well orange if you get the botom left screen in ms3d an put it on top view and the you set it nose down in the same screen and then rotate the ship so the belly is facing twart you in the same screen that will take care of the 90* thing

I never seem to get the most out of life untill i take someone elses!

wikkid, that seems 2 hav sorted it out
(now all iv got 2 do is get the textures to work!)

yeh me to all mine come out either white or invisable like it can't under stand the tga files after i conver and flip them

Edited by - cylon123 on 10/8/2004 9:09:00 AM

if you are using the latest ms3d then you can use a dds texture... no more flipping if you use this texture.... Just remember to make MIP0 into MIPS for the dds texture to work in your MAT file.

PS. for missing textures... check your MAT file for typo error. For the tga to dds converter check the download section here at TLR... look for the file NVDXTX if i spelled it correctly, it is from nvdia utilities.... or check out this LINK...

nVidia Texture Tools

---

FIREBASE Technologies

---

Edited by - firebase on 10/9/2004 12:28:17 AM

Ok...Finally got Milk Shape to work on my system, now to other questions. In Drizzt's tutorial, it lists various Hardpoint Types. Does anyone know if you can create a new type... say Hp/Fixed/HpMisc or Hp/Fixed/HpUpgrades to be used in place of the system set up in the Freelancer: The Next Generation mod by Starfyre Studios, where you mount the upgrade in a free weapon slot? Has anyone tried stacking actual shields/thrusters/etc... on a ship to see what happens? Can the weapons, tractor,scanner, and/or thruster be "upgraded" with the mounting of an equip item and if so, what needs to be entered for the item in equip.ini? Can the single player storyline, including the "beginning of a new game" intros, be totally redone with or without the oftimes tedious "story" dialogue and animation sequences; making the single player game more like a multiplayer game without the multiplayer? Basically, I am looking to totally redo the game for myself primarily as I may be going back to a dial-up connection in a few months instead of DSL, which I have right now. If someone else is interested, then they are welcome to use it when I am through with it. I just don't know if I will be able to provide any support as I am relying heavily on ground-breaking done by others just to try and get up to speed. I am also interested in creating animated ship models, if possible, as well as using destroyable textures, say for example, giving the effect of a Star Trek style shieldthat absorbs damage, then gives way, allowing shots to reach the hull. It would be transparent, in an oval shape around the ship. When shots hit it, it will look like they are hitting a shield, and when it gets destroyed, shots would actually hit the hull.

Sorry, I got long-winded there.

Another question, has anybody done work on creating totally new character appearances? I know Freelancer comes with a variety of characters, but what if someone creates a mod that includes the Predators as a faction? Just keep using humans for the shops? I know you could just have non-human factions use robots for all interaction on a base, but that is just about as bad as using a human.

Crawfu I'd do a search of the mods files. I know there are mode to change skins and how to do your own skins. I'd bet changing the looks of npc's into predators or aliens or whatever is just a mater of changing the skins. As for changing the hardpoints in TNG I'd first get in touch with Starfyre Studios first. Reynen is VERY touchy about messing with his mods, especially without permission.

Also as for getting in touch with some of the senior guys on the site, just scroll through the forums til you find a recent post from one of them and click on their profile. If they left their email adress there you go. If not then post in their forum and ask how to get in touch with them if they are interested in dealing with you. Chips is a good guy but he's also a moderator and has to deal with a lot of stuff so don't take it personal if he declines. Sorry I didn't answer sooner but I don't always get to a wifi site on a regular basis.

"we wish for one last landing on the globe that gave us birth, to rest our eyes on the fleecey skies, and the cool green hills of earth" - 'Noisy' Rhysling

Junior1210
All the mods that I have seen for characters seem to just reuse existing models already in the game, but I will try a little harder to find a tutorial on skin creation. As for Reynen's mod, I am not wanting to modify his, I am actually looking to build an entirely new mod, basically from the ground up. The reason I referred to that particular mod was as an example. I am still trying to figure out what if anything had to be done to create the new hardpoint types and how to get the game to read it right; not much luck so far...

I am currently playing around with hardpoints and trying to figure out why my ship keeps getting a different loadout than what I set it to in my ini's. I had created one ship model and saved it, then I completely redid it because of problems with my groups and hardpoint positioning. I had each ship reference the correct cmp and mat files, yet they both wind up looking the same in Freelancer, both appearing to be the same model. One possibility that I am considering is the presence of multiple shield hardpoints, i.e. Hp_Shield01 and Hp_Shield02; also, my thruster refuses to appear, again, maybe because I have multiple thruster hardpoints. I am just experimenting to find out what I can and can't do.

