Cloning of ships

[Safe-Keeper]

Has anyone got a good Ship Cloning tutorial? I found stljeffbb1's tutorial a bit disorganized and hard to understand (not to mention it deals with cloning planes, not ships, although of course it's lost on me what difference that makes).

[bigboywooly]

Tis fairly simple S-K - well this is as much as I have gathered and used
Make a copy of the ships folder that you want to clone

Say you want to clone a N class DD to a M class

Rename all the N class items in the folder to M class - including the cfg entry
Open Pack3d - I find version 2 or 3 best
Point towards your renamed dat and hit clone

Done

To do the job properly the dats references need changing too

Changing the references inside the dat from N to M require Hexediting
With the example above its a simple swop from N to M
I have learned to leave the Rudder and Prop entries unchanged or other files need altering then also

If you are keeping the amount of letters the same then its fairly easy
:rotfl:

What do you have mind doing ?

A good step by step tutorial would be a good thing
By someone experianced
lmao

[Safe-Keeper]

If I don't hex the dat references, does it still work, even though it'll presumably still have the same default name in the editor (I notice some new GWX craft still have generic names such as C2_Cargo or whatever)?

[bigboywooly]

Yes it will still work
One of the main changes really is the texture
If you can hex the texture name change you are sure of the ship picking up your new textures - not that of the original

Go ahead and try one S-K
Add through JSGME to your install and check out in the museum
Will work ok with just a straghtforward clone anyway
dont forget to make a new cfg for the Roster folder too
Use a copy of the original ships and remname - inc inside entries

Any problems post or PM me mate
Will help if I can

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by Safe-Keeper

Has anyone got a good Ship Cloning tutorial? I found stljeffbb1's tutorial a bit disorganized and hard to understand (not to mention it deals with cloning planes, not ships, although of course it's lost on me what difference that makes).

IIRC stljeffbb1 wrote his tutorial back when we didn't have very many modding tools. Sansal's improved Pack3d versions simplified everything & made it possible to clone a ship in seconds, whereas before it literally took days.

[Stiebler]

Sansal's Pack 3D writes its changes back onto the original file. This can make tracing file changes very difficult.

Therefore:
1. Do your work with Pack 3D on *copies* of the original files, placed in their own folder.
2. Use some kind of hex editor to load the modified files (even if you don't alter them) and then re-save them, in order to change the file date to today's date.

That will save you a lot of anguish.

Stiebler.

[Safe-Keeper]

OK, so what I did was take the Small Tanker, rename every file from NOTSf to NOTSf_Altmark, edit the texture file, copy the .DAT file into another directory and clone it using Pack3D, and putting it back into the right directory. Finally, I added it as a new entry to Germany's roster and to the EnglishNames file. I did rollback SH3 Commander.

Now not even the main menu of the game loads, nor does the editor.

At least I didn't mess up the texture file when I edited it (before I tried to clone the ship).

The name's in the wrong place, but that's minor. I might work it out in time.

2. Use some kind of hex editor to load the modified files (even if you don't alter them) and then re-save them, in order to change the file date to today's date.

All of them?

[pontius]

Did you also change the content of the *cfg- files?
Renaming them is not enough.

- pontius

[Safe-Keeper]

I changed OTSF to OTSF_Altmark, if that's what you mean. It now reads "ClassName=OTSF_Altmark".

Edit: I also added an entry to EnglishNames.cfg: OTSF_Altmark=German Tanker Altmark.

Are there others that I've forgotten about?

[pontius]

Make sure you have changed all filenames correctly, sometimes a little writing-error is causing problems.

Check all files again:

Structure:

data/Sea/Shipname-Folder
rename the Folder to your wanted shipname.
(OTSF_Altmark)

data/Sea/Shipname-Folder/
rename all files here,
check shipname.cfg for the right classname,
give the unit the unittype you want to have.

data/Sea/germannames.cfg -or- englishnames.cfg
check if shipname is correct.

data/Roster/German/Sea/shipname.cfg
check here if classname and Unittype is the same like in the shipname-folder.

[Safe-Keeper]

Nope, couldn't figure it out. I even tried to delete the whole new NOTSf_Altmark folder, its EnglishNames.cfg entry, and the .cfg in the German sea roster. Still not even the Main menu of the game loads.

Think I messed something up and that it's time to reinstall SHIII for about the dozenth time since starting my work on NorOps.

[bigboywooly]

Try adding your work through JSGME
That way you should be able to remove it easily

Send me the files and will take a look
My email is in profile

Oh Sometimes extending the original name is not good
You could have renamed the ship NOTSa
Same amount of letters

[bigboywooly]

http://www.mediafire.com/?anjyymduxd2

Copied the NOTSf folder to desktop
Renamed folder and all contents to NOTSa
Renamed class name in cfg to OTSA
Cloned dat with pack3d version 3 whilst in the folder ( helps keep damage model - thanx Ref )
Renamed a copy of the Roster cfg to OTSA and class name inside and changed disply name to Altmark
Added OTSA=Altmark to englsh names.cfg

Opened up the NOTSa dat in Ultredit and replaced all NOTSf entries with NOTSa except Rudder and both Prop entries - if these are changed it requires the sim ( ? ) cfg to be hex edited and not as easy ( thanx Ref )

Made into JSGME format and added to game

Take a look at the file formats and changes made to names etc then you can do your own S-K

[Safe-Keeper]

Enabled it and added an entry to EnglishNames.cfg. And got a "Not found in platform library" error in return.

[bigboywooly]

Hmmm I dont
Ok what class name does it give as not found
Usually says something like class OTSA not found in platforms library

Which means it cant find the ship in the Sea folder