Author Topic: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...  (Read 6270 times)

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How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
Hey all, I have FS Open installed, as well as the original BTRL demo, and was wondering how easy it would be to "Copy and Paste" ships from Beyond the Red Line such as the Viper Mk. II's into Diaspora so that I could FRED some missions with them.

I would also like to import some models from Blue Planet. Thanks and sorry if this violates some kind of rule!

 
Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
I did something similar with the Typhoon from FS2.
This is actualy not that hard, you just have to figure out how this works.
This is how I did it, I do not know if it is the right way.
I am going to assume you have the ships model and its .tbl file.

Make sure you have a table file of the ship, the model and then it is basicly copy/paste work.

Just make sure that you read the .tbl file of the ship you want to import.
Most of the time there is something in your ships .tbl what the game has not (weapons, sounds etc)

Be sure to edit the game's ships.tbl and add the data from your import ship to it.
Same goes for the weapons.tbl if you need to edit this. (I advise to look at this. Otherwise you may not be able to add weapons to your ship in FRED)

If you have got everything covered (that means everything in the game's .tbl files matches the stuff your importship uses) you should be ready to roll.

Be ready to encounter a lot of error messages that say that some names are to long or that something in the .tbl does not add up.

Hope this sets you in the good direction
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Offline newman

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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
If memory serves, BtRL used differently scaled models so you'll need to rescale it as well. Some table tweaks will likely be necessary too.
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Offline karajorma

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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
When doing this, I must stress that you should run the debug builds to test with. If you've done something wrong they'll tell you.
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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
Ghostrider is mostly correct, except for this part:

Be sure to edit the game's ships.tbl and add the data from your import ship to it.
Same goes for the weapons.tbl if you need to edit this.

You should never EVER edit .tbl files (unless it's in your own mod). Instead, use *-shp.tbm and *-wep.tbm to add or overwrite entries from the original tables.

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
Indeed, you should also make this as a mod with its own mod.ini file and folder structure similar to the data folder. Do not simply put the files in Data as this could cause severe problems when later Diaspora patches come out.
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Offline Ace

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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
BtrL ships are scaled 2.5 from Diaspora ones, IIRC. So that's a major change that you'll need to do.
Ace
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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
I was going to ask the same, I don't know how to ask without sound petulant....is anyone interested in working on this?  I realize it must have taken a monumental effort just to get the release going.

I am not a technical person by training.....I am a adjunct prof of Accounting, Finance, Venture Capital, International Tax and ERP systems and a consultant in the same areas.  I trade any needing help in these areas for efforts at the conversion?

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
I think it's best to state the official position the Diaspora team have when it comes to converting BtRL to Diaspora.

1) We won't be doing it. It's not because of the time it would take (I'd be surprised if the entire team couldn't convert it in under a week), but is actually to do with issues surrounding the break up. When the time came to split up the resources from BtRL the Diaspora team took nothing which wasn't 100% the work of people on the Diaspora team. This was in return for a promise that they wouldn't use our assets.
 Large amounts of the BtRL demo were the work of the people who remained on the BtRL team. For this reason you'll never see the BtRL demo bundled with a Diaspora release. The only way that could ever happen would be if the BtRL team released us from the promise to never use their assets in Diaspora.

2) If someone else wishes to convert BtRL and re-release it, the Diaspora team have no issue with it. As far as ex-BtRL members who are now on the Diaspora team are concerned, our work was released under a similar licence to the one Diaspora has. Anyone is welcome to use it (non-commercially) in whole or in part as long as credit is given to the original authors.

3) The non-Diaspora members of BtRL might see things differently. When the demo was released, it did seem to be under the same licence but that attitude did seem to change as time went on. There's always a risk that someone from BtRL might turn up and complain. What would happen then would be up to the parties involved. The Diaspora Team would not be one of those parties, we've been very careful to try to stay out of any mud-slinging with the BtRL team and we don't wish to start now.

4) Anyone working on a conversion won't get much help from the Diaspora team. You certainly won't get any of us to work on the conversion as that would be breaking rule 1. That said, the Diaspora team are not the only experts on FS2_Open. Any competent modder could add ships from pretty much any Freespace or FSO based game or mod without a huge amount of difficulty. We're talking about a fairly basic level of modding here.


I hope that clears things up.

TL;DR - The Diaspora team won't be converting BtRL, if anyone else wants to, go ahead but read the above to find out what the risks are.
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Offline Black Wolf

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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
I'm pretty sure I still have BtRL at home. Kara's right that it's a trivial task to convert at least the Mk 2, and there's  a decade plus of FS nodding precedent that says it'll be Okay. If nobody else is interested in giving it a go, I'll have a look tonight or tomorrow.
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Offline karajorma

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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
You don't even need the MK for the single player campaign. We only used it in Multiplayer.

All you'd need to convert is the Mining vessel and the background stuff like the Scaroid.
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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
That makes sense.

 

Offline Black Wolf

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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
OK, well, I'm looking at the Mk2 now and there are some pretty obvious issues. Some, like the size and the tabling compatibility, are easy to fix. Others, like the lack of a working cockpit and RTT Dradis are... technically fixable, but, to be entirely frank, represent more time than I'm willing to put in. So, what I can do is convert the Mk 2, but it will only really be suitable as an AI ship - something to fly with (or against), but not in - i.e. it wouldn't be a player ship. Would that cover your needs Insomniac?
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Offline karajorma

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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
I wouldn't worry about making a working cockpit, etc. It's not like we aren't working on our own MK II. :) Someone would probably come along later and make a HUD for the MK II anyway so it could be used as a player ship.
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Offline Swifty

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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
Just copy and paste the Viper Mk VII HUD layout and work from there.

 

Offline newman

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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
..or be patient and wait for ours :)
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Offline karajorma

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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
On balance, if someone is going to monkey around with BtRL, I'd rather they imported the SP campaign than the Viper MK II. That said, it's not really my business to stop anyone who wants to do either.
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Offline Dain

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Re: How to import the Viper Mk. II/other BTRL ships into Diaspora...
Yeah, the demo campaign had some really nice features like the random pilot chatter at the beginning of the mission. Made restarting half a dozen times on account of the monarch getting pummeled by rocks almost bearable! :P It'd be nice to fly it with Diaspora ships and flightmodel.