Vice City map import chronicles

[Randomdays]

A basic crew's quarters done. Spock added for sizing.

[Randomdays]

I'm working on the shuttlebay at the moment, which started out at 200k+ vertices. Most of that turned out to be the shuttles and workbees included, and the cargo area at the back.

I got rid of their vehicles and added an imported shuttle, plus got rid of the cargo bay, and that brought the total down to 20k+ I'm in the process of addeing the textures to the room.

An interesting problem came up though. I was looking to add the shuttle form the TOS "Bridge Commander" conversion.

In nifskope, it appears with the texture in place, but with some texture errors. Probably due to the game using a very early form of nif. The bridge room had the same errors but converting to obj and back fixed it.

With the shuttle this didn't work. I think its more likely due to some problem with a non standard tga texture. The texture shows a little bit of the proper placement, but most of it is missing and black in the preview, instead of white. And there's no red or yellow on the tga, but its shown on the shuttle

I'll upload it in the request folders if anyone wants to look it it and try to figure it out.

[Randomdays]

Shuttlebay just about done. I used a different, higher poly count shuttle to place on the hanger deck. Sulu used for sizing, but I think the shuttle is a little small. Still tweaking. Total vertices 24k +. Probably the most complex of these rooms.

Should just be the corridor left and then maybe going back to the map making.

[cranlox]

Going to see if I can touch up or contribute something about that problematic texture.

[Randomdays]

Great Cranlox!

I took the small corridor piece from the transporter room area and broke it off to be by itself. Tweaked it a bit and added a red crossbar across the corridor.

I'm going back up to the "reserved" post I set aside and see if I can get the Enterprise Map started.

[cranlox]

When I opened the nif that you sent it did not allow me to see anything in nifskope, I was able to see the textures with transparencies and it seemed that they were healthy and well

[Randomdays]

On the TOS Shuttle Type 1 nif, it comes up as in the picture above with a lot of texture errors,but the texture in place. I'm using nifskope version 1.13

Bridge Commander is netimmerse version 3.1 (I think) ,Freedom Force is version 4.0.0.2., and FFvt3R is version 10.1.0.0

For me, the tga comes up as in the second pic - a little bit of color but most of it black - and no red or yellow color, and no black writing. It might be the program I'm using to work with tgas. This is what I see for the 2 textures that come with the shuttle (screen caps since I can't upload tgas with the site I use). These are the only 2 textures that came with the nif - and since everything is there in nifskope, the missing parts have to be in the texture - and the 2nd pic with the uv for the engines show where the missing parts should be.

As mentioned, I was able to use the TOS bridge from Bridge Commander and get it converted, but the textures appeared asnormal tgas, compared to the shuttle ones.

[Randomdays]

Moving back down here since I ran out of room at the beginning of the thread.

Now we're going to start adding the custom trek rooms to the map

1) Make as folder under "Data/Art/library/" for the trek nifs. Besides the standard "area_specific" one that comes with the game, I have one called "area_speciff1" from adding some custom maps. I'll create a directory there called "TOS Enterprise" for the new nifs.

Each room will have its own folder under that, so I'll create another folder named "enterprise bridge". From the bridge room, I'll add just the nif here. All the textures will go int the standard "Data/Art/library/area_specific/_textures" folder

[Randomdays]

Go to the "templates"  tab towards the right on the top of the editor.

Templates are set up for everything in the game, from objects to fx's,  from sounds to characters. Scroll to a building on the list and you'll see some settings for it on the right. These setting make the building "act" like a building in game. Different types of items in the games will have not only different values in the game, but different tabs as well. If you click on an empty tab you'll see a list of settings available.

Since we're adding the bridge, we'll set it up as a building. On the building that you've scrolled to, click on the bottom button "Copy" This will make a copy of that building.

On the copy, leave the settings the same, as well as the class and material, but click on the bottom button "Rename" and change the name to "Enterprise Bridge", and change the nif to the location where the bridge nif is.

Last, click the "save" button at the bottom to add it to the "objects.dat" file. This holds all the templates in the game - the standard ones and the custom ones that you added. The Enterprise bridge is now available to be used in game.

