Questions: Creating a New Cluster and Game Start?

[Ajpav13]

Edit: Removed original Question and original Title for the Post.

Premise: I am attempting to learn how to set up a new Cluster and Game Start.

I am using the mod Hiigaran Crossroads, as a base.
(I figured starting from a "lean" set of files would be easier than sifting through the gargantuan X Rebirth original game-files - And that the "relatively straight" highways & rectangular orientation would ease understanding of how XR works).

I have read the 4 guides available on the English forums, including the "Mission Director" PDF. I am no programmer, but have experience modding XR Savegame files & Other Games' text files.

I intend to post a Tutorial on the forums, upon completion of my little "adventure" meant to complement Observe's excellent work in 2013.

Disclaimer: My pursuit here is purely academic, Hiigaran Crossroads is an excellent mod created by: Exavier724 on 11 Jan 2015. I will NOT publish his mod or any sub-modification of his mod as per the forum-rules and basic human ethics.

[UniTrader]

regarding quarternions: forget about them. use <rotation yaw="0" pitch="0" roll="0"/> instead (or some online calculator)


for the Positions: had a Script which outputs the current Position to the Info Screen for that, as Zone Offset, Sector Offset and Cluster Offset, but no idea where it lies because my mapping was a while ago.. could quickly rewrite it though ^^
also some hint: do not rotate Sectors or Zones compared to their Cluster - this will have weird results when using the Tubes.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

If building a new sector, a quick mention of what I think was probably a mistake by Egosoft in case it helps avoid it:

Across Albion, DV, OL and Maelstrom, the relative positions of all gates and super highways match up across zone, sector, system and galaxy maps. E.g. DV is to the north of Albion on the galaxy map and similarly, the DV gate is in the north of Albion and the Albion gate is in the south of DV.

Whereas when Fields of Opportunity was added, the sectors are the wrong way around when compared to the above, previously established format. On the galaxy map, Albion is left of FoO and OL is right of FoO. Whereas the Albion gate is on the right side of the right-hand side FoO sector, and the OL gate is on the left side of the left-hand side FoO sector.

[Ajpav13]

@UnitTrader - well after 3 hours and a couple of glasses of whiskey, I learned Three things about quaternions:

1) They were thought up by an Irishman during an unprecedented moment of sobriety.
2) There is no "online calculator" that uses Cartesian Coordinates and Yaw, Pitch and Roll to produce quaternion coordinates. (I mean one knows he is doomed when Wolfram Alpha can't understand the question).
3) I am fairly sure now, neither coordinate system is responsible for the problem I am attempting to tackle.


@Sparky Sparkycorp
- No expert, but I'm not certain how relative-positioning of the clusters would influence game play; do they?

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

I'm no expert either, it was just something I happened to notice hehe

As long as the connections between zones, sectors and system/cluster are how you want in the end, I don't think how orientations look in the map matters. At least it doesn't seem to have any adverse effect in FoO system/cluster*. With the FoO orientation issue, it can just be a bit confusing after having become familiar with the format in the classic Rebirth map. So it seems mostly a minor cosmetic/usability issue.



*Unless, lol, it could explain why my capitals fly behind the gate in FoO linking to Albion...but I had thought that was caused by the presence of the huge asteroid.

[UniTrader]

nope, FoO is not rotated at all (except for regions)
Cluster, Sector, Zones and Tubes all have the same orientation meaning that their X Y and Z coordinates all map to each other directly. no need to take angles into account when calculating coordinates. (yep, you can have Zones and Sectors which ecliptics are tilted to each other - doesnt work for tubes connecting these Zones/Sectors properly though - had a blue Tube which was incoming from the -X Direction in the Zone, the Gate exit was in the +Z Direction (expected +X) and a was thrown out in the +Y (expected +X or +Z) direction when i left the tube - just because the tube and the Sector ware rotated compared to the cluster)

you mean that their Gate Positioning is not consistent with the rest of the Universe, but thats a diffrent (design) issue, not something technical.

PS and i wonder where i got this one from: http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/geo ... uaternion/
but as i said in my first reply: you can use euler angles directly - so if you are not as masochistic as me spare yourself the effort

[Ajpav13]

@Sparky Sparkycorp: Thank the gods! I was worried that there was yet another element I had missed! lol.

