[Krenim]

I just started taking a look around with FRED1 and to learn a couple of tricks I unpacked the original missions of The Great War to see how scripting works in missions.
Unfortunately I have a problem with nameplated Orions, every time I try to open a mission with the Galatea or Bastion FRED tells me that it encountered an unknown data ship/weapons and the problem is probably due to a mission data disk I do not have. Obviously it's pretty easy to add another common Orion ship, but honestly I would like to know where the problem actually is.

[karajorma]

Using FRED1

Seriously though now that we have the port I have no idea why anyone would use FRED1 in preference to FRED2. If you have a good reason though you'll need someone else's help since I don't think I've ever run FRED except for curiosities sake.

I suspect however that the reason is something to do with the Galetea and Bastion simply being standard orion classes with a slightly different model file and table entry.

[Turey]

I don't think I've ever run FRED2 except for curiosities sake.

What, do all those missions just magically appear on your hard drive? 

[karajorma]

These days I append the 2 almost automatically.

That said I never run FRED2 these days either FRED2_Open all the way

[Goober5000]

I just started taking a look around with FRED1 and to learn a couple of tricks I unpacked the original missions of The Great War to see how scripting works in missions.

Excellent!  We have a bona fide tinkerer on our hands.  I predict that this mindset will make you an excellent FREDder.

Unfortunately I have a problem with nameplated Orions, every time I try to open a mission with the Galatea or Bastion FRED tells me that it encountered an unknown data ship/weapons and the problem is probably due to a mission data disk I do not have. Obviously it's pretty easy to add another common Orion ship, but honestly I would like to know where the problem actually is.

This is a well-known problem.  (At least, it was well-known in the early days of FRED, but since karajorma is focused pretty exclusively on FSO I'll forgive him for the lapse. )

The problem is the # character.  Volition put # in the middle of ship class names so that multiple ship classes could display the same thing on the HUD.  (This was before the $Alt Name feature in FS2.)  This is so that "GTD Orion", "GTD Orion#1 (Galatea)", and "GTD Orion#2 (Bastion)" all appear as "GTD Orion" on the HUD -- note that the # and everything following it is chopped off.

Unfortunately, a bug in FRED (which is also present in FRED2 as well) prevented the chopped-off names from working.  As a result, any mission with these ship classes will not load properly.  The solution is to load the mission in Notepad (or Wordpad) and change "GTD Orion#1 (Galatea)" to "GTD Orion".  Then the mission will load correctly, but it will display the common GTD Orion.  If you want to build a mission using the Galatea or the Bastion, create the mission with a common GTD Orion, and then when you're finished, change the ship class using Notepad.

Seriously though now that we have the port I have no idea why anyone would use FRED1 in preference to FRED2.

Maybe he wants to make a campaign that runs on FS1.

[BS403]

Yeah people still make those ... Like me.

[Krenim]

Thank for you reply, Goober5000, I'll try that this when I'm back from work.

As to why using FRED1 even if FREDOpen is far superior, well, every editor has a different feeling about the missions you can create with it.

[karajorma]

Well if people want to use FS1 and FRED1 they're welcome to.

It's just that I'd rather make a mission with the better tools available to me using FRED2_Open and the port personally.

[Krenim]

I have another problem now with ship editing.
I tried to create a new ship (well, actually, modifying existing ones for now) and things were working quiet smoothly, but every time I try to change something in one of the three dragons in the .tbl (or I add a new dragon ship), the game crashes when I try to run it.

[Goober5000]

What, specifically, are you changing?

[Krenim]

Just minor modification, I'm not feeling that confident yet to do anything else, but even if there's no problem with any other ship modification I've made, with dragons the game simply won't start even if I change their name.

[Goober5000]

Post your new ships.tbl file here.

[Krenim]

This is just an example and I only changed the name of the weakened Dragon, but even if I try to add a new one the result is pretty much the same: the game (and the editor also) crash after launch.



[attachment deleted by admin]

[Goober5000]

Well, you can't get rid of the # symbol in the name of the weakened dragon unless you also get rid of the "ship copy" flag.  The ship is supposed to be a copy of SF Dragon, the portion of the name before the # symbol.

Try starting from a brand new ships.tbl file and editing a different ship.