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Topics - jstubbles

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General Discussion / Modding tools not functioning
« on: March 03, 2013, 01:31:21 »
Hey guys, it's been a while!
I was wondering, have any of you had issues with the converter tool in the mod tools not working? I've tried untinstalling/reinstalling Nexus as well but that didn't help.

Basically, all of the mod tools function, except for converter. When I launch it, the windows cursor changes like it's loading, and "converter.exe" shows up in the windows task manager processes menu, but it never really launches. There's no GUI, no taskbar program to click on, nothing. I'm at a loss here :|

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Off-Topic / Landed a job at Timegate Studios
« on: August 14, 2011, 08:20:35 »
Hey all, just a heads up. Thought I'd share the good news. I interviewed two weeks ago at Timegate Studios down in Sugar Land, Texas. They liked my work and made me a job offer, which I accepted. I'll be moving down there on the 22nd and I start on the 29th :)

We'll be working on Colonial Marines, alongside Gearbox Software! So excited to finally have a fulltime job again. I've been contracting with Microsoft Game Studios and working on the Forza Motorsport series the last 3yrs, but only as contractor. I've spent a lot of time unemployed in those 3yrs, waiting on contract renewals and such, which sucked. Glad to be back at a decent studio as a real employee.

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Scripting / Ship bounds penetration events?
« on: August 03, 2011, 22:44:19 »
Nexus has a lot of limitations for things that are extremely frustrating for us on the BSG team. One particular problem we have is with missiles. By default, they operate like strikecraft. While normally that's kind of okay, they have drawbacks that make them annoying, such as flying away from ships when they're exploding or ONLY targeting the center-mass of a ship.

We're looking to change them into regular cannon type weapons like the railguns in order to fix this. However, flak defense systems are not able to target the particle projectiles. This means we have to use a shield on the battlestars. This creates more issues. I can't seem to stop the effect from playing, when the shield activates and deactivates, which is a showstopper. But for this purpose lets just say I fixed that. We still need a way for the flak effect to play so that the missiles look like they're being shot by it.

Do any of you know if events are kicked off when projectiles get close to a ship or penetrate it's collision sphere? Ultimately if the flak started firing once they got within a certain radius, that's ideal, so we can fake the autodistance firing we have right now.

What's more annoying is that this will cause yet another problem, even if we can pull it off. We'd have this flak "shield" effect that would be playing, then on top of that we'd still need real flak weapons, to fight off raiders. This would cause the flak effect to compound even further, which *could* affect performance, if it got too dense.

Crap like this really makes me consider switching to another engine >_<

4
Game Assets / UI texture changes
« on: March 06, 2011, 03:33:21 »
I'm currently trying to change the UI scheme a bit but I've run into an issue where I can't seem to find several of the UI textures. I've gone through and checked what I believe are all the UI files but can't find the following parts:



The bottom frame border of the ship list, blue border in the ship panel and the left bracket & gradient in the manual box area seem to be evading my dradis scans (har har). Anyone know where these suckers are hiding?

5
Game Assets / Object animations in Layout
« on: February 01, 2011, 06:16:14 »
Hey guys, had a quick question about animations in Layout. I got everything animated and it compiles and plays in the game. The problem I'm having though is that the animation looks like it's on a spline ramp instead of being linear. So when it starts, it starts slow then winds up faster and faster. This is not the behavior I want. It should have a constant speed.

I've gone into Layout's graph editor and set the animation keys to repeat in the pre/post behavior and also set the keys from TCBSpline to Linear. But this doesn't seem to help it at all in game.

Any ideas?

6
Scripting / Staggering weapon firing
« on: August 21, 2010, 20:15:16 »
Hey all, just wondering if it's possible to make different kinds of firing solutions on weapons. So lets say a ship has 8 turrets of one weapon type and you choose "destroy hull" - right now they all fire at the exact same time. Is there a way to change that, or create a new weapon function button, that staggers the firing, so there's like a quarter second delay between each weapon firing?

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Mod Development / Released Mods / Configuring strikecraft
« on: May 09, 2010, 18:13:16 »
I'm running into an issue when it comes to configuring strikecraft. I set everything up the way it seems to be required, but the craft show up as selectable weapon "buttons" on the hud, instead of actual strikecraft.

