Topic: Animated Textures.

[zaniwhoop2]

The problem is really whether or not the engine supports it. If I remember correctly, there is no suport in the .mod format for animated textures. The only way I can see is for it to work is an undocumented extention to the format used by dummy.mod.

If I had a copy of the DM file (or knew where it was located), I'd take a look at it with a hex editor and a copy of the format. The dummy.mod file seems to be a normal .mod file, but it doesn't reference any textures; I've only taken a quick glance at it though.  

[I_Mudd]

The animated texture is located in Starfleet Command II/Assets/textures/pk-maw.bmp and the model is located at Starfleet Command II/Assets/Models/mdm/mdm.mod. I also emailed you a copy in case you don't have the game installed.

Thanks to everyone's combined efforts on this. It's got to be something simple, we're just not looking at the right file(s) yet.

I was told today that in Bridge Commander, A ship that could seperate into 3 parts, and be controllable by the player was dimissed as impossible by the game makers. They claimed the engine wouldn't support such a feature. Soon, the Promethius, a ship that does just that will be released.  Take that nay-sayers! Where there is a will, there is a way. It's just code.

Let us know what you find, zaniwhoop2.

I_Mudd.

[I_Mudd]

Another thought.

What if, perhaps, the animated textures for the DM and the Organian are mission based? Both only appear in specialized missions, unless you've editted your shiplist to allow for there use in any mission.

 I tried putting an Organian in a mission with FMSE, and it would load into the game, but with no texture, thus, invisible - as the dummy.mod does not have any registered textures to it. It also was stationary. I only found it by hitting Target view. I could target it, shoot it, tractor it and move it - albeit, very slowly. I think the game was registering that the Organian had allocated power to movement, but after examining it's shiplist entry I found it was lacking several key features that standard ships use to allow for movement, sensors, tractors and weapons. Interestingly enough, the Black hole/wormhole/singularity doesn't maintain it's gravity affects either with FMSE, as I placed one on the map for a reference point.

Can the API code, used to build real custom missions, be used as the basis for an 'add on'  file that works similar to the model.siz file ( whether it be a .gf, .txt, or whatever...), allowing for the assignment of dummy.mod to player ship models, and assigning animated textures to these points? Any programmers out there?

Something to think about ...

I_Mudd.

[Khaliban]

Quote:
Bridge Commander uses animation for textures. Maybe we can ask one of those guys how it works for them?  

As I recall, they use the sequence command in 3DMax.  I don't know if mod files support that, though.

[Desty_Nova]

If you guys work this out, I'm so putting spinning bussard collectors on the engines of all my SFB Feds.

[Smiley]

Quote:
What if, perhaps, the animated textures for the DM and the Organian are mission based? Both only appear in specialized missions, unless you've editted your shiplist to allow for there use in any mission.

I soooooooo already said this! lol

[Firehawk]

Quote:
The DM has an actual model to examine, but the Organian is a dummy.mod, which supports my thinking that there must be a way to assign textures to a dummy.mod. I'm pretty sure, however it's done, it will be much the same as for photons, disruptors, probes and plasma weapons; possibly even phasers-as they originate from a dummy.mod and strike on a dummy.mod; i.e. hardpoints.  

After looking at the textures for the DM maw effects and the Organian, there seems to be a definate connection to the way the Plasma and photons are done. The DM's texture, called pk-maw.bmp, is larger - thus fewer animation 'frames' than the Organian, Photon and Plasma.  The process as to how they animate and how they are assigned is what eludes me, thus far. If indeed they are assigned to dummy.mods, then there must be a file which tells the game engine the difference between an Organian and a type G Plasma.

More as I figure this out,

I_Mudd.  

Actually the Doomsday machine model in the /assets/models/mdm folder and the one that uses the pk-maw.bmp file are different.  The one that uses the pk-maw.bmp is a dummy.mod also.  In the spec file look at
  "Neutral   UNKNOWN   N-DMY   SPECIAL..........."  and if you scroll across you will see a dummy.mod assigned to it also.  

You are right that the pk-maw and the organian texture are like the photon and plasma texture.  They are all defined in the starfleet2.exe file.  It has been several years since I played around with this so I might be remembering some of it wrong but the script calls,  defines,  setups, or however you want to describe it,  the dummy.mod and tells it which texture to use.  The starfleet2.exe if I remember correctly has the number and size of the frames in the texture and that kind of stuff.  This is why when you put a dummy.mod in a regular script it is invisible,  the script doesn't set it up and tell it what texture to use.

Firehawk  

[zaniwhoop2]

Yep, the mdm.mod file doesn't reference it, it's actually in the executable (along with a lot of other interesting stuff).

I haven't done much API programming, but is there a way to do that in the API? Did Taldren have a special API for their missions? (And isn't there source-code for those missions?)