[Randomdays]

Now, go back to the mission tab. For a standard item, you would be able to go the map editor and place the item on the map with the editor commands. For some reason, I'm not seeing the custom content here, so I'll add it using the Mission tab.

1) Click on one of the civilians on the list to the left and make a copy of him.

2) Select the copy, and select the "rename" button. Rename it to "enterprise_bridge".

3) Changes the type from "Character" to "Generic", and change the template to the new one for the "Enterprise Bridge"

4) Change the 3 position values to "0" and the bridge will now be on the map at its center.

[Randomdays]

1) use the "edit in game" button to go to the map, and the bridge should there, right in the center. Going back and forth between the in game editor and the templates tab, enter the x/y/z values for the bridge to move it where you want it. the top of the 3 other options will rotate the nif. You can actually grab it in the in game editor and move it with the mouse, but I like the templates tab more.

In this case I'm moving the bridge to the north edge of the map, and rotating the turbolift to the south, to connect to the corridor and the rest of the rooms. When its in position, save the level.

If you go into the normal game and select it from the "Rumble Room" choices, you can move to the bridge and check it out.

In the pic below, I had El Diablo fly north and land next to the captain's chair. The bridge right now is done except I need to add some bounding boxes and split the chairs off as separate items that you could pick up and throw.

After this, It should be just doing the final setup for the rest of the rooms, like for the bridge, and adding them to the map.

[Randomdays]

1) Markers - Markers are placed on the map but can't be seen during gameplay. ( I think) They can be used by scripts to add items to the map during play, like having some thugs show up when the script is run.

On the missions tab there's a marker called "skirmish spawn" When you start a rumble room, Your characters will start near the skirmish spawn. I've moved this onto the bridge room so you'll start there.

Whatever enemies you setup in the rumble room menu will appear near their own spawn points. The standard looks like 4 different groups of 6 each, giving you 24, the max enemies allowed when setting up the rumble room. I think if you only have 1 enemy he'll spawn at the first spawn point, but it could be any of the 24 randomly.

There can also be squadmarkers used for multiplayer and where the different teams will spawn on the map.

2) Nodes. When editing some maps you might see some icons on it some some little blue people.
These are Civ Nodes. They direct the civs as they wander the map. You can see these on the mission tab in the editor if you check the layout tab on the bottom. When reaching one, if there's a string on it in the mission tab, the civ will go that that node next. Otherwise, they'll go to a random node, usually the nearest. I think any civ can use any node.

There are 443 nodes on my map - I'm not sure why there's so many, or how you would till a civ to use some nodes and not others.

Edit - So to make a civ follow particular nodes, place the civ near the civ node you want him to start with. That node, and each one after it would have to have the line placed on it where you want him to go next. You would have to do this for every civ for his own route.  If a civ stared at a node not with a route on it, he could accidentally move from that to one with a route, and then he'd start on the path sequence as well.

Also, I backed up the map files and deleted all the civ markers. They still wandered a bit, and reacted to the rumble room enemy by running away.

There are also nodes for vehicles, road nodes, and traffic nodes that deal with civs and vehicles so that they interact without problems at intersections. I've deleted all of these from the map as they're not needed.

These are not objects so you don't create them in the objects tab and there's no nif for them. Reading some old posts, it looks like they're difficult to create except in Max, at least for FF1. I'm not sure about FFvt3R. If there's some already present, you ought to be able to copy and make new ones.

From more reading, it looks like they're not absolutely necessary, as  the civs will wander without them. They could be set up for patrol routes perhaps.

The map I'm using for my base has 15 male civs and 14 female one, divided between those who wander the city half and the park half. I'm going to try to move all the city civs and markers into the Enterprise rooms, and change the standard civs into random Enterprise crew.

