HOW TO: Phasers

HOW TO: Phasers; support/discussion/questions

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HOW TO: Phasers

Post by thunderchero »

Credit for this post to DCER

How to make the phasers work.


1. First you need to create a ship and save it as flt. Or have one at hand. Then convert it to hot. Or have a hot file already at hand.

2. Open up the hot with WordPad, you'll see something like this:

Code:
HOT file format v1.00 by Erick Jap (last updated on April 23, 1997)

Input File = btc.FLT

db
Format revision level = 1570
Database revision level = 0
created on Tue Jun 06 22:51:00 2006


....



3. Now you will need to make a new object which will be named slotn, where n is a number between 1 and 255. This object will be the hardpoint from which the ship will fire phasers.

Objects in the hot look like this:

Code:
====
ObjectBead2
Name o1_8
Type Object
ID 2
ZZZZ

====

Now let's make a new one. Add it anywhere in the file, just make sure you have the entries properly separated by using ====

Here's our new object:

Code:
====
ObjectBead2000
Name slot1
Type Object
ID 2000
ZZZZ

====

Notice I've put in the name slot1. And I've picked a large number 2000 following ObjectBead. This is so it will be unique in the file and there will be no collisions. You can't have two ObjectBead2. I've changed the ID as well. Not sure if it's needed but let's keep it this way.

4. Now we need to pick a PolygonBead which will hold this new Object.

Polygons look like this:

Code:
====
PolygonBead23
Name p31_6
Type Polygon
VertexList 3 57 58 59
Color 255 255 255 255
ObjectID 2
TextureNo 0 0
ZZZZ

====

In this example I'll be using the above one.

5. Find the BeadList which hold the Polygon and replace it with your new ObjectBead:

Here it is:

Code:
====
BeadList14
Bead PolygonBead24
Child 0
Bead PolygonBead23
Child 0
Bead PolygonBead6
Child 0
ZZZZ

====

Result:

Code:
====
BeadList14
Bead PolygonBead24
Child 0
Bead ObjectBead2000
Child 0
Bead PolygonBead6
Child 0
ZZZZ

====

6. Now let's make a new BeadList which will hold the PolygonBead we took out and set it as a child under the ObjectBead:

Code:
====
BeadList9000
Bead PolygonBead23
Child 0
ZZZZ

====

I chose to name it BeadList9000 with the large number so you'll have no collisions in the file.

Now we set it as child to ObjectBead2000:

Code:
====
BeadList14
Bead PolygonBead24
Child 0
Bead ObjectBead2000
Child BeadList9000
Bead PolygonBead6
Child 0
ZZZZ

====

7. Ok the model is now ready. Convert it to hob, and add it to stbof.res. You have to add it as it's explained in Dafedz guide. Set the textures and everything.

8. Now we have to edit trek.exe:




You will need to replace an existing prefix with the one from the new ship. Do a search for a prefix, for instance CL2, and you'll get to this list. Pick a prefix to change. Change the data there.

Red - the prefix. Three letters (upper case!), followed by 00.
Blue - the number of hardpoints you'll use, in our case 1
Green - the scale of the ship as float. You don't need to change this.
Yellow - the hardpoints. There are 16 bytes of space. One byte for each hardpoint. Put in the hardpoints from left to right and set unused bytes to 00. In our case I've put in 01 for the firts byte. Because the slot is named slot1. The number 1 comes from the name of the slot.

Set all other bytes to 00. We don't yet know what they are for and it will work this way.

This should do it. Enjoy the phasers.
Last edited by thunderchero on Sat Mar 28, 2009 10:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by jigalypuff »

lose this how to, it is the old way of adding hardpoints (first discovered by dcer) i`ll do a how to and post it later.
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Post by thunderchero »

jigalypuff that would be great, If it is the way siggi does them I still prefer doing them dcer's way (it is easier for me and does not raise vertex number as much) and the way I have been seperating model (by face) my vertex number is always high but no change in polygons.

