X2 mod for X3 ships (plus a modding question)

[SWAHILI!!!]

Hello all, I have been wanting to make a mod for X2 that switches all X3: Reunion ships to X2: The Threat.
A). How might I do this? I would imagine it would require a .bod file or something like that, but I'm not sure.
B). I also wanted to create several new ship classes.
This was my idea:
There would be the following classes:
M0
M1
M2
M3
M4
M5
M6
TS
TP
TL
Plus, the following classes:
M3-
M3+
M4-
M4+
M5-
M5+
M7
TS+
They would be the following:
M7- Frigate, bigger than a M6, smaller than a M2
M3, M4, M5- Light Fighter. They would be Raider Class, i.e. Argon Nova Raider. Bigger speed and weapons, less shield space
M3, M4, M5+- Heavy Fighter. They would be Sentinel Class, i.e. Argon Nova Sentinel. Less speed, better shield space
TS+- Super Freighter. They would be much larger versions of the original TS, they have less speed, bigger shield space, more cargo room.
It would look like this:
Paranid Demeter Super Freighter TS+ (The one from X3):
[ external image ]
Could I make it so that when I highlight a ship of that class, it will say M5+, not just M5?

C). The TS+ ships would be way too large to dock at any stations, as they would be a bit longer than the Centaur is in X2 currently.
I was thinking, maybe, I could add an extra external docking port to each station so they could dock there, instead of inside the station, but they could still trade, and read BBS, ect. Would this be possible?

Sorry if my questions are confusing.
Thanks,
S

[Lord Dakier]

i dont think it can work something to do with framerate i think... might but i doubt it alot

[ninjitsumonk]

A). How might I do this? I would imagine it would require a .bod file or something like that, but I'm not sure.

You would have to extract all the cat/dats, then use the X models viewer to find out which items you need for each ship(textures, models etc.).
Then you would need to strip them down to their bare bones, the X2 engine cannot handle such highly detailed models(got nothing to do with your computer)

B). I also wanted to create several new ship classes.

don't bother IMO, too many classes, leave it as it is(maybe even exclude the M7 and M3+'s)

C). The TS+ ships would be way too large to dock at any stations, as they would be a bit longer than the Centaur is in X2 currently.
I was thinking, maybe, I could add an extra external docking port to each station so they could dock there, instead of inside the station, but they could still trade, and read BBS, ect. Would this be possible?

They would have to be capital ship docking bays, but yeah its possible.

[SWAHILI!!!]

Thanks for the information.

See, what I wanted to do was make the M6's more of a heavy trading vessel, with the new M7 Frigates the new light capital ship.
I think I did over do it with all the M3, M4, M5-, M3, M4, M5+ ships, I think I'll just have the following ship classes:
M0
M1
M2
M3
M4
M5
M5
M7
TS
TS+
TP
TL

Cheers,
S

[Cycrow]

i doubt it would be all that possible without alot of work.

alot of the X3 ships uses features that are not available in X2.

also, unlike X3, you have a limit to how many ships you can add, and usually you have to replace existing ones.

also adding new ship classes is not possible

and finally, the X3 ships have much more polys than the X2 ones, the engine might not be able to handle them as well

[Chris Gi]

And you can't add new textures.
Beside creating low poly models you will need to re-texture them.

The TS+ ships would be way too large to dock at any stations, as they would be a bit longer than the Centaur is in X2 currently.
I was thinking, maybe, I could add an extra external docking port to each station so they could dock there, instead of inside the station, but they could still trade, and read BBS, ect. Would this be possible?

As far as I tested it, there's no such thing in X2 as a "big docking point". The docking possibilities for the big ships in X2 (like M1,M2, TL) seem to be hardcoded and is limited to shipyards etc. If your TS+ is defined as a TS, the game engine will try to dock inside the station; if you define it as a TL, the ship can only dock at the shipyards....

[ninjitsumonk]

I suppose what you could do for the new classes is have an AL plugin that searches for all Mx ships, then if its of a certain Object(one of the Mx+'s) then you could:

Code: Select all

if not $ship -> get local variable name='add.class.active'

$ship.class= $ship -> get object class

$extension= sprintf............
$ship.name= $ship -> get name

$ship.name= $extension + ' ' + $ship.name
$ship -> set name to $ship.name

end

and the text file you load could just be

Code: Select all

[%s+]

so the ship will get the name: [M5+] Argon Discoverer.
Or whatever so at least thenyou have some way of signifiying that it's better than an average M5

[Harlock776]

You could have several different m3 class per race like a standard m3 and then a heavy m3 with a rear or front turret. You could have a standard TS and a TS with extra space and more than one turret. Also speed and maneuverability can be different per class of m3 or ts etc. Really it's hard to mess with new docking ideas, I don't know why but I think it has something to do with collision avoidance whenever a ship docks or undocks. There are some bod files in the 04.cat&dat patch that are supposed to have something to do with docking big ships but I haven't been able to get them to do anything for me.

Also as I've learned from messing with custom eq docks models, if you move the docking point which is that bod file that looks like the docking bay on the default eq docks... if you move that too far up or down or too far away from the center of the scene then m6 class ships will have a hard time docking and might not even dock at all while the player is in sector so that tells me a lot about collision avoidance and docking properly.

I don't think the docking problem is an easy problem to solve otherwise egosoft would have fixed it with X3 since their devnet is really big now and all the major ideas have floated through there by now. It must be a complex programming and math problem for sure.


You can make a Ts ship long but it can't be too long. When you dock a ship at the internal docking bays inside the station you can measure the max length of the ts ship based on the length of one of those interal cage looking bays. If you ship sticks out from the bay then it's too long or if the front of the ship goes too far past the other end of the bay it's too long also. If you are allowing TS ship to dock with capships then there will be problems with ts ship length there as well because the ts will undock and try to fly all over the place sometimes before flying away from the capship it was docked at externally. So you have to move the external capship dock point farther down until that problem goes away and thats if it goes away lol.

It would have been nice to have some sort of update like the original x2 the return was supposed to bring just to see what ego might have tried to fix with x2.