Help, adding Lighthouses.

[Armistead]

I would like to add lighthouses to different points on land. Seems I recall in SH3, you would open the terrian/lighthouse file with notepad and could just copy one of the files, make lat/long changes, etc and paste it.

Obvious I did it once, but how do you get a dat file to open correctly with notepad without it being gibberish.

Any advice, there once was a tutorial, but link is long dead. Just want some on mountain tops overlooking the ocean, a few islands, etc. Trying to research where some were other than the standard ones you get on piers.

[Brewster]

Originally Posted by Armistead

I would like to add lighthouses to different points on land. Seems I recall in SH3, you would open the terrian/lighthouse file with notepad and could just copy one of the files, make lat/long changes, etc and paste it.

Obvious I did it once, but how do you get a dat file to open correctly with notepad without it being gibberish.

Any advice, there once was a tutorial, but link is long dead. Just want some on mountain tops overlooking the ocean, a few islands, etc. Trying to research where some were other than the standard ones you get on piers.

Try opening it with S3D maybe you can add some more lighthouses then

[peabody]

Originally Posted by Armistead

I would like to add lighthouses to different points on land. Seems I recall in SH3, you would open the terrian/lighthouse file with notepad and could just copy one of the files, make lat/long changes, etc and paste it.

Obvious I did it once, but how do you get a dat file to open correctly with notepad without it being gibberish.

Any advice, there once was a tutorial, but link is long dead. Just want some on mountain tops overlooking the ocean, a few islands, etc. Trying to research where some were other than the standard ones you get on piers.

You can add lighthouses directly in the mission editor. In the tools menu select "Map Location Edit mode" then right click on the map and add a location. Location type: 3DLocation. In the Location 3Dmodel: Lighthouse. And you can set other things like zoom start zoomend, and dates etc.

Peabody

[Armistead]

Pea, I played with it for an hour, lil confused, maybe you or someone can help.

When I set a lighthouse or say hula village, they sink into land. If you place on flat land, looks OK, although some settle in the ground depending on slope. I've tried adjusting slope and height values, but nothing happens. So if someone could tell me how to do that.
Not sure what the zoom Z render does or other options there.

Mainly have some high cliff want to get lighthouses on.

[peabody]

Originally Posted by Armistead

Pea, I played with it for an hour, lil confused, maybe you or someone can help.

When I set a lighthouse or say hula village, they sink into land. If you place on flat land, looks OK, although some settle in the ground depending on slope. I've tried adjusting slope and height values, but nothing happens. So if someone could tell me how to do that.
Not sure what the zoom Z render does or other options there.

Mainly have some high cliff want to get lighthouses on.

Yes, they would have to settle into the ground if they are on a slope to keep them level. Otherwise they would look crooked so they should be placed on a flat section.
I have never played with the slope value, so I can't answer that part of the question.


Peabody

[Armistead]

Yea, seems you're right. If you adjust height and slope in the ME locations, it defaults back to Zero. Obvious, towns can be placed high on hills, all over the place, so seems somewhere there is a height function that works.

[peabody]

Originally Posted by Armistead

Yea, seems you're right. If you adjust height and slope in the ME locations, it defaults back to Zero. Obvious, towns can be placed high on hills, all over the place, so seems somewhere there is a height function that works.

I just remembered the lighthouse.dat is the 'small' lighthouse, there is a "Tall_Lighthouse" which may be the one you want. The "lighthouse.dat" is in the terrain/locations folder and links to the Generic lighthouse in the library/harborkit.dat. The "Tall_Lighthouse.dat" is in the Terrain/locations and does not appear to link to another object.

I took the Tall lighthouse in the terrainlocations folder changed the y value to 9 and here is the tall lighthouse at Kwajalein.



I then took data/terrain/locations/tall_lighthouse and cloned it, remapped IDs and called it tall_lighthouse2.dat and set the y value to 12. Note: I changed the y value in the node-TLighthouse NOT the node-TLighthouse_RefPoint Added it with the mission editor and now have two lighthouses at different heights.



Now I do not know much about this stuff since I have never played around with it before, so it has not been tested to see if it will create conflicts or if those items in the locations can be cloned. But this one did work and it wasn't difficult.
If you find a location you want to put one, set a value for the y (height from water) and since you know the staring point is sea level, the second guess for a value should be fairly close. Of course you would need to clone a new one for each place you put them unless you are lucky enough to find locations that are the same height. (unlikely)

But I do repeat this is NOT tested enough for me to say it is going to work.

Now if the small lighthouse is the one you want, it is linked to a separate object, so it may react differently.

Hope it helps, a starting point for testing at least.

I also remember a post of someone working on a Pearl Submarine Base and if I remember he gave some info in there about creating objects/locations/harbor kit stuff. Try a search.

Also to answer another of your question....I guessing here the Z far render may render the lighthouse at a further distance than it normally would.

Peabody

Edit: One additional point, I suggest leaving the "Location name in game" box empty or you will end up with lighthouse names on your map while playing the game.

[Armistead]

Thanks Pea, I was sort of on that path, but that will help a lot. That should work and will look a lot better than those placed lower.