[The_Force]

Is there any chance someone could post a tuturial on making mainhalls.

[mjn.mixael]

Do you mean like a full hangar (retail-like) mainhall or just a simple animated menu?

[The_Force]

A Full Hanger like mainhall please.

[mjn.mixael]

Well.. that's going to be much, much more difficult. There are very few people who have ever pulled that off successfully, like 1 or 2.

You have to model the whole hangar and everything in it. You have to setup animations (if you want them) and render those. It's going to be even more complicated if you want to populate the hangar with people. Once that's all done you need to create the anims in the right format, create a mainhall.tbl and place the anims in the right spot, make a mask, and hope it all works.

I would probably be the one to write such a tutorial because I dont' know of anyone else (yet) who has gotten as close to finishing full hangar mainhalls. I know there are a few in progress that I'm looking forward to though! My work has taken months, maybe more than a year.. I've lost track. I would say that you should just start by modelling the hangar. Once that's done let me know and I can walk you through the rest then.

[Legate Damar]

I need this badly, although I would settle for the "simple animated menu" option.

(Actually I would just settle for knowing how to take a static image and put clickable buttons on it)

[mjn.mixael]

I need this badly, although I would settle for the "simple animated menu" option.

(Actually I would just settle for knowing how to take a static image and put clickable buttons on it)

Well perhaps I'll whip up a tutorial on that this week. A full hangar just isn't really tutorial material if you don't have modelling/rendering knowledge.

[Aginor]

Oh yeah some sort of tutorial would be great!
I also want to do some kind of main hall for my Kilrathi mod for Saga.
Not as complex as the Saga one though, that one cost Tolwyn several months and I bet he got some grey hair in the process.

[Pahkwa-thanh]

hey mjn.mixael, do you happen to have any idea what the mods are that have these new mainhalls you mentioned? i'd love to take a look at them :-)

[General Battuta]

hey mjn.mixael, do you happen to have any idea what the mods are that have these new mainhalls you mentioned? i'd love to take a look at them :-)

There aren't any released, though ED had one in progress and Inferno had some kind of flat bitmap 'mainhall' art, iirc. The only true mainhalls that have been done are mjn.mixael's for FSPort.

[Pahkwa-thanh]

oooh... okay lols, for a minute i thought there were others than the regular FS 2, FS Port and WC Saga halls

[Cyborg17]

Didn't JAD 2.2 have a bitmap mainhall?

[General Battuta]

Lots of campaigns have bitmap mainhalls but I doubt that's what he wants.

[Aginor]

Now I'm a bit confused... I know the Saga one was a huge load of work to do and it looks great. Is there something even more complex?

[Legate Damar]

Bitmap mainhall would be fine for my purposes

[Pahkwa-thanh]

Didn't JAD 2.2 have a bitmap mainhall?

what's JAD 2.2 ?

[Cyborg17]

what's JAD 2.2 ?

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=78518.0

I actually meant JAD 2.1.

[mjn.mixael]

Now I'm a bit confused... I know the Saga one was a huge load of work to do and it looks great. Is there something even more complex?

I haven't played Saga, so I don't know what the mainhall is. My mainhalls are full 3D modelled hangars that are animated (soon to be with characters too) in 3D. They were then rendered, cropped, and converted to work with FS's mainhall menu system.

[Aginor]

Ok, then they are like the Saga ones I think. Those were also done in 3D and then rendered with animations.
There are animated people, doors, ships flying past the windows and such things as well.

[Legate Damar]

Okay, could someone please help me make a main hall? Just a basic one?

Say I have an image I want to use as the background, where do I find the images for the buttons, how do I put them into the image and make them clickable, etc.?

[mjn.mixael]

you need to make all your buttons. I've got the tutorial about halfway done... just be patient. The mainhall is not a necessary feature of any mod. You should be able to work on other things for now.