messing with external ship cockpits

[cattafett]

basically what i want to do is replace the pirate cockpit model (the outside one for now) with the teladi one
can i do it by renaming the model parts like i did with the argon eclipse and the otas hauler from TC so they load each others model
if yes what are the cockpits called or how would i find out

[Shadow dream]

Basicly you can do this:
open TShips, select the wanted ship and look, which body ID the cockpit has. Vanilla uses a body-part as cockpit, so this number should be the same.
Now that you have the cockpit-body you can replace it with the one in the scene of the pirate model. (it's cockpitnumber should be the cockpit body too). Important: Change the body-ID of the cockpit to fit the new one!

Basicly this is the job, however it might be that the new body isn't placed correct. This is caused by the different shape and therefor another pivot-point.

the best way to solve this was to use gmax (or 3ds max), import the scene of the pirate model and the wanted cockpit body - replace the body and export the new scene. change the cockpit body-ID in tships and done.

Shadow

[cattafett]

probably a bit late but open the Tships with what? notepad or the x2 editor
ended up copying the v\00885 from cad/dat 02 and renaming it v\00757
and sticking it in a new cad\dat
did this by working out that 00757 was the only model part the pirate ships had in common
and as the teladi had three model parts in common but only 00885 was from cad/dat 02
(same as the one for the pirates) so took a punt and it worked out
as a bonus my game is still vanilla but i'm guessing the internal cockpit
wont be this easy

[Shadow dream]

it worked out so easily? well, fine then

yeah, the cockpits won't be that easy. there you need the X2 editor to open the TShips and see, what cockpit the ship uses. It's listened among ship class, cargo, speed,...
copy the cockpit scene (folder "cut") from the wanted ship and replace it with the not wanted one. This should do the job

Shadow

[cattafett]

ok doing the internal cockpits was much easier
knowing what to change with out having to list each part of a ship and then finding matches
with other similar ships makes all the difference
but
and this is not too important as i've done what i wanted to
but using the X2 editor to open the TShips leads you to the cockpit and model bobs
the cockpit.bob is the internal cockpit view and the model.bob is like a blueprint to tell the game how to put the ship together
(and this is where i stop telling you what you already know) how do you tell which thing listed in the blueprint is which model part

[Shadow dream]

the "cockpit bob" that is listened in the tship names the file (or blueprint as you call it). this blueprint sets the cockpit you can see inside with all it's monitors etc.
how to tell, whicht part of this blueprint is what, you either should have a bod-file list (earthpilot made one I think) or better: use gmax (-> www.turbosquid.org or so) to load the body and have a look at it! gmax even can import the blueprints and all of it's parts in one turn, so I recommend this way
note: you need some tools (plugin) that doubleshadow has offered to the community, as DBox and x2bc (bod compiler).

Shadow