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Post by sean_west »

Rather than loose information, how about adding both methods, and then people can choose which way the prefer?
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Post by Dr_Breen »

Beside the way explained above there's a newer and easier way to add phasers:

once you have finished the binary separation in creator select FACE in the dropdown list:
b371a41b.jpg
b371a41b.jpg (69.78 KiB) Viewed 7899 times
select the faces where you want the phaser to be fired from. (1 - 16 faces are possible)

Copy and Paste them (Ctrl+c, Ctrl+v),
Creator will ask you if you want to modifiy the pasted faces...don't change anything and click OK.
d31edaf6.jpg
d31edaf6.jpg (9.92 KiB) Viewed 7899 times
the pasted faces should now apear in the shematic view....on the left side there's a button that looks like a rubber duck.

click it and a sub menu apears which allows you to create many different things. Create the same amount of objects as faces you have pasted before (it's the 3rd button in the top row of the menu)
10ce3a88.jpg
10ce3a88.jpg (71.46 KiB) Viewed 7899 times
once you've created enough objects rename (by double clicking) them to slot01, slot02, slot03 and so on.
now you attach the faces you've pasted before to the renamed objects...always 1 face per object. this can be done pretty easy by drag and drop.

as a last step you place the new objects right next to the first Bsp of you Bsp tree...at the end it should look like this:
864b86be.jpg
864b86be.jpg (63.29 KiB) Viewed 7899 times
now save it as a .flt and convert it to .hob using the hob filters.

In trek.exe you do the following:

Your hex editor has to read 16 bytes per row. Now search for the code you gave to your model (like km3 in this example) but pay attention every code apears 2-9 times in trek.exe...take the last one your editor can find.

in the picture below you see how it should look right now:

Red: your shipcode

Green: the number of phasers your ship will have. this can be any number between 1 an 16 but it may NOT be higher than the number of slots your model has. as you see the the number of phasers is set to 08, but i created only 6 slots on the model i edited before....Botf would crash here as soon as your ships were about to fire their phasers

Blue: shipscale, we don't take care about it here

yellow: Slots...when you set the green value to 08 as in the example, then set the first 8 bytes here to 01 and the rest to 00.
f34e83dd (1).jpg
f34e83dd (1).jpg (56.27 KiB) Viewed 7899 times
Allright your ship should have phasers now.
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Post by thunderchero »

very nice ship there Dr_Breen, :wink: :wink: we could always use some more dominion ships for UDMIII :D :D The new bird of death and bloodwing and simitar are almost ready for UDMIII :wink: :wink:

I am currently working on video tutorial for 3ds to hob and will try to use your method of adding phaser if it works with my way of seperation in face mode.

Also I was wondering we use 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08, you use 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 and it seams both work. so does it matter as far as you have found?

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Post by Dr_Breen »

I tried it with both 01 01 01 ... and 01 02 03 ... it doesn't seem to make a difference.

the ship 1 of 3 ships I rebuilt from the Fleetops mod in star trek Armada II

I will be done with the last ship in a few days, then you may use them if you want.

whats your way of seperating faces? i do it in 3ds max usually, because the slice tool in creator is buggy sometimes and creates wrong faces...a tutorial about sliceing would be great, the tutorial on daefetz site is already quite old and outdated

creator is only useful for creating phaser slots and building up the bsp tree
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Post by Wraith »

Dr_Breen wrote:
the ship 1 of 3 ships I rebuilt from the Fleetops mod in star trek Armada II
Im sorry but I have to ask, did you recreate that dominion ship all by yourself including the textures or did you reconvert the sod file to a max file? I thought that was not posible :?:
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Post by thunderchero »

@Wraith,

yes you can convert sod files to 3ds with milkshape with sod addon.

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Post by Wraith »

thunderchero wrote:@Wraith,

yes you can convert sod files to 3ds with milkshape with sod addon.

thunderchero
Thanks, the fleet ops mod has a LOT of new and interesting ships, you could introduce some of them to UDM III :D
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Post by Dr_Breen »

@Thunderchero: the Milkshape Sod importer does only work for stock models. im talking about the one released by assimsoft...if there's another one let me know, it would save a lot of time

@wraith: I had to rebuild them, so it does not exactly match the old model, but with the Storm 3d tool from armada you can view the wireframe of the model which makes it a little bit more easy to rebuild the ship.

By the way, converting the model, would require the autorisation of the autors of the fleetops mod.
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