How can I disable the docking "animation"?

Crawdaddy79 · Post by **Crawdaddy79** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 3:31 am

Hello.

I'm new to this game and I've found a couple of issues that have me scratching my head. One is the docking animation with the green brackets that are constantly flying towards me on my screen. This seems wholly unnecessary, and there doesn't seem to be a hotkey that disables it. If there isn't such a thing, then I will continue to resort to looking away from my PC screen while approaching a docking location, as the animation seems to have an effect similar to ice picks on my eyes (until you get close, where they take on more of a consistent presence rather than flying at me repeatedly at a thousand MPH).

Secondarily, there are contracts that I can accept, that will tell me to go to a waypoint to begin them. However, if I accidentally click on the navigation map and change the waypoint, the contract's waypoint cannot be recovered, as far as I can tell. Am I stupid, or is there no way to reset the waypoint? I see a "log" in the navigation panel but nothing appears there.

Thanks for your help and support and time and everything else.

Capt_Caveman · Post by **Capt_Caveman** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 4:12 am

the nav point for the contract will still appear as a small blue box in your nav map

Maarschalk · Post by **Maarschalk** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 5:17 am

Hi Crawdaddy79, Welcome to the game and forum!.....Hope to see you out there some time!.....

The docking animation are the docking guides green if you are on the right approach path red if you are not on the right approach path. They are handy for City docking on planets! You can not turn them off they are part of the docking guiding system for City docks and Station docking bays. I think you can mod them though with the customizing kit to be more friendly to your eyes if it bothers you to much!......

Crawdaddy79 · Post by **Crawdaddy79** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 1:04 pm

From post: 135947, Topic: tid=9260, author=capt_cronic wrote:the nav point for the contract will still appear as a small blue box in your nav map

Hmm.... I believe you, but that's definitely not what happened in my case. The waypoint was once in a vast area of blankness (it was a "find this thing" contract), and on the way there, in my efforts of trying to figure out what "A New Hope" was (I found it in a later try), I moved the waypoint somewhere else. The blank space definitely did not have a blue box in it.

I will start a new contract and see if I can replicate it.

From post: 135950, Topic: tid=9260, author=Maarschalk wrote:Hi Crawdaddy79, Welcome to the game and forum!.....Hope to see you out there some time!.....

The docking animation are the docking guides green if you are on the right approach path red if you are not on the right approach path. They are handy for City docking on planets! You can not turn them off they are part of the docking guiding system for City docks and Station docking bays. I think you can mod them though with the customizing kit to be more friendly to your eyes if it bothers you to much!......

Thanks for the warm welcome.

As for the docking animation, I am happy that it's very intuitive, but I think it can be intuitive in a less annoying way (I'm not epileptic, but I'm always scared that one day I will find out that I am). The ability to turn it off with a hotkey, and turn it back on as you get closer, I think would be an excellent, easy option to include with the next Evochron: Mercenary patch.

49rTbird · Post by **49rTbird** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 2:01 pm

To Disable the landing animation (sort of) you need to create a folder named HUD (if you don't have one yet) and put it in your games main location. Now get three files from the Mercenary Mod kit (download that from the game website) named "landgreen" "landred" and "landshadow". Open each file with Paint and erase the colored box you see and make everything the background cover which is black for the "landred" and "landgreen" and white for the "landshadow". Save each as a ".png file and this will get rid of the animation as the HUD overrides the games default files. One word of warning thought is that you will not see these rings anymore so if you try to find a city on a planet the rings will NOT be there to guide you to it.

Oh as mentioned you can also mod them in other ways to make them smaller or with shorter lines with the paint program or other picture program you may use.

[Edited on 4-28-2012 by thetiebers]

Crawdaddy79 · Post by **Crawdaddy79** » Sun Apr 29, 2012 1:13 am

Thanks for the help.

I figured out that turning off the HUD entirely is the best option for disabling the docking animation. I tried editing the landing.png's, but either I did something wrong or there's a fourth file somewhere because I still got the docking animation in black (regardless of "good" or "bad" approach).

I tried to replicate my Nav-point reset error and could not. I swear that it disappeared but I guess you can chalk it up to noob error for now.

Nigel_Strange · Post by **Nigel_Strange** » Sun Apr 29, 2012 2:02 am

There are "shadow" images for most of the HUD images. You need to find those and turn them to all white, I believe, so that they will be completely transparent.

The shadows are there to prevent the hud from blending in to the background when you are looking into light, such as when a star is in view.