Using Hiigaran Crossroads Mod as a Template (I figured the straight highway-system within a "leaner set of docs" would make things a bit easier to learn; opposed to digging through the gargantuan compilation in the game-files), I am attempting to redesign the sector.

By moving gates/highways/stations...etc; I aim to learn through trial-and-error (mostly error in this case hehehe), the basic concepts needed to create a new Cluster for future modding projects.

My Current Problem: Changing the gate linking from Maelstrom to Hiigara, into FofO to Hiigara. It is not working.

For now, I'm going to move on and see if I can refine my question to a more specific query. (As it stands now, my question would reference 3-4 xml documents).

Thanks for all the assistance so far though Gents!

Disclaimer: I have read through the 3-4 guides on the forums (including the MD pdf) - and as this is someone else's work do NOT intend to publish - this is simply "academic" at this point.

[UniTrader]

if you want more reference files you can also have a look in an unfinished Project of mine:

https://github.com/UniTrader/UTXReImagi ... 1_universe

uses aforementoined tilted Zones and Sectors though, which problems i could not solve yet. (not the reason i am not continuing with this though)

[Ajpav13]

@UniTrader

Wow, thank you so much! Will look through it for sure. Very grateful for your insights!

Whatever I learn from this, will be posted in a small-tutorial of my own.
Observe did an amazing job with his, (back in 2013), mine will hope to pick up some pieces that were left out (due to lack of knowledge at the time) and geared towards those without programming knowledge (such as me lol).

Working on the Game Start right now - hope to have it working within the hour.

[Ajpav13]

Ok, if anyone can assist, I am at an impasse - This is my Setup of my gamestart from the md folder of my mod. Everything works, except:
1) Factions Remain unknown.
2) The Balor spawns in an "Empty Space" zone just outside of Wrecksville in Lookout Alpha. Any Ideas?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mdscript name="Setup_Gamestarts_Naxos" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="md.xsd">

<!-- Naxos Freestate Gamestart -->


<cues>
<cue name="Setup_Naxos" module="pav_start">
<conditions>
<event_cue_signalled cue="md.Setup.GameStart"/>
</conditions>
<actions>
<signal_cue cue="md.Setup.Open_Jumpgates_Lib"/>

<set_faction_known faction="faction.canteran" known="true"/>
<set_faction_known faction="faction.reivers" known="true"/>
<set_faction_known faction="faction.argongovernment" known="true"/>
<set_faction_known faction="faction.familyryak" known="true"/>

<find_cluster name="md.$Hiigara" macro="macro.hiigara_cluster_01_macro"/>
<find_zone name="$StartPlot" macro="macro.hiigara_zone_010101" />
<!-- Creates a Ship: Balor Size L -->
<create_ship name="$naxosbalor" macro="units_size_l_single_attack_ship_macro" zone="$StartPlot">
<owner exact="faction.player" overridenpc="true"/>
<pilot actor="null"/>
<defence actor="null"/>
<engineer actor="null"/>
<cargo>
<wares list="[ware.fuelcells]">
<fillpercent exact="100"/>
</wares>
</cargo>
<units>
<unit category="unitcategory.defence" mk="1" exact="1"/>
<unit category="unitcategory.defence" mk="2" exact="2"/>
<unit category="unitcategory.defence" mk="3" exact="3"/>
<unit category="unitcategory.defence" mk="4" exact="4"/>
<unit category="unitcategory.defence" mk="5" exact="5"/>
<unit category="unitcategory.defence" mk="6" exact="6"/>
<unit category="unitcategory.welder" mk="1" exact="21"/>
</units>
<drop ref="ship_large_military"/>
<safepos object="player.playership" max="6km" radius="2km"/>
</create_ship>

