Custom new ship issues

[Midnightknight]

Hi,

So i finally decided to make my own ship cause most of the ships in X3 AP now are passed the "wow" effect you have when getting it for the fist time. (Flew all 3 top M6+ in 3 separate games, most M7 and even the mighty pteranodon, but wanted something new).
So took 3DS, grabbed once again all the X3 tools and this time worked something around with the cerberus.

The issues is now the model is to my taste, i put turrets (kept those of the cerberus so far) docking bays and exported it both as a scene and a body.
I used X3editor2 to put the two in a new cat file and made a new entry in Tships with the set model. But nothing works.

Well to be exact it's a bit more specific. I already created the Tship file before the model, using the argon cerberus to change it, and when i set the correct model file in X3 editor, modifing the tships, nothing happens. My "Lance" keep having the cerberus model and i didn't even have an error, and it's even more frustrating. When i check with X3editor, all seem fine in the VFS.

I tried to look this guide https://roguey.co.uk/x3/edit/killertide ... orial7.php to know what was wrong, but it rush much in all the phases that it explain nothing and skip all that is important. (Made me think of the old add for linux telling you all it can do, but never how, to not scare people with command lines).
I looked a bit over the forum but couldn't find threads about it. (even if i'm pretty sure there should be old posts about it, i saw a few 10 years ago)

Anyway, help would be appreciated, and if i could make a ship file with manager i'll share it with the community of course.

[SirNukes]

My first thought is that you might need to change sectors to get the model to update, assuming you are loading a save with the ship already present in your sector.

[Midnightknight]

Ok, checked a bit around with what you said and could make it finally work, thank you.

Now lot of testing and debugging. My main issues now i guess is how parts are handled.

My turrets actually can't shot behind, and it'd wish to know how you can change their shooting angle. I could put them all 90° from the hull to solve it, but it would be really ugly. I'd wanted more a behavior like for tanks, the turret along the hull when waiting and spinning around or raising their nose to aim.

Secondly, i tryed to make a ship dock. And it just sat at the back of my ship, but i mean, really back from it, like 500m behind my propulsion and it seem the game actually register it like docked. I checked the scene of my ship and the small triangles from docks are well placed, maybe except the external M6 dock i placed a bit where i could waiting to see how it behave.

And last, all my textures look ... Weird? It's a bit like they were repainted with some camo patterns over the textures. It's not really a big deal i messed a lot with textures and was planing to repaint it from scratch. But since it's really not something i would have expected, i wonder where it could come from.

[Killjaeden]

My turrets actually can't shot behind, and it'd wish to know how you can change their shooting angle. I could put them all 90° from the hull to solve it, but it would be really ugly. I'd wanted more a behavior like for tanks, the turret along the hull when waiting and spinning around or raising their nose to aim.

Not possible in X3. Turrets 2 axis with 180°. Tank/Battleship turrets would be 2 axis, one 360° and one 90°
Camera always needs to point exactly where the turret default position is as well, otherwise you have cam-turret mismatch and shooting will not work.
I made a guide aeons ago about how to position turrets.

Sometimes with docks it's the position between ship and mothership. If you relocate the mothership a bit and rotate it. If it is consistent then try and use another dock type.

Alternatively your bounding box is broken. Make sure you have latest X2BC and dbox versions

[Midnightknight]

Yes thanks, i've read all of your 3 guides and it helped a bit.

Will have to redesign turrets for the purpose, i guess only make new scenes and dummies but re-use already existing guns for compatibility issues.

I have unbloated my ship file too, wasn't aware 3DS was duplicating materials like this. Don't know if it's totally clear but i use 1/10 of the materials now. Maybe the instance duplicate maps helped too. (Don't know if it as a negative impact on X3)

I use the last versions of dbox and X3editor2.

[-XeNoN-]

To edit ship scene:

Turrets:

Place them as you see fit but note that game allows maximum of i believe 72 turrets placed either by classic standars front, rear, right, left, top, bottom.

Placing turrets:

Load your body file of your ship then import the turret like bigturret4_dummy (its used for capital ships)

Then place them at any order you wish you can rotate the turrets by 180 degrees or 90 depends what you want 180 is for back turrets while 90 for riles (right left) after you place them make sure your PIVOT points where is turret facing.

Engines:

Simmilar approach as turrets make sure pivot's are correct

Engine Emmiters:

Part of the engine effects if you want more effect to the engines.

To import the engines lets take example for killerog's engine bod files fx_killerog_purplered_carrier for example place it where you want then copy y and z from it then import the engine emmiter and past y/z coords to it.

Camera's:

This is kind of tricky to start import the camera for cockpit and rename it as cameradummy_1cockpit
after that import other cameradummy.bod files to 3ds max to correctly place them abit above turrets.


Other objects used for scene files:

Scene files are mainly used for turrets, engines and cameras but there are other objects which contain animation data like 3d objects displayed in game that rotate or animate in certain kind of glow stuff.


NOTE: DO NOT USE RESET XFORM AND COLLAPSE after you finished your scene file because this will revert all your turrets and other stuff to their original pivot and rotation and can make a mess in game as you had.
Just go to dbox2 and export all as is and make sure you deselect ignore special parts and leave export animations checked then click on export selected but make sure you selected all including your ship in your scene in 3ds max.

[Midnightknight]

Is it allowed to mix 2 types of turrets? Cause i put 2 different models on my ship and this just don't work. The big turrets are sitting on top and bot. But my side turrets that are M6 turrets never spawn. When i toggle from cokpit to cokpits i get in the camera dummy, i have the guns fitted but no turret and no shooting.

[Killjaeden]

You can mix different turret dummies within a single turret no problem - you just need to make sure the definition in TShips and the orientation in the scene is correct.

[Midnightknight]

Well on my ship it don't seem to work. If i use anything but big turrets they don't even appear, if i put big turrets all works fine.
So i put back those turrets, it's a bit ugly but it works at least.

And for the docking problem i think i have spoted my issue. Fighters follow it without ever docking in. They can't complete the order. If i do dock them manually or with the cheat it works and i could use them to fly out of the ship.
So i think i broke something about path around the ship, many civillians crash into me without i move at all.

What the game use for it? The LOD or bounding box? So i know what to fix.