Porting a Ship From XRM to LU

[Chokeslam]

I'm trying to port an M2 from XRM into LU and it's got me at my wit's end. I've got a basic understanding of how things work. Editing Tfiles, packing and unpacking .cat files, and I thought I could just figure this out. I pretty much have actually, but I've hit a brick wall and am hoping for some wisdom.

All the appropriate files from the objects folder have been moved to my LU directory, I've copied the appropriate info from the XRM Tships file to the one for LU, and can spawn it in-game. The problem is that I don't understand the Components and Dummies files well enough to get the turrets working on the project ship without screwing up every other ship in LU.

So I guess what I'm asking is: is there any way to move the information that pertains to the ship in question from the XRM Components and Dummies files to their LU counterparts?

I've tried just copying the references to the appropriate turrets from the XRM Components file and pasting basically randomly into the LU Components file(had to try:roll:), and wound up with a nice view of the inside of the hull. The turrets were firing though! As far as the Dummies file goes, I've discovered that it can be opened with the Tdebugger in X3 editor, but as far as I can tell it can't be used to make or delete entries. Honestly I can do without moving turrets if I have to though, as long as they fire.

If anyone could toss me some pointers I'd be eternally grateful. Before I put almost ten hours into figuring this out, I just wanted my favorite ship in LU. It's become a mission at this point.

Edit: I should also point out that I installed 3ds max and DBOX2 during all this and can't figure them out for the life of me. None of the old tutorials I found pertaining to this particular kind of project are available anymore.

Edit 2: Tutorial below.

[Chokeslam]

Just in case anyone in a similar position stumbles upon this thread, I figured it out. Feel free to get in touch with me if you need a tutorial. I'd be more than happy to write one up, but I'm about to finish getting everything polished up so I've got some killin' to do!

I do have a couple more questions though. When adding new entries to Tships, if I "paste to end" rather than a standard paste, will it prevent the new entries from interfering with the spawning of ships in the universe? While testing all this I added several new entries by just doing a standard paste, which caused the new ships to take the first few numbers in the ships list, bumping everything else up. I jumped into a random sector for some different lighting while inspecting my handiwork and there were like 50 or so Polaccas hangin' out. I assume that adding the new entries to the end of the list will prevent this sort of thing, I was just wondering if anyone could confirm that. I'd hate to have an issue and not notice it until several hours in.

Also, would it be wise to create a new wall file for Bounce after adding some new ships? If so can I just use the script included in the standalone version of Bounce, or is there one available specifically for the LU version? I know there are some differences, but I don't understand scripting well enough to know if they matter in this particular instance.

One more thing! I just want to throw in a thank you to Litcube, Paulwheeler, and the team members who worked on XRM and LU. Y'all are artists and gentlemen. The quality of your work and the fact that you were willing to allow free access to it is amazing. That goes out to everyone who's put their time and wits into making a good game into a great one.

[BlackArchon]

Just in case anyone in a similar position stumbles upon this thread, I figured it out. Feel free to get in touch with me if you need a tutorial. I'd be more than happy to write one up, but I'm about to finish getting everything polished up so I've got some killin' to do!

I've had some problems porting XRM capital ships to LU, too. If you could post a tutorial (especially about Components.txt - I can't figure out when I have to edit the file and when not).

I do have a couple more questions though. When adding new entries to Tships, if I "paste to end" rather than a standard paste, will it prevent the new entries from interfering with the spawning of ships in the universe? While testing all this I added several new entries by just doing a standard paste, which caused the new ships to take the first few numbers in the ships list, bumping everything else up. I jumped into a random sector for some different lighting while inspecting my handiwork and there were like 50 or so Polaccas hangin' out. I assume that adding the new entries to the end of the list will prevent this sort of thing, I was just wondering if anyone could confirm that. I'd hate to have an issue and not notice it until several hours in.

This is correct, always add ships to the end. Otherwise you will have issues, because some index numbers in TShips are hardcoded, and the game will spawn some ships based on their position in TShips.txt.

Also, would it be wise to create a new wall file for Bounce after adding some new ships? If so can I just use the script included in the standalone version of Bounce, or is there one available specifically for the LU version? I know there are some differences, but I don't understand scripting well enough to know if they matter in this particular instance.

