[WIP] Lighthouses mod

[MLF]

Hi Gap,

Tried PM'ing but your mailbox is full.

May have a fix for the drive through reef - added new node as child of existing node and moved 3d model, reflections below that. Possible that StaticObject describes a child object rather than an object at its own level????
Changed StaticObject type as well to 10/-1 and set squarelength to 200 (same as in Kendras' LH file) - not sure what that does though.

Any objections to me posting the changed file in this thread?

Regards,

MLF

[gap]

Thank you for your feedback and sorry for the late replies guys. Yesterday and the day before yesterday I was on my way to home, and I had hardly the time to read your comments

Originally Posted by Kendras

Without my computer, I can already answer to this : Yes ! I already tried this issue by colliding the rock with my U-boot. The AI ships are also stuck if they are near the island. So, no need to have a .zon file with collision spheres ! But if you make this model a land unit, then you will have to create a .zon file with plenty of collision spheres, and this will require a lot of time.

Setting the reefs as land units is not strictly needed, especially if we find a way to anchor a terrain object to the seabed. Anyway in my own experience with SH5, even land or sea units can be made collisionable using the staticobject controller rather than collision spheres, just like terrain objects. IIRC the secret is putting the controller not directly on the main unit but on an equipment linked to it through eqp file. Though following the 3D profile of its parent unit, this collisionable equipment (can be a dummy, invisible copy of the reef) should not touch the main model in any point, otherwise some weird things can happen.

[gap]

Originally Posted by MLF

Hi Gap,

Tried PM'ing but your mailbox is full.

As usual

Originally Posted by MLF

May have a fix for the drive through reef - added new node as child of existing node and moved 3d model, reflections below that. Possible that StaticObject describes a child object rather than an object at its own level????

Possible. As I noted a few days ago, SHIII harbors stored in the Terrain/Locations folder, contain no actual 3D mesh, but only dummy placement nodes that Library 3D models, on turn, are attached to. Staticobject controllers are attached to Terrain/Locations files (one per file), rather than to library models. It is also possible that traslation values of placement nodes (rather than the ones of the nodes containing the 3D models) are used for determining the position of each model relative to the 3D world

Originally Posted by MLF

Changed StaticObject type as well to 10/-1 and set squarelength to 200 (same as in Kendras' LH file) - not sure what that does though.

Oh sorry, I had forgot setting controller's squarelength property after adding it, but the 10 / 1000 type controller container should be correct. IIRC I took it from one of the stock files

Originally Posted by MLF

Any objections to me posting the changed file in this thread?

Yes, post it please. The more we are, the quicker we can sort bugs out

[gap]

Originally Posted by MLF

Tried the reef out.
Put the .dat file in \Terrains\Locations folder.
Updated the Locations.cfg.

CTD.

Remapped id's in Silent3ditor

No more CTD.

Originally Posted by SquareSteelBar

Confirm that [except CTD]

Originally Posted by MLF

Had to delete Locations.cfg which came with mod as caused CTD (calls up bits and bobs that I don't have).
Edited my Locations.cfg as suggested, and all ran OK.

So what's up with those CTD's? Are they Id-related or not? My dat file should not have duplicated Id's as I made it from scratch. I copy/pasted a few controllers with their parents from other files, but I am pretty sure I remapped all of them

[gap]

Originally Posted by MLF

Reef visible in game on surface (whether OnLand= true or false)

Nothing visible underwater.

And I drove straight through it.

Originally Posted by SquareSteelBar

Confirm that

Originally Posted by Kendras

Yes, that's logical, because the base of the 3D model will always be placed on the sea surface if the model is placed from the Locations.cfg file. But the base should be placed on the sea bed if you create a new land unit and place it with the mission editor.

So a terrain object is always anchored to the sea surface, wether its OnLand property is set to true or false?
To me sounds more logical having the reefs anchored to the seabottom for at least for two reasons:

1 - If the rocks are on land, their base will always be on the seabottom, no matter what sea depth is, thus avoiding the risk of having "floating rocks"

2 - depending on sea depth, a bigger or smaller portion will emerge from water, thus providing more variety in game.

What do you think?