Why rename rl0 to r10? edit: also need help for ship modding/replacing

[Jagdsherman]

Hello

I've recently started modding homeworld, i'm trying to make the Turanic pirates playable by replacing the taiidan wth them.

What I don't seem to understand is why do we need to rename the rl0 folder to r10 in the ship folder that contains the lod files? I read this from a tutorial.

I notice that if i don't rename rl0 to r10 then the textures appear all messed up to whatever ship i'm replacing.

How did the modding community figure this out?

Thanks

edit: does anyone have any advice on replacing the taiidan mothership or carrier with the Turanic carrier/mothership i've been having difficulty with this.

EDIT, again: ok i've managed to get the Turanic carrier working ingame. it can build but the launch and dock points are messed up. ships get stuck within the carrier after they are built.

What caused the game to crash (referring to 1st edit comment) when I replaced the files was the incorrect docking point definitions. (listed right below)

NUMBER_OF_DOCK_POINTS 3

; format is DockPoint name,type,flyawaydist,mindist,maxdist,[headingdirection,updirection] (0=up,1=right,2=forward,4=down,5=left,6=back) for direction
DockPoint In,DockingCone,5000,1000,6000
DockPoint Out,LaunchPoint,800,800,800,6,0
DockPoint Out1,LaunchPoint,800,800,800,6,0

I changed them to this which i copied directly from the taiidan carrier shp

NUMBER_OF_DOCK_POINTS 7

; format is DockPoint name,type,flyawaydist,mindist,maxdist,[headingdirection,updirection] (0=up,1=right,2=forward,4=down,5=left,6=back) for direction
DockPoint In1,DockingCone,800,800,1000
DockPoint Out1,LaunchPoint,1000,1000,1000,2,0
DockPoint In2,DockingCone,800,800,1000
DockPoint Out2,LaunchPoint,1000,1000,1000,2,0
DockPoint Frigate,LaunchPoint,1300,1300,1300,2,0
DockPoint Res0,LatchPoint,700,700,1000,2,0
DockPoint Res1,LatchPoint,700,700,1000,2,0

It turns out that "In" and "Out" (1st and 2nd lines) from the original definition did not have a "1" or "2" or another digit in front of them. This caused the crash. I even changed it back on purpose and tried it out just to make sure, and it did crash when loading.

I did try editing the launch/dock points with the ship editor but it did not save any of the changes I made. It confirms the save but when I reload it was as if i did not change anything.

Just thought someone would find this information useful. knowledge must be shared.

[Dot]

Why not use one of the many turanic raider mods? You also do not need to change rl0 to r10 because the .lod file should have the correct path's anyway.

You'll have to manually do the docking trails and points otherwise it'll look very off having a taiidan frigate coming out of the front of the bow. Don't forget to add salvage point's too.

[Captain Pierce]

"r10" was a work-around to fix texture corruption before Relic released Liflist. It had its limitations--IIRC, it stopped working after you changed a certain amount of ships--but for smaller mods, it actually worked pretty well.

[Dot]

So r10 made it think they were pirate race ships and gave them a little more free memory room?

[Jagdsherman]

Hey thanks guys, I have managed to get the carrier working with all of the proper dock points. There were only 3 now there are 7.

I still don't understand the rl0 to r10 thing can you give me a web source which explains this?

Also do any of you know of any other web sources which lists and explains the properties of .SHP files

If anyone wants the carrier file I can send it to them. When its polished.

[Captain Pierce]

No, "r10" takes them outside the file structure--and thus the textures.ll file--completely.

Jagdsherman--most of the HW modding "collective wisdom" has never been collected on one site. We probably should have back in the day, but we all knew to look here or over at TGU. Let me try and explain it better, although I don't understand it 100% myself. To make more efficient use of what was (at the time) limited RAM in computers, Homeworld has a database of all the textures used and their sizes called "textures.ll." Based on that, the game adds up all the sizes and allocates only that much memory to handle the textures. When the game doesn't allocate enough memory to handle textures, then something called "texture corruption" happens, which distorts the textures and makes them look like crap. Textures.ll includes the path of all the texture files; so, very early on in the game's history, somebody somehow deduced that putting the models and texturesinto a "r-one-zero" folder rather than the "r-L-zero" folder, when the game (via textures.ll) was looking for them in "r-L-zero," tricked the game into not having texture corruption. (I don't know that I've ever seen it explained why this worked, only that it did.) Some of the very, very, early mods (like the first "Turanic Raider" mod, that used models from the "derelicts" folder to fill out the Raider lineup) used the "r-one-zero" trick. It wasn't long, though, before Relic released a utility called Liflist, which they'd use to convert textures to .lif format and generate the textures.ll file, and with that, the "r-one-zero" workaround became a moot point. Also, I can tell you from personal experience that, eventually, the "r-one-zero" trick stops working, and you get texture corruption anyway. So, if you're planning to make a full mod, sooner or later you'll have to learn Liflist.

[Dot]

Well does the "r-one-zero" workaround stop because of texture size or amount of usage or what?

Also Jagd, go build a frigate and watch how it comes out wrong.

It is a shame nobody made a full all in one GUI tool.

[Jagdsherman]

Hmm, I see now, can any of you point me to any tutorials that explains how Liflist works?

Also thanks for the explanation. Though I still find confusing I think I sort of get the general Idea.

[Captain Pierce]

Search this forum for "Liflist tutorial," and you'll find a link I posted that will let you download the program and Crook's excellent tutorial all at once.

[Jagdsherman]

Ok thanks.

[Dot]

I find liflist annoying, especially because you can't make a simple edit to a lif quickly.

[gamegod]

i am a little bi anyoned now due to the fact that when i try to replace the kushan carrier with the turonic radiers mother ship it alwayes crashes
anyone have any idea how to do this

[Captain Pierce]

My first guess is the same thing as your mothership problem: docking points. See my reply in that thread for more info.