[Help] Weapon Not Firing Bug

[Admiral*Alex]

Title pretty much says it all (or more likely enough to get the point across). I had a model rigged and working in A2, but for the last few hours the ships weapons never fired once. I'm pretty sure there is something wrong with the ship's .odf file as I'm using vanilla weapons (or at least I'm using working weapons as I used them in another ship that is also working in A2).

As this is the first time I'm editing an .odf for a ship I made a new set of hardpoints for I'm not completely sure if it's the hardpoint placement or the ships .odf file that I need to look at (but I'm pretty sure it's the odf file).

Any help would be splendid as looking at the same lines of code is making me crazy. Ironically, this ship is one I've spend hours on getting the hardpoints where I like them. Another one I worked on, only took seconds to get up and running, and on the first try too. Thus, I have no idea what's causing the weapons to not fire.

(There is also a small reward for help me - a line in the credits file as I intended to publish the ship to the community once working)

 

[Hath]

Hey Admiral I took a look at the odf you supplied and I can't see anything that looks wrong. Are you trying to get this to work in A2?

One thing that I would try is adding "hp01" to "hp40" to one of the weapon lines and see what happens. If the weapon fires you can go back and try one handpoint at a time until you have mapped where all the weapons fire from (I would make a quick drawing of your ships on a piece of paper and add where each hardpoint is) Its a little time consuming but I've done it on several ships so it does work.

 

[Admiral*Alex]

Hey Admiral I took a look at the odf you supplied and I can't see anything that looks wrong. Are you trying to get this to work in A2?

One thing that I would try is adding "hp01" to "hp40" to one of the weapon lines and see what happens. If the weapon fires you can go back and try one handpoint at a time until you have mapped where all the weapons fire from (I would make a quick drawing of your ships on a piece of paper and add where each hardpoint is) Its a little time consuming but I've done it on several ships so it does work.

The HP's have already been mapped as I've been using a special program, so all I have to do it run the program to see the hardpoints. It works as I already used it to create hardpoints on another starship (that's secret for the moment), so I'm not sure what's wrong...


However, I will start rigging up weapons to the other hardpoints, maybe the hardpoints I made originally for the phasers and torpedoes aren't working...for some reason. The ship can be built, targeted, and destroyed, so at least one hardpoint works...

 

[Hath]

I did understand that your program was mapping the Hp's. I ways just suggesting that if something went wrong that using a bunch of Hps would hopefully allow the weapon to fire and that you could then narrow down the problem. Sorry that I didnt make myself more clear. Also if this doesn't work I would try reinstalling the Sod file. I had a bad Sod install a while back and it about drove me nuts trying to figure it out.

 

[Admiral*Alex]

I did understand that your program was mapping the Hp's. I ways just suggesting that if something went wrong that using a bunch of Hps would hopefully allow the weapon to fire and that you could then narrow down the problem. Sorry that I didnt make myself more clear. Also if this doesn't work I would try reinstalling the Sod file. I had a bad Sod install a while back and it about drove me nuts trying to figure it out.

Given I stopped working on the Vimy Ridge to work on the Balmung...its probably a bad SOD file or a couple bad hardpoints. Ugh...hour placing hardpoints gone either way. I need a (Romulan) Ale.

 

[Hath]

Hope this helps.

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:

Title pretty much says it all (or more likely enough to get the point across). I had a model rigged and working in A2, but for the last few hours the ships weapons never fired once. I'm pretty sure there is something wrong with the ship's .odf file as I'm using vanilla weapons (or at least I'm using working weapons as I used them in another ship that is also working in A2).

As this is the first time I'm editing an .odf for a ship I made a new set of hardpoints for I'm not completely sure if it's the hardpoint placement or the ships .odf file that I need to look at (but I'm pretty sure it's the odf file).

Any help would be splendid as looking at the same lines of code is making me crazy. Ironically, this ship is one I've spend hours on getting the hardpoints where I like them. Another one I worked on, only took seconds to get up and running, and on the first try too. Thus, I have no idea what's causing the weapons to not fire.

