Joint Project: Nerdly & SW77

[nerdly_dood]

XD ArchiDom is in Russian! Somehow, that's amusing to me...

:O WHOA, that place is AWESOME! They have everything there i could possibly need! Half of the pictures don't show up, though... I should try Internet Explorer, maybe? Yup, that works.

Hey, is that a Jeep Cherokee I see? I wonder what that would look like in-game--OH YEAH you already did that!

And that's good that I just need Gmax because I found it easily enough, free, and I made a truck with its boxes and cylinders (but that inflated the poly count because it was entirely made of boxes and cylinders, and i couldn't figure out how to change the shapes, just stretch/smush them, grow/shrink them or rotate them)

[allan_kuan1992]

I'm craving for some police vans and cars, if you don't mind. =P

However, knowing that some episodes of RL can be severe, I'll just wait for them. Patiently.

- Allan Kuan

[nerdly_dood]

@ Allan Kuan: This isn't my main development thread - the link is in my signature.

[nerdly_dood]

About this "additional" thing... First of all, I know that there is some sort of exemplar file that makes the vehicle an additional, but I don't know how to edit exemplars.  Second, say I re-skin an additional vehicle, with the original model file's IID being, for example, 0xc2350010. (Wonder where I got that, eh?)  Would I just edit the exemplar file so that wherever I find that IID in the exemplar, I change it to one in my own IID range (such as 0xe4400000) that has a model that I want to act similarly (with the same sort of thing for different models like headlight models and flashing light models)?

[Swamper77]

Nerdly,

You got it pretty well. In addition to changing the model references, you will also have to change the IID of the Exemplar file so it doesn't override the existing one. At the top of the Reader program, there is a button labeled File Info. Click on this button and then click on the Exemplar file to edit its IID. A vehicle Exemplar file with a unique IID is what makes a vehicle an additional.

Example:
I could take an existing vehicle that has Maxis model references, change the IID of its exemplar, presto!, I would have a new vehicle that is separate from the Maxis files.

-Swamper

[nerdly_dood]

I know how to change the IIDs - I changed the IID of the Euro fire truck light model to the one of the police car light model, didn't I? I mostly need to know how exactly one would go about editing an exemplar - but that would be once my laptop's CMOS realizes that although it's true that the trackpoint has a severe case of epilepsy, I have remedied that by adding an external mouse that replaces the trackpoint's functionality. But of course it thinks that since the trackpoint doesn't work it's the end of the world so it won't load Windows until the trackpoint passes the SystemBoard Looptest...which usually takes about 5 minutes of looptest while I move the trackpoint variously, but today it's taken an hour and a half for me to give up and use a library computer. (The last half hour was me walking a mile to the local public library, which is my ISP)

[Swamper77]

If you have ever edited a Lot with the Reader, it will be very similar for editing a vehicle Exemplar. You will be mainly concerned with the IID's of the vehicle model, headlight model, and model for the flashing/rotating lights. You just need to edit the properties in the Exemplar that reference the models so they have your IID's instead of what the existing ones are.

-Swamper

[nerdly_dood]

Okay so I think I know how I'm going to use your exemplars to make additionals.

And about the ambulance I recommended - you could just copy the front end of the ambulances youalready made to replace the front of the Euro ambulance, then a little tweaking to get te proportions right and then cut out for the lightbar... then of course the light effect... I could probably GIMP something as an animation.

[nerdly_dood]

Okay, so... To change the exemplar that identifies a model as an additional fire truck, what do I change to what to make it an additional police car?

[Swamper77]

Nerdly,

Here is what you will need to change in the vehicle exemplar to make an additional police car using one of the additional fire units as a base:

Parent Cohort: The Instance ID of the Parent Cohort that is referenced needs be 0xAA284E60, which is what the Maxis police car references.

Model Resource Key: The TGI of this property needs to point to the TGI of your police car model.

Auxiliary Model 1 Key (headlights): The TGI of this property needs to point to the TGI of your police car's headlight model. Since you're making an additional police car, it should not point to the default police car headlight model (0x10642000). Make a copy of the existing rotating light model that you want to use for your additional police car and then give it an unique ID.

UDI Vehicle Panel Exemplar Key: The ID needs to be 0xABE8BF54, which is the police car dashboard display for UDI.

Final Group ID: This property should have the value 0x00004228. If the property is missing, add it by right-clicking among the properties in the vehicle exemplar and select "Add property". Occupant Group ID 0x00004228 is for making the game see the vehicle as a patrol car and for the car to behave like the game's police car when in UDI Mode.

Occupant Groups: There should be four: 0x00004000, 0x00004002, 0x00004207, and 0x00004228. If this property is missing, add it by right-clicking among the properties in the vehicle exemplar and select "Add property". The four Occupant Groups define the following for the game:
- 0x00004000: This exemplar is for an automaton (automata)
- 0x00004002: This exemplar is for a vehicle
- 0x00004207: This vehicle is a police vehicle
- 0x00004228: This vehicle is a patrol car

For Police Vans, replace all references of 0x00004228 with 0x00004231.

Auxiliary Model 2 Key: The TGI of this property needs to point to the TGI of your police car's rotating light model. Since you're making an additional police car, it should not point to the default police car rotating light model (0x10643000). Make a copy of the existing rotating light model that you want to use for your additional police car and then give it an unique ID.

TGI of the vehicle's exemplar file: This should be changed to a unique IID that is not used by anything else. I hope you have been keeping track of which IID's you have been using.

-Swamper

[nerdly_dood]

AWESOME! Thanks!

I have indeed been keeping track of my IIDs, and except for my props, they are all 0x10640000 or something similar.

For my props they are 0xE4400000 - 0xE4400009 (I only have ten done so far)

[nerdly_dood]

Here's my take on your newer fire chief cars:


That car has a transparent hood image, and it has the word POLICE over the back wheel where you had it saying 911 on the fire chief cars. I could, if I put a little effort into it, change that car into a brown sheriff car, or perhaps I could try to turn the thing white and put a stripe of some color down the side... but the blue paintjob is the only one I have done ATM.

I've had that teaser floating around on my laptop hard drive for the past few months... and I have the full capability at this time to make it into a functional police car mod. But i won't release it until I can tweak the skin to account for updates in the model file for the police car version.

I'll post a picture of the main skin texture and of the alpha map soon. (Yes I changed the alpha map too)

[Swamper77]

Not looking too bad there. I sort of wish you had provided a slightly bigger image, but it looks good. The text is even readable on the back

-Jan

[Pat]

ND looking real good here!!

[nerdly_dood]

I should mention that I CANNOT release the blue Crown Victoria police car until Swamper has released his police car pack.

Once he's put them on the LEX then I'll re-skin his cars to add variety and then upload them to the LEX, and if necessary I'll use them as my candidacy upload thing. And since Swamper is NOT uploading to the STEX anymore, I won't be releasing my versions of his newer creations to the STEX either. If, however, I'm working on some automata that are already on the STEX then I'll put them wherever they were originally available.

Oh, and the skins for the police car:

[Simpson]

This is a very good work N_D