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i know i always ask a few questions each day, and many are kinda ridiculous so here is another one. would it be possible to create a large skiff (like the one in mos eisley) into an actual vehicle? and if possible would there be a way to make it so there is a pilot position and a few turret positions, but then be able to roam free on the deck while it is being piloted? if it is possible i personally think it would be freaking awesome to have them like that (imagine it, your team has one, and so does your enemy. you could attack each other and it would be like a sea battle, except your hovering instead of on water. you could snipe enemy troops on the enemy deck, and if you were a jet trooper you could jump on to their ship).

I know the grammar is all screwed up but what ever.

actually, that does sound really fun, but i have no idea if/how its possible...

It sounds like your talking about 2 large transports that could be piloted? If so I doubt it because I believe it would have terrible frame rates (Lag) on multiplayer internet. You could however put a couple of opposing large cruisers in close enough proximity to allow turrets and snipers to hit each other on opposing ships. I made something similiar to this many years ago with Star Wars Tribes1 mod and it was a blast!

this is one of the coolest ideas i've heard of

Yes, actually it is very possible in BF2. They fixed the collision. Now we just need someone to do the model

Teancum,
That's kewl I'm actually working on some larger spacecraft models right now that could be used for maps like these. You'll have to give me a little more time though. These were spacecraft models I had hand drawn many years ago and it looks like I finally have a game platform I could use them on

Yeah, when modeling something as big as a sail barge that you want to pilot, you have to model every place you want to be able to get to. For example... the inside hallways and rooms, and the deck on top. What I don't know is how you'd set up drivers and stuff. It would work, but basically if you press your enter vehicle button while running around you'd go to a driving/turret position. I guess that works, though.

sounds like air buccaneers from unreal tournament 2004 (very fun mod)

This is something I was gonna do in JKA. Yes, it's posible, unless you mean the barge parked in Mos Eisley instead of a skiff. It's possible but it would have the ramps you use to get on it attached to the side and the parts sticking out the bottom would still be like that.

Hmm... do I see a naval map coming in the near future?

Think about it. Instead of making them hover, put 'em in the water, give them some bigass cannons, etc. Bam. You've got a naval battle. Kothlis would be a very nice choice. Actually, this gives me an idea... how would one go about turning the barge into a ship or whatever, exactly? If it requires any modelling... I can't do it. But all it takes is some ODF edtiting, I'm up for the challenge.

for getting in it i was thinking to just kinda cheat and make a door near the bottom of one of the sides but make it so somehow it will only open for which ever team is controling or piloting that specific barge.

and for piloting it i was thinking of having a console or some thing(basically the thing that you would stand behind when piloting a skiff in the dune sea map) in a room in the barge and you would go up to it like you do with the turrets on the sail barge in mos eisley (except instead of using a turret you pilot the barge of course). it would be the coolest if to go all the way and have the on deck turrets and the cannons shot from inside on the lower level (there are cannons on the lower level arent there?).

Actually you can export the sailbarge from SWBF1 using a combination of bconstructor and Milkshape3d. I think I've already exported it, but there were a few errors in the model. These errors can be easily fixed though just a matter of flipping normals on some of the faces and repairing some face export errors. I believe what they typically do to flyable vehicles is add like little boxes in the model with naming conventions for their use. I think when I exported the gunship it had like a sphere around the driver's section I'm guessing this may have been the area you must be in to press "Enter" to enter the ship I'll have to read the docs though I'm not that far along yet. I'm sure one of the problems will be getting the collision model properly configured.

It could actually be done now, but we'd have to edt the barge model by adding in a pilot point. Say, behind the console, add an hp_active for the pilot to go. All the rest would be typical vehicle creation. The ramps being stuck to the side actually may not be a bad thing because then you can land anywhere and still have a way for your team to get on and off.

Kyross,
I think the barge would look odd flying around with those ramps attached to the sides you could probably actually delete the ramps off the model without having an adverse affect on your textures you would just need to fix the areas that you removed the ramps and just use the existing material names.

Yeah, and it would also look weird if you didn't fix the bottom. Ever notice the open hatch with guts of the barge sticking out? Model would requiring no matter what though, so might as well fix that stuff too.

I heard there is going to be a fix for the exporter that allows itto work with xsi mod tools. If this is true I will be turning out all sorts of stuff, I'd happily make the weapons for the ships.

wow so you guys are seriously considering this? if you are i could put them in the mon calamari map i am working on and and anyone helping out would be in the credits for the map.

Unknown,
Yes I think this is a great idea and have thought about it for a while myself.
Kyross can you pm me I got some other ideas on models for these types of maps maybe we can work on this project together.

sounds good to me

Yes, it is possible. Have you noticed that you can jump on vehicles? Have you noticed you can stand inside those high turrets on Yavin without controlling them? Use the same idea. Have a really big hovering vehicle (I don't think you can stand on flying vehicles while they're flying.) that has rails on it so people don't fall off. One person would drive it around the map, everyone else would have to stand on it. The vehicle could have more slots for other types of weapons on it. The people standing on the vehicle could shoot at what ever they wanted too. If the vehicle, went on a slope, the units would start sliding off. Hopefully the railings would keep them on it. Exiting a vehicle puts the unit beside the vehicle (unless we could change that). If you got in it, you wouldn't be able to get out unless it was docked somewhere.

You can't move a spawn point around, so each side would have to start on a far away (out of sniper range) island (or a space ship). You can force people to wait to spawn unit the vehicle is at a certain point if you wanted to, but players already don't like waiting 15 seconds to spawn.

I assume you could give it some inside rooms. However the entire thing has to the vehicle model.

It is possible to have a door open for one side only, and have it not open if any enemy units are in sprinting distance (though the door would have to be in a predeterimed place).