[MOD][05.08.2009] Hangarmod/External-Docking [v. 1.8 BETA]

[Coffee-Man]

Hangar-Mod – Version Beta 1.8 05.08.2009

Download - Version 1.8.1

Version 1.8.1:

-Compatibality problem with repairdrones of Gazz MARS-Script fixed.

If you are using MARS with the repairdrones, simply delete the File "Tships.txt" from the "types\" subfolder of your TC Folder. The changes to the Tships by Gazz MARS Script have been added to the Tships of my mod (it's in the cat/dat File).
If you are not using MARS you can simply go on using Version 1.8 of this mod.

Version 1.8:

-Updated and now fully compatible with X3TC v. 2.1
-Please copy the 5 scripts from the scripts folder of the zipfile to the scripts-folder in your X3TC directory and override older ones
-Make sure to check the installationguide below (Version 1.7)

Version 1.7:

-M7 Lusca, M6 Thanatos and M6 Normandy now added to the mod
-Pirate M7 now has external dockingslots.

Installationguide:

0. Read the installationinstructions in this post ("install the mod")
1. unpack the zipfile
2. Copy the files from the "scripts"-directory of my mod to the "scripts"-directory of X3:TC
3. Put the Cat/Dat-Files in the mod-directory of X3:TC, activate it, enjoy the game!
4. If everythings done the right way, you should get 2 messages the next time you start the game.

Version Info 1.6

-Mod works with X3TC 2.0a now
-Some Bugfixes
-Xenonships added to the mod
-Gazz Scenefiles are not used anymore. All camerapositions are now the same as in the vanilla game.

Hello,

it took me some cups of coffee and properly some neurons in my frontal lobe haven’t survived, but finally the mod is ready for release!
This mod allows you to dock ships of the M6/5/4/3 and TS-Class at ships of the M7/2/1 and TL-Class (for more information: read below!)
This is my first mod ever, I can not take responsibility for any damage it might do to your hardware/software/central- or peripheral nervesystem.
This mod already includes every change from Gazz Turret-Fix mod (current stand: 75 ships), would be too bad if you had to choose which one you like better – working turrets, or more dockingports at your ships...this mod gives you both!

Descreption

The Bala-Gi Research Inc. developed a new forcefield-generator-system based on the tractor-beam technology. With minimal energydrain every ship of the size of at least a frigate is able to create a forcefield around smaller spacevessels. The forcefield gets attached to the main energyshield of the carrier, which allows accelleration and even jumps in other sectors by no additional energycosts for every docked ship. The Bala-Gi Research Inc. announced, that this new technology might be a breakthrough in high-efficient civil and military spacetravel!

Changes

This mod also contains every change made by Gazz Turret-Fix mod!

M1 – Class:
- 2 extern TS-Dockingslots

Argon Colossus
Boron Shark
Paranid Zeus
Split Raptor
Teladi Condor
USC Tokyo
ATF Woden
Pirat Galleon
Yaki Hoshi
Yaki Shuri
Xenon J

M2 – Class:
- One extern M6-Dockingslot
- One extern TS-Dockingslot
- 6 extern M3/4/5-Dockingslots

Argon Titan
Boron Ray
Paranid Odysseus
Split Python - Plus: More guns!!! Shoot them!
Teladi Phoenix
USC Osaka
ATF Tyr
Pirat Brigantine
Yaki Akuma
OTAS Boreas (only 3 extern M3/4/5 - Dockingslots)
Xenon K

M7 – Class :
- One extern M6-Dockingslot
- One extern TS-Dockingslot
- 4 extern M3/4/5-Dockingslots

Argon Cerberus (no external M3/M4/M5 Dockingslots)
Boron Thresher
Paranid Deimos (no external M3/M4/M5 Dockingslots)
Paranid Agamemnon
Split Panther (no external M3/M4/M5 Dockingslots)
Split Tiger
Teladi Shrike (no external M3/M4/M5 Dockingslots)
USC Yokohama
ATF Aegir
Xenon Q (no external M6-Dockingslot)
Pirate Karacke
Boron Lusca (no M6 and only 2 fighterdocks)

M7M-Klasse:
- One extern M6-Dockingslot
- One extern TS-Dockingslot
- 2 extern M3/4/5-Dockingslots