Bounce is already included in LU and doesn't need a wall file. If you install the standalone version of Bounce in LU, you damage your LU installation.

[Chokeslam]

Awesome, thanks for the advice. I'll get to work on the tutorial. If I'm going to do it I may as well explain the whole process, just in case there's someone out there who needs all the details. It may take a day or two depending on just how detailed it gets. I'll find out once I get into it.

About Bounce. I assumed that the script that generated the wall file did some kind of voodoo with the ship models so that the actual Bounce scripts knew how close an object could get before they had to intervene, which is why a new file needed to be generated for different mods. Because of that I figured that LU also has one for the ships included in it, and that Bounce may not work properly on any new ships added without generating a new file. I've only been able to put a couple of hours in with the new ships so far, but I haven't run into issues as yet. Hopefully my assumptions were just wrong and everything will work fine as is.

Thanks again!

[Jack08]

LU Bounce and "Script Bounce", while functionally (mostly) equivalent, are totally diffrent. LU has no wall file (and no need for anything equivalent).

--

While this is likely going to be not what you want to hear, I strongly, strongly recommend that if you want to port ships from any other mod to LU, you take that ship file body only and then rebuild the scene file from scratch, using an similar LU scene as precedent, without modifying components or bodies at all... Also run a decent poly crunch algorithm.

LU has done allot to both scene's and body files, that aid in the games performance, not only was every (yes, every) single ship in the game poly crunched to remove (insanely) large amounts of polygons that are simply not needed form some ships, the scene files were also all redone, to fully support racial turrets, and improve performance by removing unnecessary items.

Some ships, were flat out removed because they were kit-bashes that literally had ships inside ships, resulting in 3-4x the amount of polys that should have been there.

There were various other reasons for redoing all this, and it was a massive undertaking, one that i to this day cant believe Litcube did all by himself (I'm terrible with scene files), i cant remember exactly what all the reasons were.

If your only porting 1 or 2 ships, you can probably ignore all this, but if your porting more then that, i'd recommend the extra effort to maintain performance quality on par with what LU has currently.

--

WARNING
Ships in LU's TShips file may only have a valid "Maker Race" field, if they are fully valid ships, allowed to be spawned by the AI. If you dont want the ship spawned by the AI, set the maker race to unknown.

[Chokeslam]

Thank you for the insight. Your post was an emotional roller coaster, haha. I have next to no experience with 3D modelling software, so while I may be able to figure out how to rebuild the scene file, it would honestly take way too much effort to be worth it for what I'm doing. Thankfully it doesn't seem necessary for my humble project.

I only ported four ships and used the cheat package to spawn them right at the start of a playthrough for roleplaying purposes. I already had the maker race set to unknown because that seemed less likely to cause issues. One of many lucky guesses made so far in this project it would seem.

The more I learn about the inner workings of this game, the more amazed and appreciative I am at what people like Litcube have accomplished with it.

Oh, also, about the cheat package. Would it be a good idea to remove it once I'm finished testing? I know that scripts not designed specifically for LU can cause problems. I extracted it from the .spk and just threw everything in the scripts folder, so I'd rather not go through the trouble of finding and deleting them all if they won't mess anything up. In hindsight I should have just put it into a .cat file.
----------------

A note about the tutorial for those interested. It's taking a little longer than I expected. There were a couple of aspects of the process that I didn't bother with because, frankly, I didn't care about them, but I decided to go ahead and try to figure them out just to make the tutorial complete. Porting custom engine effects and custom textures specifically.

I'm working on the engines right now, and it turns out it's not nearly as simple as I thought it would be. I'm already about to pull my hair out, so if I don't get it soon I'm probably just going to forget about it. It's turning into a lot of work for a little payoff. The ships are there, fully functional, some of them just won't have fancy plasma trails.

Textures are next. I saved them for last because it seems like a pretty straightforward job. Then again I thought the same thing about almost everything else in this entire process, so we'll see.

So what I'm getting at basically is that this may not end up being a perfect, complete tutorial, but I'm sure someone will be able to get some helpful information out of it.

