This depends on your stations sur file. Placing them inside the stations dock enables your ship to fly into the dock before disappearing, however, very few stations have sur files that enable this, so the dock mount needs to be placed outside of the dock otherwise ships would bounce off the sur file and be unable to dock.

Freeworlds Mod Developer
Author of Modular Station

'There is no Good nor Evil in the universe, just perceptions and circumstances.'

Thanks!

That was what I (instinctively) suspected but was too lazy too find out bu trial-and-error... I kind of hoped (although not believing it would actually be the case) that the cinematics would take over before a docking ship would actually hit the sur file, kind of like when a docking ship descends thru a docking ring onto a planet: you see the ship descend much further to the planet's surface than actually would be possible if you'd fly it yourself (apart from the dead zone0.

Btw, I really like your Modular Station Resource!! its release (and the fact that I had just begun learning 3d modelling) was what inspired me to finally try to realize an idea i had quite a long time ago but never knew how to do it: break down the various pieces of FL architecture (like the tower on space_police01.cmp) and turn them into satellite archetypes. (If the results are decent enough, I'll upload them.) I've been using stock archetypes as satellites for as long as I'm into modding the game, but customizing the models makes this even better.

EDIT: Btw do you know of there's a way ( a tool, or a Milkshape plugin, or a some trick or whatever) enabling you to actually SEE the sur file? and edit it manually? FLModelTool is a great tool, but those long lists of numbers aren't really inviting to play with... (I only use the "automatic" resize options).




Edited by - Moonhead on 6/7/2006 7:08:55 AM

HardCMP enables you to see the sur file and is useful when used along beside a sur file editting program.

To see a sur file in relation to a CMP, you must load the CMP into HardCMP (i.e. load the program first and then go to the menu and load your CMP manually rather than just double clicking on a CMP file and letting HardCMP load it that way). Then, as long as the sur file is given the same name and is in the same location as the CMP, just hit 'S' to show the Sur File.

Thanks!!

(dirty language, blasphemy, diseases and other wretched stuff self-censored. I hit the ESC button and now my text is gone!!!!!!! What the f*ck is the purpose of that?!?!? Why did the guy who wrote the script for the forum think "I'll make the ESC button clearing the message field instantly, without ctrl+z being able to get the text back, yeah!!!". What fuelled his evil mind? At such moments I long back to the Stone Age - no ESC buttons back then, just sticks and stones. A good thing I know even less about quantum physiscs than I know about 3d modelling, so I won't be tempted to built my own Little Boy. The End of Civilization will have to wait for a smarter frustrated person than me.)

Anyway, I'll just retype the whole thing.


I realized there are still things I need to know before I can place the docking things. (Note that I'm gonna do this in Milkshape, because I want to see what i'm doing. I might finetune it later on with hardCMP of the UTF editor.)

1. What are the HpDockPoints for, and where do they (approx.) have to be placed, relatively to the HpDockMount? There are two HpDockPoints per HpDockMount, is that correct?

2. I guess the HpDockMounts will face towards the direction the docking ship will be coming from; is that correct?

3. There are usually less HpDockCams and HpLaunchCamA than there are HpDockMounts. Do the HpDockMounts without a corresponding Cam have instant
dock and launch (without a "movie" )?


Thanks in advance!


EDIT: those unintentional smileys suck too, though not as much as the ESC button thing



Edited by - Moonhead on 6/8/2006 11:53:25 AM

1. DockPoints line the ship up for docking and exit. Dockpoint01 should be closest to the DockMount, DockPoint02 furthest, all in a straight line. Normally I put them 100 metres away from each other in a straight line and that seems to work fine.

2. To be honest, I never remember which way the orientation is. I just use my previous models as a guide.

3. If there is no Camera Hardpoint, there is a still a docking and undocking movie, but the camera is postion directly behind the craft rather than off to one side.

Thanks again Aldebaran!!!

(Btw, summer finally arrived at my spot on the globe, so I won't be modelling that much the next few days - I don't have a laptop I could take outside)