Argon Minotaur
Boron Kraken
OTAS Scirocco
OTAS Aquilo
Paranid Ares
Split Cobra
Teladi Gannet
ATF Skirnir
Yaki Senshi-Hauler

M6-Class

- One extern M3/M4/M5-Dockingslot

Argon Centaur
Argon Centaur Pirate
Argon Heavy Centaur
Boron Hydra
Boron Heavy Hydra
Aldrin Springblossom
OTAS Skiron
Paranid Nemesis
Paranid Heavy Nemesis
Split Dragon
Split Heavy Dragon
Teladi Eagle
Teladi Heavy Eagle
ATF Vidar
ATV Vali
USC Katana
Xenon P
Xenon PX
Paranid Thanatos
USC Normandy

TL – Class:
- Two extern TS-Dockingslot

Argon Mammut
Boron Orca
Paranid Herkules
Split Elefant
Teladi Albatros
USC Bergbauschiff
ATF Atmosphäretransporter
Yaki Ryu

Argon M1 Colossus with 2 Mistral Superfreighters
Yaki M2 Akuma with 4 Eklipse-Prototypes
USC Yokohama with some docked ships (I don’t know the english name of)

Modding a given Savegame

Installing the mod might corrupt your preexisting savegames, so make a backup of them before installing the mod and follow these steps before installing the mod:

1. Don’t fly any of the modded ships. Just take a M3/4/5 as playership
2. Fly to an unknown sector which doesn’t contain any of the modded ships
3. Save your game in this unknown sector
4. Install the mod
5. Load the savegame from step 3


Install the mod

Simply unpack the ZIP-File and copy the Hangarmod.cat/dat-Files to the “mods” directory in your X3TC gamedirectory. If there is no “mods” directory just create it. Choose the mod in the startscreen, start the game, sit back, fasten your seatbelts and enjoy the flight!

Deinstall the mod

If you wanna get rid of this crappy mod made by a german coffee-junkie, fine, do it! But do it properly :

1. Don’t fly any of the modded ships. Just take a M3/4/5 as playership
2. Make sure to undock every ship docked at one of the modded ships
3. Fly to an unknown sector which doesn’t contain any of the modded ships
4. Save your game
5. Delete the Hangarmod.cat/dat
6. Load the game from step 4

I can not guarantee that this will work, but it surly is your best bet!

Compatibility

This mod is fully compatible with X3:TC version 2.0. It should work with previous gameversions, though I didn’t test it.
It will never work with any other mod which also changes the shipscenes of the above listed ships, the Tships or the dummies.txt.

Bugs and Bugreports

As I simply cannot test every possible combination of docked ships I need your help to find and eliminate any bugs. Please let me know if you find anything suspicious, screenshots would be a great help for me!

List of known bugs:
-Ships will fly through their “carrier” while docking/undocking. Collisiondetection is deactivated during this procedure, so no harm to anyone, but it surly looks ugly! As I don’t know how to change the dockingroute I can not fix this.
-Docked ships are stuck within the parts of their “carrier”. Looks ugly, but is easy to fix!
-Docked ships are in the line-of-sight of the ships turrets. Shouldn’t happen as I tested the turrets, but you never know what happens when you drink too much coffee (and, yes, I do, that’s for sure!). Easy to fix aswell.
-Ships are not docking probably. This happend to me sometimes when I commanded a handfull of ships simultaniously to dock, one of them just waited outside the carrier with 0 speed and did nothing, stupid! Just order them to fly around a bit, once they accelarate again, give them a new order to dock.
-Ships cannot dock at any M1/2/7/TL which already existed before installing the mod.
This error occured with some savegames, even if the instructions were followed. You can try to send the carrier OOS and back IS but that fails sometimes. If you encounter this problem, the easiest solution is to replace the carrierships by new ones (script, cheat oder sell/buy them!). I’m sorry, but I can’t offer any other solution at this point.

Credits

First of all I would like to thank fud who helped me alot to get things started with this mod. He finally helped me to fix the major bug I encountered. Thanks man!
By the way: take a look at his external-docking mod, it might suit you better: click here

I also want to thank MADxHAWK from the german board who gave me some very explicit step-by-step guides how to progress with the mod. You don’t need to know how to do things, if someone tells you exactly what to do .

Many, many thanks to Axeface and Tenk, first for their great work on the Thanatos, Lusca and the Normandy, second for their genorosity to allow me to put their ships into my mod.