[BlackArchon]

I am looking forward to this tutorial!
If anything is unclear, surely people will ask further.

[Chokeslam]

[Ship Porting Tutorial]
-------------------------

Alright, let's just get right into it.

Things you'll need:
-X3 Editor 2 by doubleshadow

-3ds Max or gmax with DBOX2 by doubleshadow(There may be another way to get the info I'm using these to get, but this is how I did it.)

-Cycrow's cheat package(for testing)

-A basic understanding of how these tools work, or a tutorial to get you there. I'm just here to explain how you can use them to do a particular thing.

The examples I use in this tutorial will be of porting ships from XRM AP and XTC to LU. I don't see why the same methods wouldn't work in other situations too.

Also, this only deals with the models and the necessary game files to make them work. I tried to figure out how to port custom engine effects, but it was more complicated than I expected and honestly not worth the trouble to me. I haven't bothered with custom textures either. I preferred the look of the ships I ported without them. I was going to go ahead and try to figure it out for completeness' sake, but this was taking longer than I expected after messing with engine effects, so I decided to just forget it and finish up. Without their associated texture files the ships I ported still had texture, they weren't just an opaque grey or something like I kind of expected, but they all had that Argon spartan metal look. It looks especially cool on Split ships. Anyway, just something worth mentioning. So basically if you follow this tutorial you'll get fully functional ships that may or may not have engine trails and may or may not have the color you expect.

------------------------------------------------------------

The first thing you'll need to do is locate the "types" folder in the highest numbered .cat file from each of the mods involved. If it's an X3TC mod, search the .cat files in your base game directory, if it's an X3AP mod search the .cat files in the "addon" folder of your base game directory. Use the Cat Manager plugin in the X3 Editor to do this. Note that you'll be looking for specific files within this folder, which I'll explain further down, and they won't necessarily be in the first "types" folder you find.

Start by using the Cat Manager to open the highest numbered .cat file in the directory of the game that you're porting TO. Once it's opened, look for the "addon" folder if it's an AP mod. If it isn't there, move on to the next .cat file. Once you find "addon," open it and look for "types." Again, if it isn't there just move on until you find the highest numbered .cat file containing an "addon" folder which contains a "types" folder. Once you find this, you need to check the "types" folder for three specific files. The first "types" folder you find may contain some, all, or none of these. If it doesn't contain any of them, move on to the next .cat file. If it contains 1 or 2 two them, extract them and move on to the next .cat. Do this until you've found and extracted each of the following files:

Components.pck
Dummies.pck
Tships.pck

You may not need all of these. That will depend on whether or not the ship you're porting uses turret models or docking ports that aren't included in the base game or the mod you're porting to. I'll explain how to determine this later on.

Now use the Cat Manager to create a new .cat file, name it whatever you'd like for now. Press F7 to create a new directory. If you're porting to a TC game, name the directory "types." If it's an AP game, name it "addon," then open that directory and press F7 again to create another directory and name it "types." Now take the "Tships" file you extracted and add it to your new "types" directory. Don't add the other two files just yet. If you need them you'll have to make some changes using notepad before you add them to the .cat, and if you don't them then, well, you don't need them.

Now repeat this extraction process with the mods you're porting FROM, with one difference. Don't extract the "Tships" file, just remember where it is. You'll only need it to get information, all the actual changes will be made in the Tships file you've added to your new .cat.

In my case I had all three mods installed in different directories, this way I could fire up the source mods to browse for ships and see how they're supposed to look/function, and fire up the destination mod for testing. I just used the Cat Manager to search the .cat files, starting from the highest number and working backwards, until I found the files I needed.

You could also do it the way I'm doing it now as I retrace my steps to write this. I just created a folder and put the appropriate .cat/.dat files containing all the pertinent game files into it, and am just working from there.

Once you've got all that out of the way, use X3 Editor to open the "Tships" file for the mod you're porting FROM. Find the ship you want to port, click on it, and go to the "model" tab. The top entry under the tab is "ship scene," and contains a path to the ship's scene file. For example, the first ship I ported was the Nagoya M2 from XRM. Under the model tab in its Tships entry the path next to "ship scene" is "ship/LAN/USC_M2P_scene."

