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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 1st May 2017 at 1:33 PM
Default Cloning the remote control helicopter
I made a little spaceship cloned from the remote control helicopter. When I test it in-game, it vanishes into thin air as soon as a Sim tries to play with it. Well, okay. It's a complicated object so I figured there would be a little hurdle like that. But Google results are surprisingly sparse on how to fix it.

I've found three or four old threads here on MTS mentioning such a problem when cloning the remote control helicopter or car, but nobody mentioned the specifics of how they handled it... the threads just referred to a solution described on Shaklin's web site, which is now long gone, and the Wayback Machine never got a snapshot of it. Poo.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? What else do I need to change?
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Scholar
#2 Old 2nd May 2017 at 3:34 PM
The Remote Control Car Controller (NPC - Remote Control Car -Group 0x7F4C057E) will test the item to be controlled by GUID and if it doesn't match one of the three it's programmed to handle it'll self delete and since your little spaceship is sitting in one of it's slots it'll take it out with it.
You can either make/clone a new NPC controller for your spaceship or you may get away with editing the op-codes in the existing NPC. To add your item, begin with 'Sub - Test Object Type', you may even get away with returning the same value for your spaceship as a helicopter.

Alternatively if you can post what you have so far I should be able to make or recommend changes for VICky (my Versatile Item Controller) to handle the controlling. This is exactly the sort of thing VICky is for, instead of adding a new NPC for each item just have one NPC for everything. I have a request pending for a tutorial on preparing items for VICky so I can grab some screenshots and take a few notes for a tutorial as I go and 'kill two birds with one stone'. This would also mean that if you want to make more you can just clone this one and VICky would already be able to handle it.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 3rd May 2017 at 10:38 PM
Sorry for the late reply. You can find what I have so far here. I'd not heard of VICky before but really like the idea--considering how removing NPCs can be problematic I'm not wild about creating a brand new one. It's nice to know that there are alternatives.
Scholar
#4 Old 4th May 2017 at 7:40 AM Last edited by Chris Hatch : 24th May 2017 at 4:27 PM. Reason: Removed Temporary file
I took a good look at what would be involved in getting the default controller NPC to work a custom RC helicopter or car and nearly every op-code would need to change. Then once that's done it'd be incompatible with any others that used the same method so using a custom NPC controller is the only viable option.

I made a 'RC Helicopter Template' that uses VICky so I could test it, then use to alter yours if you wanted to try VICky so it only took a couple of minutes to get yours working and another twenty to test it. It's available at:
(File Removed)
There's a folder in there named 'NPC - Vicky' which includes 'NPC - Vicky.package' which you will have to have. That is the NPC controller and it will add a sim to your neighbourhood so you should test in a neighbourhood that's not important to you first.
Also included is the Bumper-Car that normally comes with VICky and some simple notes about VICky as well as the 'RC Helicopter Template' which you don't need in your game but may find useful to make more.
Should you decide to share your creation I don't mind in the least if you include VICky, while it is available at BAS we don't want to send children there to get a file. Feel free to include all or part of the notes regarding VICky as well. One other thing to note if you do share is that your spaceship requires Freetime EP, it's flagged in the Object Data so it won't show in the catalogue if Freetime is not installed, the RC helicopter animations are from Freetime so it really is required.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#5 Old 4th May 2017 at 12:27 PM
Awesome! Thank you so much for your help. I'd love to include VICky... something this useful ought to get a little more attention.
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