Hard Light Productions Forums
Community Projects => The FreeSpace Upgrade Project => Topic started by: Nyctaeus on August 10, 2014, 02:31:06 pm
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There is a problem with Colossus. With center point set in PCS, the model is still acting like retail Colossus ingame. That means it's center point is set between main engines, in the rear part of the ship.
I suspect the center point was set like this to keep retail balance and missions performance, but it's rather annoying for Freders and IMHO doesn't look good. Before I import this model to Blender and fix the problem, which requires some boring work, I'd like to ask: Is there any other version of the Colossus, with correctly set center point? It would save me some work.
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The center point won't change in FSU. And you don't need to import it into blender.. A couple minutes in PCS2 can move the center point.
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Actually Auto-Centering option in PCS2 is not working properly in case of Colossus. As far as I know, I've never seen this working in any model. That's why SF Junky requested me to fix this. Setting offset to LOD0 is also not a good idea, as some pof data [like thusters] refuses to move with LOD0. Maybe some other data, like glowpoints too.
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Are you for serious? This (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6681376/colossusrecenter.7z) took me less than five minutes. It's not perfect mathematical center.. but if you really need that, then you're on your own.
Open model -> click on Header in the stack -> Transform -> Translate -> move things around until it's centered on the grid.
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Oh, I didn't know that you have to use the Transform/Transate function. I thought it'd be sufficient to click on "recalculate" under the "Moment of Inertia" section. That indeed didn't do the trick. But many thanks for your efforts, gentlemen.
Something else that I've learned.
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To be honest I wasn't aware of existence of this function at all. Auto-centering function was only thing that came to my mind. It's always good to learn something. I'm only wondering why nobody ever fixed the Colossus for MVP 2014.
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You can rescale models and submodels using "transform" function as well. You can also angle them, though this is not very useful.
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I'm only wondering why nobody ever fixed the Colossus for MVP 2014.
For the same reason noone ever fixed the Colossus for the 3.6.12 MVPs, the 3.6.10 MVPs or the 3.6.8 MVPs.
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There's nothing to fix about the Colossus as far as center goes. Changing it from retail will mess with any number of retail campaign missions because it would change the ship's position in the missions by thousands of meters. We already had issues with Feint! Parry! Riposte! on this version of the model...
And while we don't expect compatibility with every campaign ever.. changing the Colossus centerpoint would needlessly screw with any number of mod missions since retail.
Hell, why do I even need to rehash this sort of thing again? The centerpoint will not change in an official FSU release.
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You can rescale models and submodels using "transform" function as well. You can also angle them, though this is not very useful.
I knew that, but not that you can and have to change the centerpoint via that option.
There's nothing to fix about the Colossus as far as center goes. Changing it from retail will mess with any number of retail campaign missions because it would change the ship's position in the missions by thousands of meters. We already had issues with Feint! Parry! Riposte! on this version of the model...
And while we don't expect compatibility with every campaign ever.. changing the Colossus centerpoint would needlessly screw with any number of mod missions since retail.
Hell, why do I even need to rehash this sort of thing again? The centerpoint will not change in an official FSU release.
Honestly, I didn't know that the Colossus was used in any mod campaign/mission. Also, I wasn't aware that this centerpoint discussion seems to come up very often.
Which problems did you have with Feint! Perry! Riposte!?
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Honestly, I didn't know that the Colossus was used in any mod campaign/mission.
I've come across the Colossus in two separate campaigns and a single standalone mission.
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It bears mentioning that scripting can relatively easily account for retail missions which assume a different centerpoint, by offsetting the ship's initial position. Of course there can be other things in the mission which would be affected by a different centerpoint, but at least for retail missions it seems straightforward enough to find out.
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Why would we add a custom script to manage a single ship's position instead of just altering the missions and telling mod creators to do the same? (While hoping FSCRP ever does it for any older mods.) How would we make sure that script works for older mods and not newer ones?
No, that's more work than it's worth. For the few mods that use the Colossus AND want to it to have a different centerpoint, they can take a few minutes to alter it in PCS2.
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Here is the thing, one of FSU's main rules is the preservation of retail behavior and while i can understand the desire to "Fix" the centrepoint surely its much easier to put the recentred model on FSMods, list it on the user ships list and let modders use it as and when.
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one option that I'm not necessarily advocating, but should be mentioned, would be to make a colossus(fixed) variant not used in anything but available for future use.
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Would there be a way to make two points in the Colossus, one for center of mass, another for center of position? That would seem to me to preserve retail compatibility while also making the Collie not act dorky.
Edit : in other words, leave normal center point there and create a new type of point (center.mass or similar) for calculating center of mass for new versions that support said point.
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We are not going to introduce a code fix for something affecting a single model in FS2 that isn't inherently broken.
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one option that I'm not necessarily advocating, but should be mentioned, would be to make a colossus(fixed) variant not used in anything but available for future use.
You mean like the model mjn.mixael has just delivered in this thread? ;)
I see no reason to make such a big thing out of this, especially since the "problem" has been dealt with already. There is now a "fixed" model available for everyone who desires to use it (like me). That the FSU team does not want to change the centerpoint in the "official" model used in the mediavps, is totally understandable and should be accepted. They delivered valid arguments for their point.