(There is also a small reward for help me - a line in the credits file as I intended to publish the ship to the community once working)

That is very odd indeed. Since the weapons you chose seem to be the vanilla/stock ones, then perhaps the problem is that hardpoints, in the model itself, are not properly linked to h_hardpoints?

 

[Admiral*Alex]

Hello:

That is very odd indeed. Since the weapons you chose seem to be the vanilla/stock ones, then perhaps the problem is that hardpoints, in the model itself, are not properly linked to h_hardpoints?

According to UTMV, they are connected, but it's possible they aren't. I was going to check to see if maybe it's just those hp's and the ship is buildable and destroyable.

 

[Chiletrek]

Good luck with your tests of the ship!

 

[kjc733]

I've had a quick look at the odf and nothing jumps out as being wrong. A couple of things to check:
- In the default font type in Notepad++ (if that's what you use) the number 1 looks identical to the lower case letter L. If you hand typed the weapon names did you write it as fcLphas or fc1phas? They will both look the same in the odf.
- As stated above, try assigning some additional hardpoints in the odf file against the non-functional weapons. Use them all if you want, see if you get them to fire from anywhere. This isn't a sod modification, just add the extra "hpxx" to the applicable weapon in the odf file.
- Try adding another weapon to the odf file to see if you can get that to work. If that fires off then it may be a problem with the weapon odf rather than the ship odf.
- Copy paste a new weapons section into your odf from a ship that you know works and alter the hardpoint numbers as necessary. That should help remove any unseen typos.
- As Chile stated above, check to make sure that the h_hpxx hardpoints are properly set up in the hardpoint hierarchy. i.e. h_scene root -> h_hardpoints -> h_hpxx
- Take a look at the weapon odf and ordnance files to make sure you haven't broken anything there, like delinking the ordnance file or setting range to 0 or requiring special energy to fire.

That's all I can think to try.

 

[Admiral*Alex]

Finally got the ship's weapons firing...and oh boy. Do I have a list of credits to write now, and a story to tell.

First, I went to double check the file names. I do recall changing the file SOD file after I exported it from UTMV as the original names caused my A2 to crash. Didn't work. NO weapons

Second, I went "Wait, maybe because of how UTMV works, the hardpoints weren't saved" See, you can create as many HPs as you like, but you have to "Bake them" into the model like they would be if you just viewed them after a SOD file was created from MS3D. Still didn't work.

BUT

I then had an idea pop into my head like Q - what if the weapon hardpoints were corrupted? As someone said above, SOD files can be corrupted. AS UTMV addes hardpoints to SOD files, I guessed that maybe what really happens is that the hardpoints get corrupted. Thus, I place my HP's in groups (Weapons, hull, engines, etc.) one or more could be corrupted. So, I said "F this!" Pretty much set every hardpoint a separate weapon to see which group or individual hard point might be broken/corrupted. You can all guess what happened...a small Federation cruiser "had more weapons firing than half of the Starfleet" to quote a paraphrase Freighter Pilot.

Not quite sure what happened or why...but I got a new ship up and running. By guess would be that the hardpoints weren't baked into the model, as I didn't test my second idea before my third.

As a side note, I knew the weapon itself wasn't the problem as even in A2, I got the my Balmung firing them in game (I literally copy and pasted the weapon into the ship I was having problem with) so I knew the weapon itself wasn't the problem.

 

[Terra_Inc]

What a tale! I'm glad to hear that you figured the problem out. Good work!

 

[Admiral*Alex]

What a tale! I'm glad to hear that you figured the problem out. Good work!

I won't say "Figured out" more like it's working...for as long as I don't touch anything. Seriously, I'm scared to change anything for fear it will stop working on me. As they say "If it ain't broke..."

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:
Don't worry, problems like this are one of the many joys of modding

 

[Hath]

Glad you got your ship working. I just took a look at her in the download section and she looks great! Really nice work.