anyone know what it takes to convert a ship so it can be used in game?

[barbarian182]

Howdy all. I was wondering something.I have a starship 3d Model in Max 2020 format. I had it custom created for me about 10 years back. it is the "Liberty" clas. designed as a variant of the "Alaska" class battlecruiser. this design is intended to be the star trek answer to the famed and iconic world war II era Liberty ships of the allies. as such they are specifically designed as a modular designed ship. They are also intended to have a serious bite to them, as all to often in real life cargo ships are slow, and undefended. My design does away with this flaw by being fitted with torpedos shield and phaser strips etc.... I would very much LOVE to be able to play the ship in star trek bridge commander but know zip about converting etc any ship for the game. anyone out there that can guide me? I have never done such a convertion before myself, and seek advice from those who know and are smarter than I'am regarding such things.

once converted, my plan is to release the type so anyone that wants it can use it. it even already has blank textures.

 

[Starfox1701]

http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/main I present the sacred tomes of the modder.

 

[Admiral*Alex]

Howdy all. I was wondering something.I have a starship 3d Model in Max 2020 format. I had it custom created for me about 10 years back. it is the "Liberty" clas. designed as a variant of the "Alaska" class battlecruiser. this design is intended to be the star trek answer to the famed and iconic world war II era Liberty ships of the allies. as such they are specifically designed as a modular designed ship. They are also intended to have a serious bite to them, as all to often in real life cargo ships are slow, and undefended. My design does away with this flaw by being fitted with torpedos shield and phaser strips etc.... I would very much LOVE to be able to play the ship in star trek bridge commander but know zip about converting etc any ship for the game. anyone out there that can guide me? I have never done such a convertion before myself, and seek advice from those who know and are smarter than I'am regarding such things.

once converted, my plan is to release the type so anyone that wants it can use it. it even already has blank textures.

I might be able to help as I just converted a couple of BC ships into A2. But, I need more information. You have a a Bridge Commander model you want to use in Armada 2, correct?

 

[barbarian182]

I might be able to help as I just converted a couple of BC ships into A2. But, I need more information. You have a a Bridge Commander model you want to use in Armada 2, correct?

I have a 3ds max 2020 model that i wish to convert to bridge commnander. so it can be used in game 2 ships actually

 

[barbarian182]

http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/main I present the sacred tomes of the modder.

thanks. I will also look into this as well. I can render still shots but that about all I can do currently

 

[Admiral*Alex]

thanks. I will also look into this as well. I can render still shots but that about all I can do currently

Sadly, that file only applies for Bridge Commander, but for Armada we are at your service.

 

[barbarian182]

Sadly, that file only applies for Bridge Commander, but for Armada we are at your service.

what about armada then? this would also work but I need to find armada to download and install it

 

[Admiral*Alex]

what about armada then? this would also work but I need to find armada to download and install it

Check out the Starfox1701's post. The file he dropped is what we call in the Armada 2 community "The Armada 2 Bible" because it's a one-stop shop for most (if not all) your Armada 2 modding needs. Even the Gods (and I'm assuming Goddess too) still look it over if they run into trouble modding as it's that well documented. It's made for beginners with little no no previous modding or coding experience.

You will need something more than just a basic text editor (like Microsoft Word), but if you check out Apache OpenOffice you can get soething that's pretty close for free (because it's open-sourced).

That said, I prefer using the Ultimate Trek Model Viewer to Hardpoint my models. It's faster (and easier) than using MS3D. Not many people use it IIRC, so troubling shooting problems is something you'll be almost on your own. I can help, but most of the program confuses me.

 

[Starfox1701]

@ Admiral*Alex I didn't post anything for modding BC Fleet OPs is for A2 Where did you get that it was for Bridge Commander?

 

[Admiral*Alex]

@ Admiral*Alex I didn't post anything for modding BC Fleet OPs is for A2 Where did you get that it was for Bridge Commander?

Probably somewhere between lack of sleep and no caffeine. My sincere apologies.

 

[barbarian182]

Check out the Starfox1701's post. The file he dropped is what we call in the Armada 2 community "The Armada 2 Bible" because it's a one-stop shop for most (if not all) your Armada 2 modding needs. Even the Gods (and I'm assuming Goddess too) still look it over if they run into trouble modding as it's that well documented. It's made for beginners with little no no previous modding or coding experience.

You will need something more than just a basic text editor (like Microsoft Word), but if you check out Apache OpenOffice you can get soething that's pretty close for free (because it's open-sourced).

That said, I prefer using the Ultimate Trek Model Viewer to Hardpoint my models. It's faster (and easier) than using MS3D. Not many people use it IIRC, so troubling shooting problems is something you'll be almost on your own. I can help, but most of the program confuses me.

Thank you for the advice. But you sorta lost me at "Hardpointing" I'm VERY VERY new to this and have no clue what the term means... please explain? I did try converting my Liberty class starship to Nif format. No luck I have the plugin to do this on max 2010 and max 9. I also can convert them to sod I THINK. But it thus far appears that converting the liberty class model from max to either of these may be impossib;le as each time I have tried the program has crashed.

 

[kjc733]

Firstly, for A2 I always use Notepad++ as my text editor, there's an addon somewhere that is designed to work with odf coding and colours the text depending on what it is for.