And thanks to Killrog and Marodeur, who fixed all the problems I had to get the new ships into the mod.

Last but not least: thanks alot to Gazz, not only for his brilliant work with the Turret-Fix, but also for his philantrophic attitude to share his fixed scenes with other modders.

Enjoy the mod and as usual: excuse my bad english (I’m really trying to improve it =( ).
CoffeeMan

[amirite]

No offense but this is like the THIRD mod to accomplish this purpose. I'm guessing you're using just about the same techniques as this mod too. Are you going to offer something new?

And why are Gazz's turret fixes installed? Theyre unrelated completely and if people want them they could just download it.

Anyway I'd suggest more docking slots on the TL. It only makes sense that they would be able to interact with lots of TSes at once. The other numbers look pretty good though.

[TSM]

looks cool to me

Does Fud intend to continue his do you know?

[fud]

I was waiting for Gazz to be done with his turret fixes, since I don't feel like releasing 45 versions.

And why are Gazz's turret fixes installed? Theyre unrelated completely and if people want them they could just download it.

I was planning on offering two versions of mine, one for 1.3 is already up.

The second being one that included Gazz's work.

[TSM]

cool

Variety is the spice of life , I will test this on seperate install.

[Coffee-Man]

No offense but this is like the THIRD mod to accomplish this purpose. I'm guessing you're using just about the same techniques as this mod too. Are you going to offer something new?

And why are Gazz's turret fixes installed? Theyre unrelated completely and if people want them they could just download it.

Anyway I'd suggest more docking slots on the TL. It only makes sense that they would be able to interact with lots of TSes at once. The other numbers look pretty good though.

When I started this mod the only other I knew was the one from fud, but I wanted some more dockingslots. As I started to work on it some people in the german board asked for a mod like this and as I already was working on it...

I don't need to offer somethin "special, exclusive", it's not like I want to sell this mod, it's just a fun product which makes the game a bit more flexible for some users. If you like it, use it, if not, let it be, simple is that .
Of course I have some plans for this mod but I can't just say what content I want to put in right know, because I don't know if I can make my ideas become real.

Gazz Turret Fix is in this mod because it uses the same scenes I have to work over to add the external docking slots. If it's not implemented you had to decide what you want...more docking slots or turrets which are actually firing at targets instead of just looking pretty. Of course I could make a different version of this mod without the Turret-Fix, but that would mean that I have to do all the work again...I think I won't do that.

Anymore comments about the dockingslots for TLs? I think they can carry enough cargo around and don't need additional 10k of cargohold by external docked freighters, but I'll see what people want.

@TSM: Would appreciate some feedback about what to do better .
sorry for the misspelling .

[TSM]

^^ TSM

Looking good so far Agamenon rocks with extra docking and new cockpit view!

[Krewzur]

FINALLY........... I LOVE U MAN

by the way when was fud's mod finished, i saw it a long time ago but forgot about it, i didn't see it at all in the script/mod library.

can you put internal docking on M7's and M2's please, like what the cerberus and the panther have. but on the others as well.

And external docking on M6's for M5's, like the good old days of X2.

Another thing as well (that is unrelated but still) for the terran M1 and TL, can you make them more assymetric. By that i mean not having a big disk sticking out the side. just imagine copying the whole model pasting it then reversing it, so the ship is the same on both sides. i don't know if copying/pasting is an option but you get the look i'm going for.

If you can do that it would be sweet, because these are the only things keeping me off Terran ships.

[TheZapper]

I for one welcome this mod. So what if ideas are 'borrowed' from other mods; providing there are no out and out code ripping....

[amirite]

I didn't mean to imply ripping or anything like that. And it's not about selling, thats silly. But you're not really offering anything different here. It just looks like a minor edit of his mod that should have been posted in that thread.

Oh and my bad about the turrets, didn't realize they edited the same files.

[Coffee-Man]

Thanks so far for your feedback =).

@TSM: the new cockpitpositions are from Gazz Turret-Fix, he somehow really knows how to set them right.

@amurph0:
Internal docking requires some remodelling of the ships body (to add the hangar, otherwise the ships would fly through the hull ) and it's not so easy to add as external dockingslots. I'll keep it in mind, but that would be something for the (far) future.
I don't know if only copying and reversadding the parts to the terran ship would be enough. I think that wouldn't copy the textures as well, so they must be added by hand. I'm not a graphic-designer and I don't really know how to get the textures into Gmax, but there is surely some guide somewhere. But that would be an idea for another mod .

