I have a couple ships in game that I'm trying to get working. Most of our ships are working fine, but a couple are being stubborn, and I have no idea why.

When you go to buy the ship, it shows in the ship purchase window. After you've bought it, it's sitting right there in the docking bay as it should be. As soon as you go to launch, however, it crashes right away and dumps you to the desktop.

My thought is that there's a coding error somewhere, or something wrong with the mounted equipment. I've looked the code over a dozen times and haven't seen anything wrong, and the equipment used is working fine on other ships. FL error checker isn't showing any sort of hardpoint issues, either.

I'm completely at a loss as to what's going on here. I'll include my code for one of the ships so maybe one of you can see what it is that I'm missing.

shiparch.ini



goods.ini


Finally, FLSpew gives me this right at the crash:

Crash on launch can be caused by a bad .mat file or a bad .sur file, and rarely by a .cmp file too.

If you rename the .mat file so it is not found, the ship will be untextured but will still launch, so you can diagnose a bad .mat file easily.

If you replace the .sur file with a vanilla one and rename it to the same name as the ship .cmp, (doesn't matter about wrong shape/size) then this will prove or rule out the .sur file.

These are fast diagnoses that you can try before you change any coding.

If you get no progress with these 2 steps, replace the entire ship .cmp, .mat and .sur with copies of the ones from a working ship and just rename them to the name of the ship you are testing. (Save the suspect ship files in another folder! lol )

Let us know.

Hey Capt.Morgan

try to replace your

[Good]
nickname = bb_tmi_lf_hull
category = shiphull
ship = bb_tmi_lf
price = 800000
ids_name = 12013 <--- change this to 237008
item_icon = Equipment\models\commodities\nn_icons\devil.3db

and rename your devil with
bb_tmi_lf
for the cmp, sur and mat file

And it should work also get ride of

hp_type = hp_fighter_shield_special_9, HpID01
hp_type = hp_fighter_shield_special_10, HpID02

could be a conflict there also

Capt. Morgan:

Zip up and attach your ship's .cmp and .mat and .sur file here please so someone can take a look to see if we can identify the problem.

Also please post your loadouts.ini entry for this ship, it may be just a hardpoint name that does not exist in the .cmp.

Just a bit of a cleanup:
camera_offset = 6, 28.000000
should be
camera_offset = 6, 28

and make all of these into integers too (not x.000000)
linear_drag = 1.000000
mass = 125.000000
steering_torque = 20000.000000, 20000.000000, 58000.000000
angular_drag = 15000.000000, 15000.000000, 35000.000000
rotation_inertia = 2800.000000, 2800.000000, 1000.000000
nudge_force = 30000.000000
strafe_force = 20000.000000



Yes, do this, to match the shiparch.ini ids_name entry. (But it's not causing the problem).


Why? No. It points correctly to the ship name in shiparch.ini


No - these Hardpoints are not for shields, they are used for something else, maybe ID tokens or generators or other add-on equipment.

Capt.Morgan:

LODranges = 0, 9999, 9999, 9999, 9999

This is not correct, custom ships usually have only one mesh and distance texture, so this is saying the following:
"from distance 0 to 9999 use 1st mesh and 1st mesh texture (LOD0 and MIPMap0),
from 9999 to 9999 use 2nd mesh and 2nd texture (LOD1 and MIPMap1),
from 9999 to 9999 use 3rd mesh and 3rd texture (LOD2 and MIPMap2),
from 9999 to 9999 use 4th mesh and 4th texture (LOD3 and MIPMap3), and
from 9999 don't display the model"!

Meshes 2 to 4 don't exist (ask the modeller if he made the extra LOD meshes and put them in the .cmp? I doubt it.)

The following is correct for single-mesh models:
LODranges = 0, 9999

This means...
"from distance 0 display 1st mesh and 1st texture, and
from 9999 don't display the model".

When anyone does make additional LOD meshes then I would expect the following:

LODranges = 0, 999, 1999, 9999
which means:
from distance 0 display 1st Mesh & 1st texture,
from distance 999 display 2nd Mesh & 2nd texture,
from distance 1999 display 3rd Mesh & 3rd texture,
from distance 9999 don't display the model

As a guide, so bigger ships still show at further distances:

make all your fighter models LODranges = 0, 1999
make all your gunship models LODranges = 0, 2999
make all your medium battleship models LODranges = 0, 9999
make all your huge ship models LODranges = 0, 19999

If there are low-res meshes and textures (check with your modeller) then decide at which distance to switch the textures and meshes as above, and at what distance to stop displaying the ship model, and set the LODranges to those values.

Don't worry about loadouts.ini, it's not an npc ship problem, the loadout is already in goods.ini

OK - I opened the model OK in hardcmp and in Milkshape, I can't see anything obvious but I will try a flight tomorrow unless someone can do it for you before me.

I am not sure the following is valid:
nanobot_limit = 0

Make it temporarily:
nanobot_limit = 10
shield_battery_limit = 10

And a bit more integer cleanup, remove the x.000000's from these too:
fuse = intermed_damage_smallship01, 0.000000, 625
fuse = intermed_damage_smallship02, 0.000000, 312
fuse = intermed_damage_smallship03, 0.000000, 156

It's just cosmetic.

Erm, have you tried launching with a different ship to rule out system crashes? I don't mean just launch once and say "yup, working" - launch about a dozen times.

After that, if you're not sure whether it is your ship - copy and paste that shiparch.ini entry to the bottom of the file, and then use a stock FL ships cmp/mat reference. Obviously comment out the non existent hardpoints HpDI01 or whatever those are, and the counter measure 02.

You could also comment out these on your own entry too...no idea what your cmp file has. Dunno if bad references cause crashes *shrugs*

No that's OK, several mods use other hardpoints including HpEnginexx like this for mounting addon equipment.

Long shot.. but check your shield

check everything its sold with actually.. swap stuff out like power and engine's. I've had this before but not for a long time last ship to do this to me was the FA37.. i believe that was due to the shield link, it was about 2 years ago so my memory of exactly why has faded..

EDIT:

Woah...

make


into


or check the CMP to make sure.. most headlights don't have the "01"