Is there a generic writeup anywhere about adding strikecraft to the game and what settings/config to go with? I'm pulling my hair out here.. ;)
It's probably painfully easy, too, and I'm just missing something. haha

Thanks

8
Game Assets / Updating planet meshes
« on: April 11, 2010, 10:06:11 »
Has anyone had success doing this?

There's no documentation for getting a new planet MESH into the game - but I've been able to load them into the solar system editor. However, as soon as I press the button to change the texture, it loads the old model again. I should also note that my own planet mesh doesn't appear to have an atmosphere when it loads up - it shows the atmosphere as a tiny sphere inside of my planet mesh. I tried adjusting the mesh size in Lightwave until it was relatively close match, but it still doesn't change the fact that when I load the next texture, the model changes back to the original low poly version.

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Mod Development / Released Mods / Weapon lightsources
« on: April 04, 2010, 19:16:27 »
Figured I'd ask, but I'm assuming hardcoded like everything else.

Just wondering if anyone has had success with projectiles casting light in non-pitch black conditions? If you play in the complete shadow of a planet or something, you get amazing realtime lighting from weapons and explosions, but it shows nothing at all if there's any sun lighting on the ships (boo!).

10
In the documentation, there's no defined orientation for models. Each engine is different so one has to assume that given examples are correct. With Nexus, the example meshes show that models should be facing the -Z axis. That is the "front" of a model. So I've built all of my models with this in mind. I am however, experiencing unpredictable and incorrect behavior with hardpoint placement for my turrets. The model I'm working on (battlestar Pegasus) has some irregular turret placements so for the sake of simplicity I'll just use a typical battleship "row" of guns in my example.

The documentation states that the first point of a hardpoint is the right angle of the triangle, the second point is it's X-axis and the third point being the turret's resting position. Now, lets start with a little geometry refresh. This, is a right angle:



So according to the documentation, the first vertex of a hardpoint would be the red box, or right angle, then the second would be to it's left, dictating it's X-axis, then lastly the third vertex is where the resting position is. So if I were to build the hardpoint in this fashion:



One would think I'd have a correctly oriented cannon facing forward. This is not the case, however. This results in the cannons facing backwards from the bow of the ship. How is this? The first vertex is the center and it should point to the last vertex??? I'm not sure why it's doing this, or if the documentation is wrong, but it seems that hardpoints are pointing from #3 to #1, not the other way around. If I build the triangle 180º, like this:



THEN I get a gun where the barrels face the bow of the ship. What gives?


This brings me to my next problem and certainly the most infuriating of the two. I want a battleship firefight. Line abreast, firing your rows of cannon. I'm having the most difficult time trying to create this, though.

Ships are allowed to have 8 weapon slots for basic rotating turrets. They are designed to cover a 180º half-sphere of whatever Y-axis they are orientated towards, meaning for each slot, you should have a triangle on top and bottom, giving you 360º coverage around the ship. I want to have those 8 turrets available to fire down the line, regardless of which side the enemy is on, so I have to have all 8 turrets (16 hardpoints) on EACH side of the ship, 8 on top, 8 mirrored to the bottom, giving me my 360º bubble.

The problem I'm running into in doing this, is that the game engine fires from the OPPOSITE side of the ship from where the target is located. So if an enemy is to my right, the left side of the ship fires through through my hull, as opposed to right side of the ship firing like it should. So this is what I get:



These guns are all oriented face-forward, so I'm absolutely clueless as to why it chooses guns on the opposite side of my ship to fire at the enemy. If anyone has an idea, I'll give you a cookie. :D

11
Mod Development / Released Mods / PRT file editing
« on: February 07, 2010, 20:21:58 »
Hey guys, just wondering if anyone has information on editing the PRT files for particle creation. The documentation included with nexus mod tools is extremely vague, limited and doesn't even have examples. The PRT's themselves break down like heavy scripting, but as an artist it's hard to figure out. Custom PRT's allow for extremely complex particle effects and I'd certainly like to be able to do something with them.

Thanks!

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