@amirite:
I think technically you may be right and there is no big difference between fuds mod and mine (adding external-dockings is exactly that: open the shipscene and add the dockingslots). But I didn't use any of his edited scenefiles or other material from his mod. As I've written in the credits he was the one who helped me getting things started, I also added a link to his mod now.
I don't mean to harm anyone by this mod.
So fud, if you want me to close this mod, just write me a PM. I won't mind it, first come, first serve, you were the first .

[TSM]

I think Fud is probably happy you done it aswell Fuds offer's different options.

This idea of scripter's working together is cool, though on the German forums they seem to do it alot omre than on EN Forum's, would be great if Graxster,Fud,LV,ThisisHarsh,Teladidrone,ApricotSlice and the gang put heads together and brained stormed super mod

[fud]

So fud, if you want me to close this mod, just write me a PM. I won't mind it, first come, first serve, you were the first .

No worries. If anything, you saved me a lot of trouble.

[amirite]

@amirite:
I think technically you may be right and there is no big difference between fuds mod and mine (adding external-dockings is exactly that: open the shipscene and add the dockingslots). But I didn't use any of his edited scenefiles or other material from his mod. As I've written in the credits he was the one who helped me getting things started, I also added a link to his mod now.
I don't mean to harm anyone by this mod.
So fud, if you want me to close this mod, just write me a PM. I won't mind it, first come, first serve, you were the first .

Hey if you're not using any of his files (and he helped you out too didn't he?) there's really nothing wrong with this. It is a LITTLE weird to have two identical mods being developed at the same time but I hope at some point you expand this mod to include more useful features. Any criticism I give is intended only to improve a mod and the mod community, so if you feel motivated to continue don't let me stop you, you're helping just as much

Maybe one thing for the future could be tackling the actul docking points on the ships, and making them look more natural. I still think there should be a couple more docking slots on the TLs too.

Personally I use Fud's mod since it uses mostly unincluded Egosoft scripts and that just makes me more comfortable. Just curious, are you using the same method and just adding things on top?

[fud]

amirite, what do you mean "scripts"?

Just curious as there are no scripts involved with mine (nor Coffee's, I presume).

[Coffee-Man]

Nice to have so much feedback in such a short time, the germans are much slower than you guys .

The Mod doesn't contain any scripts by now, I would like to add an AI-Plugin so GoD may use the Mod aswell, but as I don't know anything about scripting I'll have to learn that first...so that's not more than a wish by now *g*.

Also I will improve this mod. Attaching the dockingslots as close to the carrier as possible is one of the improvements I want to make, but that's not as easily done as it sounds. The ships vary in size and height, the Mistral Superfreighter for example is nearly twice the size of an Argon Merkur, attaching the dockingslot for both ships to look natural is the difficult part... What would help me most are screenshots of ships which don't look good when they are docked.

I don't know exactly which method fud used, but I just opened the scenefiles in Gmax than added the dockingbodies (with doubleshadows programms). Most of them are below the carrier, but I also added some fighterdocks on the upper surface or beneath structures which might look like a dockingspot on some ships.
Due to my study I don't have much time left for this mod, so improving it might take a while (examens are in sight now, so I have to learn...), but I will try to fix any bugs as fast as possible.

[athelred]

Hey just curious, is it possible to have this hosted somewhere else? I seem to be having a great deal of trouble getting it from the current site. The captcha on the download page is always blank (Actually I don't think that is true. It has a little red dot in the lower right hand corner.).

If not I guess I can try again later, but it has been this way for the last 6 hours or so.

athelred

[Coffee-Man]

Just send me a link with an upload-host somewhere in the us or uk(which would accept an upload from germany ).
Can't do it till evening, though, I'll be at university from 10 till 19 o' clock.

[athelred]

FileFront maybe? It isn't much better than rapid share, but it is the next day and the captcha is still broken on rapid share.

http://uploadhosted.filefront.com/

I have no idea if they will accept files from Germany, but I see no reason why not.

athelred

[Coffee-Man]

Thanks for the link, upload completed (Download-Link on page one now refers to filefront instead of rapidshare).