Once you've got the path to the ship's scene file, use the Cat Manager to search the .cat files in that mod's directory. Just like before, start with the highest numbered .cat file and work your way down. This time you're looking for the "objects" folder. It doesn't matter whether you're searching a TC mod or an AP mod, if the .cat file contains an "object" folder it'll be in the base directory as soon as you open the .cat. Once you find the folder, follow the path you got from the "Tships" file. For example, using the path from the Nagoya noted above I would look in "objects," then look for a folder called "ship." If it isn't there, I'd go to the next .cat file and check there. After finding "ship" within "object," I'll look for a folder called "LAN." If it's not there, move on to the next one. Repeat this as necessary until you've found the file at the end of the path you got from Tships. For the Nagoya it's "USC_M2P_scene.bod." Odds are that right next to your scene file there will be another file with the same name minus the word "scene," and with the extension ".bob." You'll need both. One will have the actual model of the ship, the other will contain all of the components on the ship, things like turrets, engine effects, camera dummies, docking ports, etc. The folder may only contain the scene file. If that's the case, just use that for now. Once you can spawn it in-game you'll be able to tell whether or not you have a problem.

Just to explain that a little bit: if you have a scene file without the associated body file, all that will spawn is the components. You'll just have some turrets and whatnot floating in empty space. With one of the ships I ported, however, there wasn't a body file to go along with the scene. I just used the scene file and it was fine. I don't know if everything was present in the scene file(if that's even possible), or what the deal was, but it worked. This is a good example of the fact that I don't fully grasp everything that's going on here, I just found a way to do what I was trying to do. If there IS a body file with the scene file you'll definitely need it. If there isn't, just use the scene file, and if it still doesn't work then the body file must be located somewhere else. You'll just have to try and find it.

Anyway, once you've found the appropriated files, extract them. At this point you'll want to go into the .cat file you created for your "Tships" file and either recreate the file path in which you found your scene file and add the files to it, or put it wherever you like and change the Tships entry to point to the new location.

Now you may be almost done. If you know for sure that your ship uses turrets and/or docking ports that aren't present in the base game or the mod you're porting to, then refer to the Dummies and Components section below, but be sure to read this next paragraph if you don't know how to copy the Tships entry.

Ok. Use X3 Editor to open the Tships file in the .cat you created, and the Tships file for the mod you're porting from. Now just copy the entry for the ship you're porting and paste it into the Tships in your .cat file. Be sure to use "paste to end," rather than the standard paste. This will ensure that your mod won't interfere with ship spawning in the game. If you want your ship to spawn or to show up in shipyards, I'm afraid I can't help you there. I haven't experimented with that because it wasn't necessary for what I was doing. I just used the cheat package to spawn them. Where your new entry ends up within the file will depend on the maker race of the ship. You can change this in the "general" tab of the ship's Tships entry. I set mine to "Unknown," primarily to try and avoid conflicts, but it had the added bonus of keeping the entry seperate from everything else, which came in handy when I was rebalancing the stats. You can just change the maker race of similar ships to "unknown" as well, and they'll be right next to each other for easy comparison.

Now go to the game directory for the mod you're porting TO. As before, if you're running TC you'll use the base game directory. If you're running AP you'll use the "addon" directory. Rename your .cat file so that it's one number higher than the highest numbered .cat already in your directory. Double check that your Tships entry is pointing to your scene file, as described above, and you're ready to fire up the game and test your handiwork. Whether you use an existing save or start a new game, just use the cheat package to spawn the ship. Odds are that the ship's name will be Readtext-something or other. If it shares a name with a ship that already exists in your game then it'll probably be just fine. I didn't figure out how to fix this because, again, it didn't matter to me. I'm just going to change the name anyway. That being said it's probably a fairly simple fix, so if anyone is bothered too bad by it and is having trouble figuring it out I wouldn't mind to try.

