Creating capital ship models for Evochron legacy SE

[TraderDan]

UV mapping will come down to however it is projected onto the mesh itself. So you may need to remap the UV on the model to something you prefer if what it comes with doesn't wrap the way you want. And the methods/options will come down to whatever 3D modelling program you are using.

Ok I'll check it out I've been playing around with different uv unwrappers, seeing what results I get. The other question is I'd considered adding the major details onto the model itself then applying one or more semi transparent texture layers for the hull colors, however opacity changes are never seen in the model viewer and if I make the layers completely transparent (so as to add no texture and prevent default textures from loading in) the ship is just completely black, any suggestions on how to tackle it?

[Vice]

Alpha is not available in the final ship object renders, so anything would need to emulate some kind of transparency on the surface of its texture (bringing in the emissive layer for an added effect, if desired).

[TraderDan]

UV mapping will come down to however it is projected onto the mesh itself. So you may need to remap the UV on the model to something you prefer if what it comes with doesn't wrap the way you want. And the methods/options will come down to whatever 3D modelling program you are using.

I think I'm just about on to it, this is my first time creating a 3D model for a game - texturing and UV models are a real pain so hats off to all the game creators for their hard work. Turns out when I rotated and resized the models for the game (I was using right hand coordinates) it broke my UV mapping. When I tried to create a new map the programs I was using were either freezing and crashing or spitting out garbage UV maps. The solution for one of the models was to create two models by using the deconstruct tool to smooth and reduce polygons (making a lower detailed model) then UV mapping that and importing the UV map to the more detailed model, it's not perfect but it looks pretty good so far all things considered. I wanted to try the texture in game as well but I get an error and the game crashes using (in my testing) ship3-high.png (the crash happens during the game loading screen when the hud computer says 'activating life support, releasing docking clamps etc') I converted the png texture to a .dds and I'm about to retest.

**having the texture converted to .dds didn't crash the game, but it didn't load the texture either.

I re-read some of your earlier instructions and it looks like the editor will open anything you throw at it but texture panels for low are 256x256, medium 512x512, high 1024x1024 and very high 2048 x 2048. Since I was using a 512x512 texture and named it ship3-high.png maybe it was looking for a resolution the texture can't deliver. I'll rename it to medium and try again.

Huzzah! It loaded! I also realized I had my details level in game set to medium (those big ships are ram hungry for my humble integrated graphics laptop) so that might have some impact as well I'm guessing? For example if you have a ship3-low.png and the person who downloads the mod has their graphics set to high would it cause the same error? If so it would behoove me to add a low, medium, high and very high set of textures for every ship mod so that the end user avoids any errors?

[Vice]

Glad you found a solution.

DDS is no longer a format used in the game since the switch to Vulkan and the SE version, so only PNG is needed.

Yes, a set of textures is needed for any custom models to support each detail setting. You can optionally use any resolution a target system supports, or even the same resolution for each one, but each filename for each detail setting is needed. While you are testing locally, you can just use the file set for whatever detail setting you are currently using. But once you may want to share the model with others, additional textures will be needed for each detail level so other players can change settings.

[TraderDan]

I have nearly completed a set of textures for one of the ships and they show up fine in the utility you put together, however I was anxious to see how they were working in game and I assumed they were loading properly since they no longer crash the game since I renamed them to "medium" however I can confirm that while the editor sees them and they work fine, they are not showing up in game just the default textures for that particular capital ship are loading.

Just to make sure I'm doing it right I have the following textures: ship1_0.png which is my texture layer that I changed to ship3-medium.png added to the media/ships folder, ship1_0normal.png that I changed to ship3normal-medium.png, ship1_0shader.png which I changed to ship3shader-medium.png and lastly ship1_0lights.png which I kept as fully transparent because I haven't started that step yet and changed it to ship3lights-medium.png. Fingers crossed I'm just naming the files wrong or something. :-)

Glad you found a solution.

DDS is no longer a format used in the game since the switch to Vulkan and the SE version, so only PNG is needed.