Last on this, on the object tab for the civs, under the skin entry on the right, their skin is set to "random". When they spawn, any of the skins for that character might be picked, so that they all don't look all look alike

[Randomdays]

1) Map object properties. Most of the properties you can add to an item's template are set to 0 or 1, for "off" and "on". If you add the "flyover" property and set it to 0, the item will no longer highlight or give you hit points when you mouse over it. The "ambient" property looks like it will do the same, making it part of the map, but it seems to disable bounding boxes

2) Custom sounds. This appears to be pretty easy, though I don't know how everything works.
 
a) put your custom sound in the main "data/sounds/" folder. It has to be a  wav file. If it doesn't seem to work, try making a single channel sound instead of stereo, and/or lowering quality to 22k. My sound is named "bridge.wav"

b) go to the sound tab and copy an existing sound. Since I'm adding an ambient bridge sound, I'll pick one of the ambient sounds up top.

c) in this case, rename it to "ambient_bridge." Next, select if its global, can heard everywhere on the map, or local, just near a marker.

d) "remove" whatever wav's are there from the original you copied from, and add the bridge sound

e)  I'm not sure what "Mode" does, but most of the pre-existing sounds use "no variation" or "simple variation"

f) For looping, pick "sequential looping" I think this is mainly used if you have more than one sound added in. It can play the sounds in order and then start over, overlap them, or play them at the same time. I'm guessing here. Set loop delays to "0" and check "always loop" to on so that it will loop and repeat itself when done.

g) The other options set the volume, how fast it fades with distance, whether it can be blocked by walls and such, and some standard sound options.

I'm guessing on a lot of this since I couldn't find a lot of info with searching, but it seems to be working all right in game.

h) on the mission tab, if you have an existing sound marker, copy it. Rename it to" amb_bridge". The positions are the marker's standard x/y/z location on the map. Very important, on the top "strings" space on the right side, type in the name of the sound, in this case "bridge". I don't know what the rest of the entries are for, and they don't look like they're used that much on the other entries on the tsb.

The sound should now play when you get near it on the map.

[Epimethee]

Impressive work, Randomdays!

[Randomdays]

Thanks!

More complicated that I thought, mainly due to the custom items

I've added all the rooms and corridors.

For each room, I imported it in Blender, then also imported a stone wall from the park objects. This is mainly a donor for the bounding box. I join part of the room to the stone wall, and then delete the wall - the room part has now inherited the bounding box.

In edit mode, I added vertices to the bounding box and shaped it" to the entire room - it can get pretty complicated.

Even with what looks like a complete bounding box, the civs on the map seem to find "holes" in it, and still wander in, or I try to go somewhere I ought to be able to, but find myself blocked.

For the holes, I'm placing some park walls around the rooms to act as an additional barrier. I figure I'll cover everything up but the rooms with a large "black" area so you won't be able to see them, like the underground maps

The other thing I'm not sure of is flying - in the underground maps, they're set below ground level, and you can't fly above the edge to take shortcuts.

Looking at an underground map in nifskope, map 3a, there's an entry called "physics box" with one of the sublines called "AREA UNPASSABLE",and a material called "hide me" with that.

It looks like some ultra high bounding boxes following the edges of the underground rooms - that might get a bit complicated as well.

Next up is still adding a few items like chairs, and wall comms, to the various rooms and corridors

Below is a pic of the engine room with its bounding box (the thin white lines) in nifskope. I can climb the stairs on the left and walk on the midlevel, but not the stairs on the right. Though I can fly and land on the the northern part of the mid level on the right, but not the southern half

[Randomdays]

Update - still bogged down in details but making progress.

I think the character couldn't go up the stairs in the engine room because they were too narrow for the character's own bounding box.

Widening the stairs and turning the bounding box under it from a ramp to a series of smaller "step" bounding boxes got her to the top.

I also had some problems with some doorways whuch is probably the same thing. Moving the bounding box edges away from the door let the character go thru.

1) Bridge - complete for the model. Chairs added. In a bit I'll look into adding the classic bridge "beeps" with a looping sound when I figure it out.

2) Transporter room - complete. Added a wall picture of a star map like in the series. Added a wallcom.

3) Briefing Room - complete. Kept the chairs as part of the map, but broke off the table and chairs into a separate nif. Bounding box problem again - when it was part of the room, the bounding box around the table didn't work and you could walk thru it. Separating it and giving it its own bounding box fixed that.