Okay, I have a working model, the only problem is that the only two hardpints that seem to work are my 2 Hp_weapon hardpoints. My thruster, turrets, mine, and countermeasure hardpoints won't even appear in-game. I have the opensp mod built into mine so that I can quicly test my ship out without going through all the opening sequences. I know that the opensp mod isn't affecting it, because it wasn't working right before I integrated it. My ship is facing the right direction, It doesn't go invisible, the lens flare from the sun can be seen through it in turret view, as well as target brackets, but I can't remember if that is normal or not. Does anyone have suggestions for what I can try? I will be happy to email the files...25 MB worth to anyone that is willing to take a look at it.

If you can only recieve 10 MB of files, try an account at walla.com, you can receive up to a GB with that. I know from personal experience that you can receive 50 MB in one email through it.

I have a problem with my ship docking and my cargo space.

Basically, I replaced the civilian starflier with my "beetle" ship by creating a folder in data\ships\beetle\ and replacing the 2 lines in shiparch.ini that indicate where the cmp and mat files are for the civ. starflier. I also tweaked LOD ranges. I think these are the only changes I made to the original Freelancer files.

My ship works as do all hardpoints, my LOD ranges are fine, my textures are fine. My docking problem, Ive noticed at Westpoint Academy. I've successfully landed on Manhattan several times but at West Point my ship goes inside the docking hold and stays there for a long time without exiting movie sequence. After a while it comes out and tries again. This is not due to lag because I've tried this on several servers. Any advice? My HpMount hardpoint is 770 meters (In Lightwave 3D) below the top of the ship, but as my ship is shaped like a Star Wars X-fighter, the hardpoint is also 40 meters above the lowest point of the 2 bottom wings.

\\//
//\\-

so its approximately where the " - " is.

Also, the strange thing with my cargo hold is that once I tractor in commodities, it shows that my cargo hold is full, but I cannot see what I am holding when I am docked at a station or by pressing F7 on keyboard while in space. However, If I do a "trade request" with someone, I can see commodities show up on the list.

Please help.

Ok im new to this but ive done well so far, only 1 thing I have aproblem with
damn ship seems to b invisiable.

I have checked LOD and set it as 0, 2000 and even tried 0, 4000 but still nothing

I have checked and recreated mat file making sure textures are in TGA and fliped horisontal using the program u linked to in tutorial

The utf editor looks to be correct with :-

- material library
- pat17
- Dt_name
- Type
- iron02
- Dt_name
- Type
- glass02
- Dt_name
- Type
- texture library
- pat17.tga
/
- MIP0
- iron02.tga
/
- MIP0
- glass02.tga
/
- MIP0

inside Dt_name I have pat17.tga (eg names of each file name that corresponds to the name of the item)
inside type i have DcDt as specified by tutorial
the texture entries called .tga have nothing entered in them.
the MIP0 have the imported textures that have been fliped horsontal as requested.

Im at a complete dead end please could someone help me out

check the overall size of your ship. for example, when using Lightwave3D, the ship should be about 1 or 1.5 kilometer long in metric. I think mine was about 1.2km and was approximately the size of a Patriot ship

First off Drizzt, thank you for the great tutorial. It's well written and easy to understand. The only part I don't get is the section on texturing. Understand that this is my first time trying this so I really have no idea what I'm doing and yes I understand this sounds like a total noob question. The problem I get is that after I hit that <none> button in MilkShape it comes up with a file selection screen. Where am I supposed to find appropriate files for use? Can I use ones that came with freelancer or do I have to download them or what? Or can I use MilkShape or GMax to create the files? Any help would be very welcome.

Xbrix,

the file selection screen you see is for the textures, now you can use many forms in milkshape but only 2 of them apply to freelancer. .tga and .dds are the only versions that are compatible to freelancer, now.. where do you get them?

You can make your own textures in photoshop, and save as .tga then invert them and use on your model.. or you can get the .dds plugins from nvidia or they can, along with a handy guide be downloaded Here

Other textures will work in milkshape but they MUST be converted to .tga or .dds, they MUST be square and they MUST be 24 bit (max) in order for Freelancer to see them. 32 bit textures are not supported...

Edit: there is also a downloadable set of all the freelancer textures in .tga form available in the downlaods section.. you will have to do a search though..

Does this help?

Harrier






Retreat[![! ---- I'm too badly messed up now[![!



Edited by - harrier on 11/2/2004 4:32:56 AM