Yes, a set of textures is needed for any custom models to support each detail setting. You can optionally use any resolution a target system supports, or even the same resolution for each one, but each filename for each detail setting is needed. While you are testing locally, you can just use the file set for whatever detail setting you are currently using. But once you may want to share the model with others, additional textures will be needed for each detail level so other players can change settings.

[Vice]

For the time being to test with, try sticking with the 'ship1_0-[detail].png' filename structure to apply them globally. They can be ignored on the other frames, but this should at least allow you to see them applied to your test cruiser. Then I'll look into what may be happening with the other filename sets for individual ship types and I'll likely send you a download link for a test build if modifications are needed.

Edit: E-mail sent with the download link for the revised test build.

[TraderDan]

For the time being to test with, try sticking with the 'ship1_0-[detail].png' filename structure to apply them globally. They can be ignored on the other frames, but this should at least allow you to see them applied to your test cruiser. Then I'll look into what may be happening with the other filename sets for individual ship types and I'll likely send you a download link for a test build if modifications are needed.

Edit: E-mail sent with the download link for the revised test build.

Awesome thanks again! :-)

[TraderDan]

Wow every version it seems like you up the ante on the graphics department! First observation while hunting out the cruiser to see if I could check the textures is the cruiser is loading my model for the battleship, I'm going to see if the battleship is loading the cruiser model.

I'm guessing in the code ship 3 and ship 4 got switched, let's see if I can find a place for one to spawn in....

Edit: Haven't found a cruiser yet however I found a command ship and that model seems to be almost completely invisible with just a few texture artifacts being shown.:(I have Galaxy Class enterprise model assigned as ship 5 that's not quite ready to leave spacedock, but loaded fine albeit with default textures previously)
PS. I noticed the holographic advertisement billboards at a planetary base, that's a nice touch :-)

For the time being to test with, try sticking with the 'ship1_0-[detail].png' filename structure to apply them globally. They can be ignored on the other frames, but this should at least allow you to see them applied to your test cruiser. Then I'll look into what may be happening with the other filename sets for individual ship types and I'll likely send you a download link for a test build if modifications are needed.

Edit: E-mail sent with the download link for the revised test build.

[Vice]

There are quite a number of visual improvements in the works, most of which are nearing completion at this point. Lots of gameplay elements left to test for a while though.

As for the ship type mismatch, you ran into a bug there. The index offsets are displaced by +1 so what is specified as a cruiser imports as a battleship. This was due to some code changes a few weeks ago (fixing one thing breaking another, lol). I'll work out the fix and will provide an update at the same link which will be available in about 30 minutes from the time I'm posting this.

You have it correct, each capital ship type should follow this pattern for filenames, descriptions, and indexes (in parenthesis):

ship1.x = Transport (104)
ship2.x = Destroyer (105)
ship3.x = Cruiser (106)
ship4.x = Battleship (107)
ship5.x = Command (108)

Edit: Ok, the update is available.

[TraderDan]

There are quite a number of visual improvements in the works, most of which are nearing completion at this point. Lots of gameplay elements left to test for a while though.

As for the ship type mismatch, you ran into a bug there. The index offsets are displaced by +1 so what is specified as a cruiser imports as a battleship. This was due to some code changes a few weeks ago (fixing one thing breaking another, lol). I'll work out the fix and will provide an update at the same link which will be available in about 30 minutes from the time I'm posting this.

You have it correct, each capital ship type should follow this pattern for filenames, descriptions, and indexes (in parenthesis):

ship1.x = Transport (104)
ship2.x = Destroyer (105)
ship3.x = Cruiser (106)
ship4.x = Battleship (107)
ship5.x = Command (108)

Edit: Ok, the update is available.

Got it, I'll check it out ;-)

Any idea why my ship5 is showing up as a ghost ship? Oh wait if it's +1 it's perhaps assigning as texture position / ship ID that isn't there ....? In that case I would only see the alpha layer if I'm not mistaken

[Vice]

Any idea why my ship5 is showing up as a ghost ship? Oh wait if it's +1 it's perhaps assigning as texture position / ship ID that isn't there ....?

