Heavy Ironclad Battleship

[Gedemon]

I don't know what may cause this problem... I've got the same kind of weird bug with 2 of your units : the HMS Warrior and the Hood.

I know the anim work or has worked for them.

And strangest : the animation is working again if I set the <iGroupSize> to 2 in the xxx_CIV4UnitInfos.xml...

 

[GeneralMatt]

Hmm, that is weird. I must try that group size thing, though it is really only meant to be one ship per se..

 

[NikNaks]

Well, we could be back to the 'comments in XML makes things go wrong' debate. Have you tried removing any comments you might have?

 

[GeneralMatt]

Never thought of that. Would comments at the top of the modular XML make it go weird? And may that be the cause for the modular techs not reading the prerequisites? That is another problem I am having. The tech works fine when not modular, but it will not bring up any prereqs when modular..

 

[NikNaks]

No, modular techs is an SDK thing, but comments half way through files (not at the top) have been found to cause weird errors.

 

[GeneralMatt]

Hmm, that doesn't solve anything sorry. The only comments are at the top as I never figured out how to do them..

 

[phungus420]

I seem to be having trouble with this unit. It's frozen, with it's guns out, no wobble, no animation at all. Looks pretty bad that way, hoping I can fix it, because it's a good looking unit otherwise. This is what I have in the Art Defines flile:

Spoiler :

<UnitArtInfo>
<Type>ART_DEF_UNIT_STEAM_FRIGATE</Type>
<Button>Art/Interface/Buttons/Units/steamfrigate.dds</Button>
<fScale>0.24</fScale>
<fInterfaceScale>0.5</fInterfaceScale>
<bActAsLand>0</bActAsLand>
<bActAsAir>0</bActAsAir>
<NIF>Art/Units/SteamFrigate/ironcladbattleship.nif</NIF>
<KFM>Art/Units/Frigate/Frigate.kfm</KFM>
<SHADERNIF>Art/Units/SteamFrigate/ironcladbattleship.nif</SHADERNIF>
<ShadowDef>
<ShadowNIF>Art/Units/01_UnitShadows/FrigateShadow.nif</ShadowNIF>
<ShadowAttachNode>BIP Pelvis</ShadowAttachNode>
<fShadowScale>1.0</fShadowScale>
</ShadowDef>
<iDamageStates>4</iDamageStates>
<TrailDefinition>
<Texture>Art/Shared/water_ship_wake.dds</Texture>
<fWidth>1</fWidth>
<fLength>180.0</fLength>
<fTaper>1</fTaper>
<fFadeStartTime>.2</fFadeStartTime>
<fFadeFalloff>0.35</fFadeFalloff>
</TrailDefinition>
<fBattleDistance>0.35</fBattleDistance>
<fRangedDeathTime>0.31</fRangedDeathTime>
<bSmoothMove>1</bSmoothMove>
<fAngleInterpRate>720.0</fAngleInterpRate>
<fBankRate>.3</fBankRate>
<fExchangeAngle>25.0</fExchangeAngle>
<bActAsRanged>0</bActAsRanged>
<TrainSound>AS2D_UNIT_BUILD_UNIT</TrainSound>
<AudioRunSounds>
<AudioRunTypeLoop>LOOPSTEP_OCEAN2</AudioRunTypeLoop>
<AudioRunTypeEnd>ENDSTEP_OCEAN2</AudioRunTypeEnd>
</AudioRunSounds>
<SelectionSound>AS3D_UN_OCEAN_END1</SelectionSound>
<ActionSound>AS3D_UN_OCEAN_END1</ActionSound>
</UnitArtInfo>

So, how do I fix this?

 

[GeneralMatt]

I know, I have been haing that problem to and I have not figured it yet, sorry. The way I did it used to work so I have no idea what is up..

 

[Thomas SG]

Please, make the animations work soon. We want to use one of your Ironships in the "[CCV] Community Civ V" - Projekt. But it must be animated! And your models are the best I've seen.

But without animations they are at the moment a little bit useless.

 

[Thomas SG]

By the way - can you combine two animations? We need a new attack-animation for the guided missile because we want a tactical missile in our mod.

So we need:
flight of the missile + detonation of a nuke

and maybe the typical glow

 

[GeneralMatt]

Yeah, I will give them another go when I get over the newness of my new PC.

And I think you can combine animations, but I do not know how sorry.

 

[phungus420]

Yeah, I will give them another go when I get over the newness of my new PC.

Awesome I will be waiting (in)patiently for your animated version of the Ironclad battleship. It really is a pretty unit, and I can't find any other unit like it to fill that era of warships, so hopefully you can get it to work.

 

[GeneralMatt]

I did do one a while back, but it was not nearly as good.. (Model/texture wise)

 

[phungus420]

If you're talking about the Warrior, it's only 2 .dds files. I need a .nif to use, so that's actually pretty useless for most "basement" modders like myself.

On a related note, why does almost no one include a button (thanks to those who do, it makes modding my game sooo much easier) with their unit graphics. I litterally spend most of my time adding units and modding my game trying to find apropriate buttons, would be nice if I could just use an included .dds file with the downloads. Am I missing something here, like is there an easier way to "make" buttons, or is scouring the web looking for apropriat .dds files the only way?

 

[Thomas SG]

Dear GeneralMatt,

I'm going crazy. What I am doing wrong? I know there is still a problem with the animation, but I got more problems.

In my game the cannons are all pink! And in the civiliopedia the ship is very, very dark and blue! I made some screenshots.

Can you tell me what's going wrong?

I also tried to open the unit with nifskope - no chance, only this message:

"failed to load block number 3 (NiNode) previous block was NiCollisionData"
"failed to load nif from 'C:/Spiele/Civilization 4 - Das Original/Beyond the Sword/Mods/CCV Versionen/Community Civ V/Assets/Art/Units/Ironfrigate/ironcladbattleship.nif'"

And why is the only entry "0 NiNode battleship.nif"?

 

[GeneralMatt]

The pink cannon are because the texture is missing. I was sure I included it, is there a frigate.dds in the folder?

The civelopedia is just the reflection off the water, or more the simulated reflection.

And because I did some stuff with the bones makes it unreadable by NifSkope. Try NifViewer if you really need to look at it..

 

[Thomas SG]

Is it possible to kill the reflection?

I deleted the frigate.dds. Sorry, my mistake.

 

[GeneralMatt]

No, I think the reflection is deletable afaik, do not worry too much about how it looks in the pedia..

About the .dds, yeah, just use the generic one, it is the same.

 

[Refar]

It seems to me, like the guns are hidden (~ animate correctly) in the pedia screenshot - no pink there... Cann you tell me (short version) how you export/animate the unit ? I looked over it in NifViewer and found nothing wrong, but something must be causing the animatino mess up...

Another thing i am curios about is - is it possible to add Bones/Skin in blender ? If yes, there might be a easy way to make the unit having a FX shade with Gloss - i think for the metal ship this would be a gret improvement.

 

[GeneralMatt]

Basically, for animating I do this.
I export the hull separately. I then import say the Frigates hull into Blender, move around the cannons and copy/paste to make new ones. I line them up with the ones on the hull of the ship. I also delete the entire frigate mesh, save the cannon.

I then export the guns and bones of the frigate, and open it in NifViewer. I then add the hull mesh and attach it to the right bone. I then play around with the numbers to make it all sit right.

The funny thing is that it used to work but now it doesn't.

And yes, you can add textures and bones in Blender, not sure how to add more than one though. But I know you can add new textures through 'Viewer.