[Titan]

first off, sorry if everyone thinks im spamming by creating so many threads, but they keep just stopping with nobody answering my questions. srry.

anyway, can someone finally tell me EXACTLY what i have to do to put a ship/wep IN GAME for plain FS2 (didn't ask my dad last night, i got in trouble, and knew if i asked that would remind him and i would NEVER get it)

[chief1983]

Have you looked here?  http://www.freespacefaq.com/shipmods.html

[Dark Hunter]

That covers building a ship, not installing it.

For plain, non-FSO FS2? OK: the ship contains a model (.pof), some textures (.pcx), and a table (.tbl), right? You would need to place these in the FS2/data directory. The POF goes into data/models, the textures into data/maps, but the table data is tricker. TBM's only work in FSO, right? Well... you'd have to extract ships.tbl from the main FS2 VP file, add your ship's table data, then save the modified table to data/tables. (To modify a .tbl file all you need is Notepad/Wordpad.)

That should make the ship go in the game... but you won't be able to use it in any stock missions. Why? Each and every mission has an "Allowed ships" list that dictates which ships are available for the pilot to select. You'd have to open each and every mission in FRED, add your ship, then save them to data/missions, which is a helluva lot of work.

However, the added ships would be perfectly useable in missions you created yourself.

[chief1983]

Ah.  I thought the guide went as far as getting it in game.  Still, the Wiki should have been able to help with most of that other stuff then I'd have thought.

[Titan]

ok, thanks. keep forgetting that wikis there...

EDIT: ok, i checked the wiki. but i have a question. can primaries have shockwaves? that would be SO STINKIN AWESOME!!!!!!!! (i think the person that made the movie in the bottom of my sig managed to do that)

; Superlaser
;
$Name: @GA-12
+Title: XSTR("GTW GA-12", 3246)
+Description:
XSTR(
"Standard Issue
Level 3 Hull Damage
Level 3 Shield Damage", 3247)
$end_multi_text
+Tech Title: XSTR("Subach HL-7D", 3248)
+Tech Anim: Tech_Subach_HL-7
+Tech Description:
XSTR(
"The Subach-Innes HL-7 is a xaser weapon, firing an intense, highly focused beam of x-ray emissions. Until the Shivans appeared with their shield technology, these weapons were considered an unnecessary and costly extravagance. But Great War dogfights against Shivan craft quickly taught the Allies that their ships didn't stand a chance unless they could punch through shields. The HL-7 works superbly against shields of all varieties and has become the standard issue Primary weapon for all Terran fighters and bombers.", 3249)
$end_multi_text
$Model File: none
; The following fields (preceded by @) are only required for laser
; rendering, which requires that "Model File:" be none.
; These are the same values that used to be hard-coded:
@Laser Bitmap: newglo9
@Laser Glow: 2_laserglow03
@Laser Color: 0, 250, 250
@Laser Color2: 50, 250, 250
@Laser Length: 20.0
@Laser Head Radius: 2.50
@Laser Tail Radius: 0.90
$Mass: 0.2
$Velocity: 750.0 ;; speed of the weapon (initially) -- may or may not change
$Fire Wait: 0.1 ;; in seconds
$Damage: 34
$Armor Factor: 7
$Shield Factor: 8
$Subsystem Factor: 0.3
$Lifetime: 2.0 ;; How long this thing lives
$Energy Consumed: 0.20 ;; Energy used when fired
$Cargo Size: 0.0 ;; Amount of space taken up in weapon cargo
$Homing: NO
$LaunchSnd: 76 ;; The sound it makes when fired
$ImpactSnd: 85 ;; The sound it makes when it hits something
+Weapon Range: 100000 ;; Limit to range at which weapon will actively target object
$Flags: ("player allowed" "stream")
$Icon: iconSD4
$Anim: SD4
$Impact Explosion: none


btw, this is a wep i made. does it look ok? i just modified the Subach HL-7. if this is ok, what do i do with it?

[Getter Robo G]

Um did you get your ship in game successfully???

I only ask cause from experience hard learned that when you change ONE thing, unless you bug test it harshly, it can come back to bite you in the ass later when you try to make more changes. Especially if you change OTHER things like weapons and then later get a list of bugs so you don't know what's causing it or what files to narrow it down to... (like a bazillion token errors that are false, the data IS there properly, the errors are coming from somewhere else).

There are dozens of things that can go wrong in a ship table alone.

I'm just saying... 

[jaedub51]

That covers building a ship, not installing it.

For plain, non-FSO FS2? OK: the ship contains a model (.pof), some textures (.pcx), and a table (.tbl), right? You would need to place these in the FS2/data directory. The POF goes into data/models, the textures into data/maps, but the table data is tricker. TBM's only work in FSO, right? Well... you'd have to extract ships.tbl from the main FS2 VP file, add your ship's table data, then save the modified table to data/tables. (To modify a .tbl file all you need is Notepad/Wordpad.)

That should make the ship go in the game... but you won't be able to use it in any stock missions. Why? Each and every mission has an "Allowed ships" list that dictates which ships are available for the pilot to select. You'd have to open each and every mission in FRED, add your ship, then save them to data/missions, which is a helluva lot of work.

However, the added ships would be perfectly useable in missions you created yourself.

TBM's? What are those/How do they work?

[Dark Hunter]

Call them extensions to the main tables. You just create a new text file and put extra stuff in it, and the game reads it as an extension of the main table. For instance, anything put in <name>-shp.tbm will be added to the ships.tbl. Anything put in <name>-wep.tbm will go to the weapons.tbl, etc. There's a bunch of .tbm versions. They're basically just easier to deal with than changing the big, main tables around all the time.

[Polpolion]

That weapon of yours does 234 damage per bolt, Titan. I think you might want to rebalanced it.