A new mod: Packwar

[Peet]

No, I feel that any capable modder is allowed to spend otherwise productive modding time reading Dune books because it increases the chance of a Dune mod being created in the long run...

TBH the best way to achieve that is pestering rattle to work on his.

[Rubenes]

Done everything. The first unit should work now.

[rattle]

Dune II :P
...which isn't really Dune.

and its best to upscale in your modeling program, because upspring does weird things when you scale.

It scales the normals up when you scale your model down and the other way around. Not fixable by recomputing the normals. You won't notice small scales but you certainly will when you resize them to twice or half the size.

BTW for accurate scaling export your models by a scaling factor of 8. 8x8 units = 1 square in spring and upspring.

[Rubenes]

You pressed reply instead of edit...

[Pressure Line]

Dune II
...which isn't really Dune.

and its best to upscale in your modeling program, because upspring does weird things when you scale.

It scales the normals up when you scale your model down and the other way around. Not fixable by recomputing the normals.

For accurate scaling export your models by a scaling factor of 8 (8x8 units = 1x1 elmo).

that scale factor depends entirely on how big you intend the model to be. i find its best to model at the size you intend. 16x16 for 1x1 32x32 for 2x2 etc etc. (talking aboput wings here, and the grid in upspring is by default in half elmo units [unsure if it is changable])

*edit* although if you are modeling something on a Krogoth scale you may want to consider modeling at half size and scaling on export.

**edit** sorry for derailing your thread dude x:

[rattle]

That's not what I meant, there is a little button right next to the export/export selected format buttons. You can set stuff like import and export scale factor for most export types.

[Rubenes]

Ok, my mod is complete, and I should be able to get my first useless unit in game. My major problem is, that Spring always gives me the error "could not find bitmaps/detailtex2.bmp". I searched on the forums, and other people who had the same problem were told to reinstall Spring. This didn't work for me, however. How can I fix this manually?

[Snipawolf]

Heh, had the same problem, every one starting out does.

Numdependencies=1;
depend0=springcontent.sdz;

Add to modinfo.tdf file.

[Rubenes]

Ok, I have another problem now. When I press enter to start the game, I get the message "Spring has encountered an error".
What could be the cause of my problem? If you want, I can send my mod to you.

[lurker]

Did you look at infolog.txt? Running it under svn spring might also give you more detailed output.

[Argh]

Usually, an insta-crash is something vital missing- an explosion reference is one of the more common causes, but it may be a bad path to a COB file or 3DO / S3O, or the textures for same. Spring is remarkably graceful at handling missing files in general, and will almost certainly report something useful in infolog- the only exception (until this next beta- I think this was addressed, which is really nice) was CEG references, which used to cause crashes without any information left behind...

[Rubenes]

I solved my crash, it was a faulty script. Now Spring gives me the following strange error: "Cannot find unittype: corcom". My mod isn't even based on TA! How come Spring gives me this error? I think this is caused by my mod depending on springcontent.sdz , but when I remove this dependency, I get the detailtex2.bmp error again.

[KDR_11k]

The problem is the start script expecting two factions, if it can only find one it defaults to assuming the second has "corcom" as its commander.

[Rubenes]

I'll try using SpringSP then.

SUCCESS!



I got my unit ingame! Now I'm going to start working on a alpha version. Most units will look like this one (Peet, do you matter if I copy your SimBase style for my alpha?), but later on I'll try to improve the units.

Ok, my biggest problem now is finding out how to script. I need both to get my commander functional. Could I find tutorials on those subjects anywhere? I'd also like to know if the buildmenu TDF's in the download directory are necessary.

[Peet]

(Peet, do you matter if I copy your SimBase style for my alpha?)

lol. Me being too lazy/unskilled for texturing is not an arbitrary style to be copied (besides I've switched to black on white).

[Rubenes]

It's just that I don't feel like putting large amounts of work in an alpha version either. It's just to show the basic gameplay. BTW, could somebody please tell me how to script a basic builder? It needs no animation or anything yet, I just want it to build. My commander, for some reason, also appears to be invisible. How come this happens?

[Pressure Line]

It's just that I don't feel like putting large amounts of work in an alpha version either. It's just to show the basic gameplay. BTW, could somebody please tell me how to script a basic builder? It needs no animation or anything yet, I just want it to build. My commander, for some reason, also appears to be invisible. How come this happens?

lack of a height value on the s3o most probably.

[Rubenes]

I did forget the height value, that was indeed the reason why it was invisible. Now, I looked around in some XTA scripts of builders, and I found this function QueryNanoPiece(). Is this the basic function to let my unit build something? I know other functions exist to aim the nanopiece and do nice animations, but I just want my commander to build.

[KDR_11k]

QueryNanoPiece says where the nanospray comes from. You're looking for set INBUILDSTANCE to 1.

[Rubenes]

Could you tell me where to put that? Thanks. Currently I only have an empty function which I made up in my units. Can I use a TA tutorial to script my units?