If you ported both the scene and body file, and the ship doesn't use any custom turret models or docking ports, then you're basically done now. Congratulations! Just edit the ship's stats in Tships to your liking and you're good to go. If you're unsure whether or not it uses any custom stuff, it's pretty easy to determine. If it has docking ports, try to dock some ships to it. Be sure that it was designed to dock the ships you're trying, of course, and if it's not working then you have more work to do. Install some weapons and see if they fire. If not, you have more work to do. These are issues with the "Dummies" and/or "Components" files. If you want your docking ports to work and your weapons to be fully functional with working models/animations, you'll need to make some changes to both files.

-----------------------------------

Dummies/Components


Alright. I don't fully unerstand everything that's going on in these files, so if you're looking for a complete rundown you're going to be disappointed. All I can do is explain what I've managed to figure out in the context of ship porting.

Dummies seems to deal with the animations associated with the various components on the ship. If you have a custom docking port it'll need an entry in here in order to function at all. If you have custom turrets, they'll fire as long as they have an entry in Components, but without an entry in Dummies the models won't turn/rotate, and the empty laser models won't show up on the ship when there's nothing installed. For example, with most turrets the shell of the turret will still be visible with nothing installed, and the barrels will appear once you install a laser. Without an entry in Dummies, there's just nothing present when nothing's installed. In order to find out what to put in here you'll need to open the ship's scene file in 3ds Max or Gmax, using doubleshadow's DBOX2. There's an installation and usage guide included in the download of DBOX2, so at this point I'm going to assume that you've read that and know how to open a scene file.

On the left hand side of the window you will see a list of components. Specifically, paths pointing to where the files for the components are located. It'll include engine effects, turrets, camera dummies, and docking ports. There may be more items that I'm forgetting, but that's everything we'll need for this tutorial, and some things we won't. Use this list to track down the files associated with your turrets and/or docking ports and extract them using the same process I explained earlier for finding and extracting the ship's model files. Now you need to recreate the file path in which you found them, inside the .cat in which you placed your other files, and place them there.

Now open the Dummies file for the mod you're porting FROM and find the entries for the components you're porting. For docking ports, look under SDTYPE_ANIMATED. Just scroll down the list looking for the file path you found in the scene file. Once you find it, you want to copy everything starting with the beginning of the file path, down to the start of the next file path. Example:

ships\props\TSTP_extdock2_dummy;ANIMATEDF_DOCKPORT_TRANSPORT|ANIMATEDF_DOCKPORT_M6|ANIMATEDF_DOCKPORT_M8|ANIMATEDF_DOCKPORT_UDDOWN|ANIMATEDF_DOCKPORT_BELOW30;0;

Once you've done this, open the Dummies file for the mod you're porting TO, and go to the bottom of the list in the SDTYPE_ANIMATED section and paste it. Now if you noticed, there's a number next to SDTYPE_ANIMATED. This is important. For example:

SDTYPE_ANIMATED;23;

When you add an item to this list, you will need to change the number for each item added. So if I added one item, I'd change the above number from 23 to 24, if I added two it would be 25, and so on. Assuming you've placed the files in the appropriate location and added the appropriate info to the Dummies file, all you have to do now is add your updated Dummies file to the "types" folder in the .cat you created and your docking port should work. If it doesn't you've obviously made some sort of mistake.

If you want to narrow down the problem, whether with turrets or docking ports, you can always add the Dummies and Components files for the mod you're porting FROM to your .cat and fire up the game. Spawn your ship and see if everything is working as it should be. If it is, then your problem is in Dummies or Components, if it isn't then your problem is with the files that Dummies and Components are pointing to. Check that you've added the correct files to your .cat and that the file paths are correct. If your files are present in the right location, and the entries are correct in the Dummies and Components files, it WILL work.

Note that you can't just use the Dummies and Components files for the mod you're porting from permanently. Sure your ship will work perfectly, but nothing else will. Just figured I should point that out.

Now, for turrets the process is basically the same. Search the old Dummies file for the entry containing the file path to the turret model you got from the scene file, and copy it to the new dummies file. This time you'll need to look under SDTYPE_GUN. As before, make sure you change the number next to SDTYPE_GUN based on the amount of new turret entries you add. If you want to test this before altering Components, add your updated Dummies file and the old Components file(for the mod you're porting FROM) to your .cat and spawn the ship in game. If the turret models are turning/rotating with the camera then you're good. If they're not then you've got an issue with your Dummies file. If they're not showing up at all then you have an issue with the file path to the turret models, or the wrong files.