4) Corridors - almost complete - added wallcomms along the wall. I need to block off the unused doors so you can't go thru them.

5) Crew quarters - complete. Opened up the doorways to fix the bounding box problem. Added Spock's Vulcan Harp to a table and an "IDIC" symbol to the wall.

6) Sickbay -complete - Didn't need any fixes

7) Engineering - complete - broke off the right stairs as its own nif and bounding box. Removed part of the roof on the left to see the mid level better.

8) Shuttle Bay - fixing it up. Added the wall comm. Replace the included barrels with some from the game.

[Randomdays]

Today's update -

Added some info on one of the reserved posts above on markers and civ nodes

created a small wall piece to block and hide the "doors to nowhere" on the main corridor.

I've had to redo some rooms a few times due to foolishly saving over them with the wrong room name. Everything's backed up now

Did some testing on bounding boxes and what it would take to block a flyer from going over them. Mixed results.

If you take a standard graph block in Blender and assume its about 15 feet, the underground maps have a large, flat, complex, bounding box with its height at about 150 feet. The bottom is a bit below ground level with the many sides connecting the two. The areas where the player can move are like linked islands on the top and bottom sides.

Testing in game with some walls I made, I blocked in the spawning enemy in the rumble room in a small box, so they wouldn't bother me during test. Bounding boxes 60 feet high can be flown over, but not 90 feet... sometimes. I've tried heights of everything up to 150 feet, and got different results- sometimes they act like they're not there and the character moves right through them. Sometimes the character flies way up to the top, and sometime they block flying as they should.

Since they're mainly setup to limit characters, enemies and civs on the ship, who should be walking and not flying anyway, it'll have to do unless I get more info on how they work.

Besides each room's bounding box, I'm placing some of the new walls around them for backup on trying to keep everyone where they belong.

Next, sitting some custom shaped black floor pieces at the height of the walls to block them, and the normal map, from sight. The corridors still look a bit bland so I'm going to add a few more pieces for the wall to brighten them up. Looking at some shots from the show, I see different lighting was used to help with that as well.

[Randomdays]

Update - just about finished with this stage of the map.

All rooms are on the map with walls around them ,and blackouts placed at ground level on the city part of the map, plus at corridor height around most of the rooms. fixed some"shimmering" areas that occur when two nif surfaces occupy the same spot, either on the map or in the nif itself.

Still some problems with both blender and nifskope trying to figure out the outside of some the nifs, but not much I can do other than what I've already done.

Found out how to add customs sounds so you'll hear the standard bridge noises. I'd like to add the noise of the doors opening, and have a teleport set up to take you to the park area, either from the transporter of the shuttle, but that would take scripting.

Still to do - import custom characters to actually be part of the map, and if Kommando is still interested, set him up to make some female star fleet characters to wander the ship. If not, I'll use some of the Elite Force models and randomize them.

Adding how to import sounds to the reserved entry above, and importing characters later after that gets done.

[BentonGrey]

RD, it looks like you've been doing some amazing stuff!  I haven't had time to sit down and go through your process and your questions, but I'll try to get to it this week, though it looks like you're figuring stuff out just fine without me!

[Randomdays]

Thanks Benton. The Star Trek map is coming along pretty well, just not sure what some of the parameters mean on the tabs, and the scripting part mentioned above.

For the Vice City map, the hold up is still needing a huge base map that I can freely move about on. Your new note on maps might help with that though. I'll have to see if putting a flat square with a bounding box on the main map will allow me to to walk freely. If not, then I'll still need a huge map to work with. The base for the Star Trek map is one of the larger maps available, and its nowhere close to being large enough.

[cmdrkoenig67]

Wow, RD... You're Star Trek TOS map looks great! Much better than my old ST TOS map made out of Freedom Force parts LOL!

One suggestion (you don't have to take it, but I thought I'd mention it)... You might want to set your bridge sound to local (for just the bridge) and make sure your sound marker for it is on the bridge.

Dana