Hardpointing are the "solid" bits of the mesh. The mesh itself is generally just graphical, it's a pretty shape that looks nice on the screen, however game engines don't know what to do with it. A hardpoint is a definitive point that can be assigned to do something. A starship mesh may have a phaser array, but a phaser beam will only be emitted from a hardpoint which you would need to overlay on the mesh. Similarly hardpoints are targets for incoming weapons, mounting points for sensors, engines, and pretty much anything else that has a stat in the game. This will be covered in the Big Book of Modding for A2, but my understanding is that other games (like BC and Legacy) use similar systems.
So, mesh is pretty graphics.
Hardpoints are the skeleton of physical bits.
Then you have a text file (odf in A2) which defines what those hardpoints do.
As an example, I have attached the hardpoint map of the Tachi. The mesh is the model itself, the hardpoints are the blue circles. Weapons fire and weapons impacts will only occur on those blue circles as defined by the odf file.

 

[Admiral*Alex]

Firstly, for A2 I always use Notepad++ as my text editor, there's an addon somewhere that is designed to work with odf coding and colours the text depending on what it is for.

Hardpointing are the "solid" bits of the mesh. The mesh itself is generally just graphical, it's a pretty shape that looks nice on the screen, however game engines don't know what to do with it. A hardpoint is a definitive point that can be assigned to do something. A starship mesh may have a phaser array, but a phaser beam will only be emitted from a hardpoint which you would need to overlay on the mesh. Similarly hardpoints are targets for incoming weapons, mounting points for sensors, engines, and pretty much anything else that has a stat in the game. This will be covered in the Big Book of Modding for A2, but my understanding is that other games (like BC and Legacy) use similar systems.
So, mesh is pretty graphics.
Hardpoints are the skeleton of physical bits.
Then you have a text file (odf in A2) which defines what those hardpoints do.
As an example, I have attached the hardpoint map of the Tachi. The mesh is the model itself, the hardpoints are the blue circles. Weapons fire and weapons impacts will only occur on those blue circles as defined by the odf file.

An extremely through write-up.

A more nutshell explanation is that hardpoints are the things the .odf (a kind of file type the game engine reads) needs to attach to the model. It's there "where does this thing go?" the game engine needs to find out where you want that Phaser beam or Disruptor Cannon to shoot from or where say a Photon Torpedo needs to hit to take out the life support system.

Attached is a bit clearer view of how hardpoints appear on a model (I use a different program than most).

 

[Terra_Inc]

Those are some good explanations here

what about armada then? this would also work but I need to find armada to download and install it

Apart from disc copies of the game, which are understandably quite rare these days, you can get a digital copy of A2 (and several other old Trek games) from gog.com.

 

[barbarian182]

Firstly, for A2 I always use Notepad++ as my text editor, there's an addon somewhere that is designed to work with odf coding and colours the text depending on what it is for.

Hardpointing are the "solid" bits of the mesh. The mesh itself is generally just graphical, it's a pretty shape that looks nice on the screen, however game engines don't know what to do with it. A hardpoint is a definitive point that can be assigned to do something. A starship mesh may have a phaser array, but a phaser beam will only be emitted from a hardpoint which you would need to overlay on the mesh. Similarly hardpoints are targets for incoming weapons, mounting points for sensors, engines, and pretty much anything else that has a stat in the game. This will be covered in the Big Book of Modding for A2, but my understanding is that other games (like BC and Legacy) use similar systems.
So, mesh is pretty graphics.
Hardpoints are the skeleton of physical bits.
Then you have a text file (odf in A2) which defines what those hardpoints do.
As an example, I have attached the hardpoint map of the Tachi. The mesh is the model itself, the hardpoints are the blue circles. Weapons fire and weapons impacts will only occur on those blue circles as defined by the odf file.

o.k. all of this stuff is WAY WAY beyond me...I can render a still shot, thats about it for me. I honestly am not sure where to go from here...as it stands all attempts to convert the Liberty class model have failed. each attempt resulted in my 3ds max 2010 program crashing... if you were me what would you do from here?

 

[Admiral*Alex]

as it stands all attempts to convert the Liberty class model have failed. each attempt resulted in my 3ds max 2010 program crashing... if you were me what would you do from here?

I would hazard a guess and say that the model is incompatible with the modeling program. Either because it's too detailed for your program or its internal file structure doesn't like the engine your program uses.

Have you tried using Milkshape 3D by chance?

 

[barbarian182]

I would hazard a guess and say that the model is incompatible with the modeling program. Either because it's too detailed for your program or its internal file structure doesn't like the engine your program uses.

Have you tried using Milkshape 3D by chance?

nope. the model is in 3ds max 2010 format. and I have failed to convert the ship to a format Milkshape can handle thus far. I actually have 2 different ships I would like to do this with, But looks like that unless I can find someone far smarter about these things than me, I may never be able to use these ships in game. I myself have never played any of these games before, But wanted to lean how to so.

 

[kjc733]

The best format I've found for transfering between software is .obj format. You may get a couple of mesh errors crop up but that's what I use to go from Maya to Milkshape (or anything else).

 

[barbarian182]

The best format I've found for transfering between software is .obj format. You may get a couple of mesh errors crop up but that's what I use to go from Maya to Milkshape (or anything else).

I will try that. thanks for the advice