Centauri.
Can anyone have a look at my files to see what is wrong ? I will send them to you if you want to help me.
Thanks

EDIT : Now it works, finally. I deleted all .pak files in the missions folder and it worked. Thank you all.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: Shade on May 19, 2008, 06:19:26 pm
There is one more thing you could try: Make a new pilot and try that in the campaign. Occasionally using an old pilot with a new campaign can cause problems not unlike what you're experiencing. If that doesn't do it though, then sure, I'll take a look.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: Ker.Soth on May 20, 2008, 03:48:01 pm
what are .pak files anyway?I think they were crashing my editor when I was trying to open the Campaign. Just a newbie question, trying to get a grip.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: Shade on May 20, 2008, 03:56:21 pm
Do you mean .bak files, maybe? If so, it's just an .fs2 file with the extension changed that's used as an automatic backup by FRED, in case you screw something up and want to revert your changes. You can open it if you change the extension back. The same goes for the backup.xxx files, though those don't identify the mission they're backups of.
Title: Re: Jump drive questions
Post by: Ker.Soth on May 20, 2008, 04:04:45 pm
thnx Shade. Yeah I meant .bak       In that case I won't be so hasty to delete them from now on.