Yes, I suspect it is related and the mesh is getting thrown into a non-existent index. Should be sorted with the update.

[TraderDan]

My nerd side is thinking how you could emulate a cloaking device effect by switching the ship ID to remove it's texture lol

[Vice]

The small ship cloaking effect kind of does that from the player's point of view, applying a darker blank texture and then alpha for semi-transparency.

[TraderDan]

Ok sweet, I haven't yet purchased or tried the stealth device yet though I believe I've seen it for sale at a few spaceports though.

The small ship cloaking effect kind of does that from the player's point of view, applying a darker blank texture and then alpha for semi-transparency.

[TraderDan]

Good news is there's no more ghost ships and the ships seem to be indexing correctly with their respective models. The cruiser /ship3 still doesn't seem to be showing textures though. I put a couple links to some screenshots of in game compared to in model viewer utility. One thing of note just for an experiment I included a "shipspecs106.txt" with the following perameters:

ship3.x
106
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.4
0.4
0.4
0.4
0.4
0.4
0.4
0.4
0.4
0.4
0.4
0.4

To start I wanted to get all thrust and turret locations stacked on the same regions so that I could view my textures more clearly and that in game I could see that the text file was correctly pointing to the right ship. In this case I noticed that shipspecs106.txt is still only changing the turret positions and thruster flares of ship4, the battleship not the cruiser. When I was having the ghost ship issue it was still assigning my shipspecs.txt to the battleship model even though it was displaying as a cruiser at that time.

Screenshots:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18Pavyj ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UE454z ... sp=sharing

There are quite a number of visual improvements in the works, most of which are nearing completion at this point. Lots of gameplay elements left to test for a while though.

As for the ship type mismatch, you ran into a bug there. The index offsets are displaced by +1 so what is specified as a cruiser imports as a battleship. This was due to some code changes a few weeks ago (fixing one thing breaking another, lol). I'll work out the fix and will provide an update at the same link which will be available in about 30 minutes from the time I'm posting this.

You have it correct, each capital ship type should follow this pattern for filenames, descriptions, and indexes (in parenthesis):

ship1.x = Transport (104)
ship2.x = Destroyer (105)
ship3.x = Cruiser (106)
ship4.x = Battleship (107)
ship5.x = Command (108)

Edit: Ok, the update is available.

[Vice]

Looks like those 'shipspecs' parameters were all set to -1 for slot ID as opposed to internal index value, which I suspect is why some of the previous changes had misaligned things with frame ID's. If you use 'shipspecs105.txt' in the meantime, it should work. I'll change those index assignments for the next update, so just be aware they will likely shift again.

As for the textures, knowing the exact filenames being used in the \ships folder should help me determine what may be happening there. They should need to be (for ship3.x):

ship3-veryhigh.png
ship3normal-veryhigh.png
ship3shader-veryhigh.png
ship3lights-veryhigh.png

And then where 'veryhigh' is, also sets for 'high', 'medium', and 'low' to support each texture detail setting. And whatever texture detail setting you have selected will need the same filename set available.

Edit: Update with the adjusted 'shipspecs' ID values available at the same link, so it should now work when set to 'shipspecs106.txt'.

[TraderDan]

Sweet, I'll check it out thanks Vice Regarding filenames the .png's are the same filenames as you listed except instead of 'veryhigh' they are 'medium' and the sizes are 512x512 I'll try the new update as well as changing the filenames to 'veryhigh' and see if anything changes.

Looks like those 'shipspecs' parameters were all set to -1 for slot ID as opposed to internal index value, which I suspect is why some of the previous changes had misaligned things with frame ID's. If you use 'shipspecs105.txt' in the meantime, it should work. I'll change those index assignments for the next update, so just be aware they will likely shift again.