<find_dock_location name="$Dock" container="$naxosbalor" size="tag.dock_p"/>
<create_platform_actor name="$BalorCommander" type="entitytype.commander" dockingbay="$Dock.component" ref="trader_albion_random">
<owner exact="faction.player"/>
</create_platform_actor>
<create_platform_actor name="$BalorDefenceNPC" type="entitytype.defencecontrol" dockingbay="$Dock.component" ref="fighter_albion_random">
<owner exact="faction.player"/>
</create_platform_actor>
<create_platform_actor name="$BalorEngineer" type="entitytype.engineer" dockingbay="$Dock.component" ref="engineer_albion_random">
<owner exact="faction.player"/>
</create_platform_actor>
<assign_pilot actor="$BalorCommander" object="$naxosbalor"/>
<assign_defence_manager actor="$BalorDefenceNPC" object="$naxosbalor"/>
<assign_engineer actor="$BalorEngineer" object="$naxosbalor"/>
<set_object_commander object="$naxosbalor" commander="player.primaryship"/>
<start_script object="$BalorCommander" name="'move.patrol'"/>
<start_script object="$BalorDefenceNPC" name="'fight.defend.capital'"/>
<start_script object="$BalorEngineer" name="'engineer.ai'"/>
</actions>
</cue>
<cue name="Naxos_Helptext" module="pav_start">
<delay exact="60s"/>
<conditions>
<event_cue_signalled cue="md.Setup.GameStart"/>
</conditions>
<actions>
<show_help custom="'Sir, your fleet is ready and awaiting your orders'" position="1" duration="20s"/>
</actions>
</cue>
</cues>

</mdscript>

[UniTrader]

i think the respective Zone (macro) is not found.. in this case it returns a random one which matches remaining criteria - in your case a completely random one because there are no criteria except the (probably not valid) Zone macro.
the Debuglog will tell you whats wrong in these cases
Info on how to use the Debuglog:
https://www.egosoft.com:8444/confluence ... d=30113934

[Clownmug]

The way <set_faction_known> works is kind of silly. It only makes it so you can see the name of a faction instead of showing "Unknown Faction." If you want a faction to show up under player status and the encyclopedia the only way I know of is by using the AddKnownItem() function in a ui script.

[w.evans]

Unless you changed it in your copy of Hiigaran Croosroads, looks like you're just missing a "_macro" here:

<find_zone name="$StartPlot" macro="macro.hiigara_zone_010101" />

not sure how to set factions to known, but the plot files set certain zones and everything in them to known:

Code: Select all

            <find_zone name="$Alb_LookoutAlpha_Zones" space="$ALB_LookoutSec" multiple="true"/>
            <set_known object="$ALB_LookoutSec" known="true"/>
            <do_all exact="$Alb_LookoutAlpha_Zones.count" counter="$Counter">
              <set_known object="$Alb_LookoutAlpha_Zones.{$Counter}" known="true"/>
            </do_all>

Setting a faction-owned station to known might do the trick for the owning faction as well. Haven't worked with game-starts myself, though, so can't speak from experience.

Hope that helps, and looking forward to your guide!

edit: Just read that snippet again, and looks like they just set all zones in lookout alpha to known. Oops.

[Ajpav13]

Hello all! Thank you all for assisting me - I greatly appreciate it!

Can anyone assist me in figuring out how to create stations for a custom game-start? (I will edit this post later once I figure what specifically I am doing wrong).

As promised, I created a quick game-start guide with all the knowledge I have learned this past week so that others can piggyback on my work (AFAIK such a guide doesn't exist on the forums just yet).

it is located here: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=382132 feel free to send me your criticism/input.

[w.evans]

A peek at Yorrick's DeVries Freelancer gamestart might help. The actual station-generation is done via:

Code: Select all

              <create_station name="$Station" macro="$StationMacro" owner="faction.player" zone="player.zone">
                <position value="$BuildLocation.offset"/>
                <buildsequence sequence="'a'" stage="2"/>
                <buildsequence sequence="'b'" stage="3"/>
                <buildsequence sequence="'c'" stage="3"/>
                <buildsequence sequence="'d'" stage="2"/>
                <buildsequence sequence="'e'" stage="1"/>
              </create_station>

but there's a lot of prep work before that part of the script. The relevant code is all in:

\devriesfreelancerstart\md\Setup_Gamestarts.xml

[Ajpav13]

@w.evans
-Thank you for the script!

Yeah, that is precisely the similar format that Observe uses in his Transcend and that is used in Vanilla "Argon Merchant" game start - I'm missing something though - I'll repost in a few hours once I narrow down what the heck I am missing.