Onto Components. I don't know exactly what's going on here, but I can tell you that your turrets won't work without an entry here, and that if you don't do it properly there are some weird side effects. As far as the entry goes, you're going to do basically the same thing that you did with Dummies. Look in the Components file for the mod you're porting FROM under SCTYPE_LASER for the file path to the turret models, and copy/paste them to the Components file for the mod you're porting TO, making sure to change the number next to SCTYPE_LASERS. An example of a few entries:

ships\Cadius\USC\Prop\Scatterfire_Weapon; 2;
NULL; 0.065385;-0.008235;0.072024; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;
NULL; 0.065192;0.011649;0.072024; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;
ships\Cadius\USC\Prop\Starlight_Weapon; 2;
NULL; 0.065192;0.001250;0.072024; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;
NULL; -0.065191;0.001250;0.072024; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;
ships\Cadius\USC\Prop\Revelation_Weapon; 2;
NULL; -0.043242;0.000660;0.234357; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;
NULL; 0.043242;0.000660;0.234357; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;
ships\Cadius\USC\Prop\Absolution_Weapon; 2;
NULL; -0.054858;-0.002675;0.351776; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;
NULL; 0.054858;-0.002675;0.351776; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;
ships\Cadius\USC\Prop\Prophecy_Weapon; 4;
NULL; 0.120900;-0.032010;0.243668; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;
NULL; -0.120900;0.030957;0.243668; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;
NULL; -0.120900;-0.032010;0.243668; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;
NULL; 0.120900;0.030957;0.243668; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;

A complete entry starts with the file path and ends at the next file path, so here we have five seperate ones. In this case the number next to SCTYPE_LASERS in my Components file was 76, so I would copy and paste this under SCTYPE_LASERS and change the number to 81. Now, assuming you've done all that correctly, your file paths to the turret models are correct, and your Dummies entries are correct, you should be ready to go. What I would do at this point is fire up the game and make sure everything is working correctly. If so, I'd finish polishing up the ship's stats in the Tships file and get ready to do some killin'. If not, retrace your steps and try to isolate the problem. I'd start by running the game with the Dummies and Components files from the source mod to see if the issue is there or with the model files. As long as you've got the models in the right place and the right entries in Dummies, Components, and Tships, everything will work.

I rushed the last bit of this because it ended up taking longer than I expected, so I apologize if I was too vague on certain points. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask them. If I don't have the answer, maybe someone else will. Remember that I am by no means an expert at this sort of thing, but I'm happy to help answer questions wherever I can.

[SirNukes]

I just used the scene file and it was fine. I don't know if everything was present in the scene file(if that's even possible), or what the deal was, but it worked.

The scene file is just raw text (once unpacked), mostly comment fluff, with lines listing paths to objects being placed and the offsets and rotations to use for them. You can open it up and check that you didn't miss any custom objects. If you are curious, various details on the scene file format are here: http://www.argonopedia.org/wiki/BOD_scene_syntax.

[Chokeslam]

I just used the scene file and it was fine. I don't know if everything was present in the scene file(if that's even possible), or what the deal was, but it worked.

The scene file is just raw text (once unpacked), mostly comment fluff, with lines listing paths to objects being placed and the offsets and rotations to use for them. You can open it up and check that you didn't miss any custom objects. If you are curious, various details on the scene file format are here: http://www.argonopedia.org/wiki/BOD_scene_syntax.

Ah, ok. Thanks for the link. I'm gonna have to delve into that wiki, seems like a wealth of useful information.

What I was referring to, though, was the fact that for that particular ship(the Split Mantis TP from XRM) all I could locate was a scene file, no actual model, but it still appears just fine in LU using only the scene. I thought that maybe the model was somehow part of the scene file in that particular case, but that's obviously not possible after what you pointed out. Just like pretty much all successful modding projects I've done, I'm not quite sure what's going on but it's working.