As for the textures, knowing the exact filenames being used in the \ships folder should help me determine what may be happening there. They should need to be (for ship3.x):

ship3-veryhigh.png
ship3normal-veryhigh.png
ship3shader-veryhigh.png
ship3lights-veryhigh.png

And then where 'veryhigh' is, also sets for 'high', 'medium', and 'low' to support each texture detail setting. And whatever texture detail setting you have selected will need the same filename set available.

Edit: Update with the adjusted 'shipspecs' ID values available at the same link, so it should now work when set to 'shipspecs106.txt'.

[Vice]

You can use any individual detail filename set on its own, but it will need to match whatever texture detail setting you have applied, otherwise default textures will be loaded. So if you don't want to include fully resized texture sets for each detail setting, you can just stick with the 512X512 set and include all of them from 'low' to 'veryhigh' and it won't matter what texture detail setting is applied as the game will be able to find any of them that way.

[TraderDan]

Ok got it, I'll make a texture for every range then I'm sure to hit one of them :-)

[TraderDan]

First test ran the game without making changes to my current setup and came across a cruiser and destroyer model, the game ran fine but only the default textures loaded on the cruiser.

Second test I made copies of: ship3-medium.png, ship3normal-medium.png, ship3lights-medium.png, ship3shader-medium.png and renamed them to: ship3-low.png, ship3normal-low.png, ship3lights-low.png, ship3shader-low.png so that I had two sets of textures (I made no changes to the images themselves they were all 512x512 and I changed all the thruster positions of shipspecs106.txt from 0.2 to -1.0.

During the test I ran across two destroyers, one command and one battleship that spawned all in the same vicinity, no issues all loaded with default textures applied. I traveled to Emerald Station and just as I was docking I saw a capital ship warp in but I didn't get a look at which one and as soon as the "docking tractor beam engaged" audio was about to play the game crashed with the following error:

"Error: failed to load image: item109.x in main.agc at line 224988"

I never paid much attention to it before but since some of my models are bigger than others I know that when I jump through a warp gate that the larger ships will spawn into the area if the game takes longer to load. It seems like the game randomly selects 3 capital ships of the 5 to spawn in at random intervals in certain locations around the player, when reloading the game or warping to a new system through a gate it seems the ship spawns will reset. Since ship ID slot 109 doesn't have a ship assigned and it is +1 over a command ship (the last address with information attributed to it) if the games randomizing routine selected say 104, 108, and 109 as soon as it looks for ship109.x it crashes because it doesn't find anything. A quick fix might be to add an exception like "select x,y,z ship from list, but always exempt ID109/ when z=109 assign x-1 for z"

Then again I could be completely out of my gourd and not know what I'm talking about this is purely just based on speculation and observation.

And a big thanks for letting me try out these new builds, I think I've had just as much fun hunting bugs and modifying the game as I have playing it so far

And I've learned a heck of a lot, who knew Evochron Legacy would be an educational game as well?

[TraderDan]

Great news! I got my test texture to work in game, to be thorough I would add a set of textures before each test then seek out a cruiser and see if the textures appeared, I only altered the texture names not the textures themselves. I started out with medium and no textures, added a 'low' set of textures, still nothing, then I added a 'high' set of textures and they appeared. I never made a set of 'very high' textures yet.

Screenshot:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E-a2-4 ... sp=sharing

[Vice]

Glad you got it to work. The error appears to be related to a lingering variable value that got transferred over to the menu list icon system. Kind of a strange one, I'm not yet sure how that happened, but I am looking into it and can put some validation checks in place to prevent it in the future.

Edit: Update available that should prevent the error.

[TraderDan]

Awesome I'll check it out, once this UV map is done unwrapping

[TraderDan]

Wow Vice! I just got some time to sit down with your recent build while I was hunting down the USS Reliant (to see how my UV wrap was showing in game) and it's shaping up really nice, I think folks are going to love it.

[Vice]

Should add some fun options and several enhanced graphics/effects elements. A lot of testing is left to do before some can be finalized, so there's still some experimental aspects in place under evaluation. I hope to have more complete code and testing results achieved by mid-January.