Questions versus Key-Carried

See Above.

Hello.

For Kemet, I have a ship that is a large cargo hauled pod attatched to a smaller 'tug' ship called an 'A'ahait'. I want the cargo pods to not be visible when the ship isn't carrying any magor cargo- the tug itself only can carry about fifty tons or so, but the pods add thousands of tons of capacity, and are assigned by missions avalible in the Mission Computer. I know that I can change this via the Key-Carried bit, but I am totally at a loss to use it. Do I have to have the mission assign an outfit-item ship to the A'ahait that is listed in the A'ahaits' shďp resource, as in if the A'ahait has ship 128 listed as it's key-carried ship, I have to grant an outfit that points to a wëap that points to ship 128 to cause the key-carried sprites to be shown? On that, should I have the tug rendered at the center of the frame, then moved to the top when the cargo pods are attatched, or should the tug always be at the top of the frame inconsequent to the appearance of the pods? I'm just curious, because in Mechanisto it takes half an hour to render one frame of this ship (on a 333 megahertz G3 PM 8500 with 480 meg ram, 300 of which is going to Mech') and that's 64 frames for the tug and 64 for the tug and pods combo, with an approxamate total of fifty one hours of rendering. Understandably I don't want to tie up my one dev machine for two and a half days while this one ship renders just to find out how it works...

For some reason I can't embed a picture here and I tried. Sorry, the pic will be avalible in the 'screenshots' section of the website listed in my sig.

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated! Thanks,
Rik

This post has been edited by rmx256 : 16 October 2004 - 12:42 PM

If you move the location of the tug from one set of frames to the next, the weapon exit ports you designate in the ship's shän resource (Guns, Turrets, Beams) will not line up for both. If you keep the tug at the front of the frame for both sets, when it isn't carrying a pod, it's rotation will look... "wonky." (Imagine the wheel of a car, with the axle attached to the tire, instead of the center of the wheel.)

You could avoid the problem by making the pod attach below the tug. You can keep the tug's location in the frame consistent, keeping the weapon exit ports aligned for both sets, and the tug won't appear lopsided in its rotation as opposed to if the pod was simply attached to its aft.

Since I don't know what an "A'ahait" is, it threw my attention the first (three) times I tried to read your post. If it is the name of your tug ship, introduce it as such, else you'll confuse anyone who tries to help you.

Sorry about that, I should of been more clear. Thanks for the info, though!

Assuming that it works the way I remember the Nova Bible saying it does, here's what you have to do game engine wise (I agree with the above comments graphics wise):
Make a weapon- A fighter bay for some ship type (irrelevant) that you're never going to use a fighter bay for. Check the "AI does not use this weapon" box. Make an outfit that is an ammo for this weapon (name it something like ;keycarried so it's invisible to the player). Then, have the mission grant and remove this outfit (along with an extra one that gives the cargo space, and maybe has a real name), and then trigger & untrigger a secondary mission that actually gives the cargo - this can't be in the first mission or else it will never be acceptable because you won't have the cargo space.

Things get a bit trickier if you want to have AI ships running around both with and without cargo pods.

In this case, I'd suggest using an entirely different ship for the "with cargo pod" AI vessel - one where the keycarried frames are reversed. Give it the ;keycarried outfit as default - this won't register on the AI ship, but will when the player gets it. End result: When the player captures a tug with cargo pod, the cargo pod goes away.
Then add in a cron to, if the player is flying the reversed AI version, take off the ;keycarried outfit and swap the ship to the normal version.

Quite thank you in general, Wyvern; between the two of these this makes a lot more sense and I can now safely render. Just wish that Mechanisto wasn't so slow.