DescentBB

I was wondering: How do you go about making a custom reticle for a custom ship? I'm guessing it involves some sort of custom texture, but does it have to be an .oaf that switches between frames to glow and such? as fas as I know there isn't any tutorials for this sort of thing.

And also, how do you build a custom cockpit correctly? Had once tried it before, but the custom cockpit itself was miles away from the screen. Is there a tutorial for that? if not, what do I need to do?

There are different files (don't think they're animated) for the different parts of the reticle. As far as the cockpit goes, I don't even know if it's been done before. MY suggestion would be to open an existing one and modify it as much as you need.

the reticle from every ship is made from 20 ogf-textures, all in the size of 32x32 pixel with alphachannel, 1555 argb compression.

if you just want to replace a reticle make this 20 ogf, rename them to the names of the original ship-reticle and put them in d3-folder.

every ship has a prefix for the ogf-names, for exmpample the tank-reticles are with "mag" prefix.

Mag_rguna.ogf
Mag_lguna.ogf

and so on.

"rguna" and "lguna" stands for the left and right frame of the reticle (the small lines), "pr" for a primary weapon and "se" for a secondary weapon. the numbers are for the gunpoints its fired from and a+b is for "ready to fire" or "not ready to fire.

so Mag_pr0b.ogf shows, that a primary weapon on gunpoint 0 is ready to fire (massdriver in that case) this texture shows only the small indicator for the weapon, it overlaps then with the mag_rguna.ogf and mag_lguna.ogf and so on.

if you want to make a new ship with new reticle, you have to edit (or make a new one) cockpit.inf file. for example in the pyrogt i made a new reticle entry with the prefix "gtr" so the reticles textures are "gtr_lguna.ogf" and so on.

the name of the cockpit file is in the ships gam, for the tank its magcockpit.inf, and in the inf-file there is the prefix for the reticles "mag"

What do you use to even open an inf file anyway?

Ok, figured it out but how does D3 know what the prefix stands for? Also, if you open cockpit.inf you will notice that it uses pos (I'm guessing it stands for position?)

IE:

pos=105,435
textpos=500,420

I'm guessing the values stand for pixels?


What I'm wondering, is why some of these values are shown in the Phoenix and others are shown in the GL and why they are different on each?

IE:

"Phoenix:


@ primary weapon display
type=1
pos=105,435
textpos=500,420
create

@ secondary weapon display
type=2
pos=435,435
textpos=500,432
create

@ counter measures
type=11
pos=462,462
textpos=500,444
create

@ shields
type=3
rgb=96,96,240
pos=262,320
textpos=10,420
create

@ energy
type=4
rgb=200,128,0
pos=262,320
posA=20,64
posB=103,64
grscale=0.50,0.56
textpos=10,432
create

@ afterburner
type=5
rgb=255,0,0
pos=291,348
posA=0,21
textpos=10,400
create

@ ship status
type=7
pos=303,328
textpos=10,446
create

@ inventory
type=6
pos=10,32
create

@ warnings
type=8
pos=14,260
textpos=10,260
sat=0
create"


But the GL is:

"
@ cockpit information
ckptmodel=cockpit.oof
reticleprefix=ret

@ hud information
fullhudinf=hud.inf

@ shields
type=3
special
rgb=128,128,240
pos=354,320
create

@ energy
type=4
special
rgb=200,128,0
pos=264,320
create

@ inventory
type=6
pos=10,32
create

@ warnings
type=8
pos=14,260
sat=1
create

@ afterburner
type=5
pos=308,335
rgb=255,0,0
special
create

@ countermeasures
type=11
pos=490,295
create"

In other words, why aren't all the same elements defined in both inf files?

I wonder if it only reads OGF files too? I would love to have an OAF file for a hud. Then we could have a little spinning ship. Really it doesn't look all that hard to do if I can just figure out the whole inf file thing. I've made a custom HUD before. Really, the only tricky part would be the positioning of the textures themselves. The cockpit doesn't look that bad. Especially if you use Milkshape 3D. (There is a new export utility for it made by Descenterace.) And another $40 conversion utility will also handle it for you. I would love to pump out one for the GX.

the numbers are coordinates for the objects on the hud, for the files, i think you opened the wrong files, have a look in the gam dude.

pyrogl:
pyrocockpit.inf

phoenix:
advcockpit.inf

tank:
magcockpit.inf

for animated reticles, hmm i have tried that one, but found no way to do so. animated textures are .oaf´s (ogf-frames) and it looks like for reticle-textures the .ogf extension is hardcoded in the game. probably someone else knows more about this.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Arial" size="3">Originally posted by mob-messenger:
What do you use to even open an inf file anyway?</font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

with a regular text editor, such as notepad, word, wordpad ETC ETC

In the gam file all it says is this....

pyrocockpit.inf
-Directory: misc


eh?

Hey, Mob Messenger... I don't know a whole lot about the topic, but where can I find the Milkshape export utility you mentioned? I've been waiting forever to be able to use Milkshape for my D3 stuff...

Actually, I'm the guy beta testing it. It's not out yet but it will be hopefully within a couple of weeks. I will let you know ASAP!! The current one seems to work pretty good so far but I haven't done much extensive testing on it.