Help with a mod

[TrashMan]

posted on March 11th, 2014, 1:57 pm

Last edited by TrashMan on March 14th, 2014, 9:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

So I'm a guy that enjoys singleplayer and modding. And thus I've taken it upon me to improve the A2 singleplayer (Classic Edition). And something was...missing.

I'm basicly re-balancing everything and adding new ships and stuff.

Done so far:
- re-balanced ships. They are generally a lot more expensive and slower to build, but last longer in a fight.
The difference in power between ship is reduced. So smaller fleets, but more resilient ones.
for reference, the Sovereign is 2000 shields and roughly 1000 hull, with 90 sec build time, (Saber is 800 shields)

- for Cardassians: added Huttet, Loknar, Dernet
- for Klingons: the Vor'Cha is now a battleship, all klingon "civilian" ship have a disruptor
- for Romulans: added the Kerchan, Shadow Wing, Valdore and
- for Federation: added Norway, Miranda, Ambassador and Excelsior. Also Galaxy-X

- ai build lists updated. They will now use all kinds of ships available.

Re-balancing is still in progress.
The current plan is for Romulans to have the best shield re-charge (which goes well with their hit-and-run tactics)
Federation are all-rounded with great shields
Klingons have powerful weapons and strong hulls
Cardassians have strongest hulls and cheap ships
Borg are...borg.

Self-destruct is now a lot more deadly and has a greater radius.
There are 2 kinds of torpedoes - regular and burst. Regular fire normally, while burst ones build up 2-3-4 shots and fire them at once.


I also tried to make the Galaxy-X as close to the series as possible. It's cannon acts like in the series - fires 5 rapid , high-damage shots. The only thing that's wrong is that I can't make it pierce shields. The supposed line in the ODF doesn't seem to work. If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears.
Currently the cannon is a regular weapon and fires automaticly, even tough it uses up special energy.

The best Galaxy-X model still kinda pales in comparison to the fantastic Galaxy models out there, so I'm making an new one. I have a good one stashed away, but I will probably use some of the galaxies as a base.

For the Galaxy, I'll have to tweaks some hardpoints, I want to make the blue deflector pulse from the series as it's special (anti-borg weapon). The saucer separation doesn't make much sense, despite how cool it is.


Now for the big problem - the changes affect the singleplayer balance. It's still playable, but the difficulty is either higher or lower depending on mission.
Basicely, I will have to tweak starting resources or ships at least.
Dunno if one can edit the incoming/scripted ships (like the federation reinforcements coming out of the gate or borg ships coming from the edges of the map).

posted on March 11th, 2014, 2:22 pm

There is only one set of odf files for ships/stations and the single player missions and instant action game uses the same ones. As you've found out editing the file alters it's stats in both game modes.

Unfortunately there is no way around that except.....It's something I wanted to do for a mod, but would have been a ton of extra work. You'd have to create duplicate file of every ship/station and name them something different. That way you would have a different set for each mode. You'd have to redo the tech tree and build lists as well, but can be done.

posted on March 11th, 2014, 4:45 pm

I don't need different stats, since the ships are (I think) relatively nicely balanced.

What I need is - for example - to reduce the number of borg cubes that arrive in Federation mission 07. Or reduce the number of ships. Change a ship to a different class...etc.


Also, progress:

posted on March 11th, 2014, 7:14 pm

Forgot to ask - the fusion special weapon can cost metal. But is it possible to have different cost? Like dilithium or latinum?


EDIT:
- added Choq, Kvek and Kron class for klingons. Made UI images for them. Balacing pending.

posted on March 11th, 2014, 9:32 pm

Another issue you may face is that ODFs tend not to "update" on maps if they have been changed after the unit was placed. For example, if you had fgalaxy and changed it to an Excelsior Class, the 3d model, weapons etc would change. However, you might find the shield and hull values would not. If the Galaxy had 1000 hp, and the Excelsior only 500, any ships that were placed as Galaxies before the change to the Excelsior would have 1000 hp.

This was a major pain in the rectum when I was doing the campaign for KA2. One of the reasons I subsequently dropped the campaign from the later versions.

posted on March 12th, 2014, 12:08 am

Sorry for misunderstanding you Trashman. In order to do what you're looking for you'd need to open the particular mission map in the editor and then delete the ship (s) you want to from the map and then save it. However, I'm not certain if there is something in the odf's you'd need to delete as well? I don't think there is.

I believe that anything placed on the map is there and ready to go as long as it's in your ship/station odf files and that you've added it to the specific map editor odf's. Likewise if you want to add a ship you would just place it on the map and then save the map. I'm not 100% certain about this though so maybe someone with more experience editing the missions/maps can chime in

posted on March 12th, 2014, 3:26 am

You'll also need to create a techtree file (extension ".tt") for the map in question unless you opt to use one of the techtree files already ingame. Otherwise, whatever you place on the map will either be unusable or cause the game to crash to desktop. Ran across this again and again when making up the Improved SP Campaign and BSG HRM v1.0.

Further, each of these items must have its own entry in the tt file and a status value. The three choices here can be either always available, conditionally available (which means you have to build something else first for them to become available) or available one time only due to map specific conditions. There are some pretty good explanations about how to do this located in the tt files themselves. As to limiting the number of Borg Cubes in a specific map, you can adjust the specific buildlist for that map. Again, there are some pretty good explanations about how to do this located within the files themselves.

All of these files can be edited by using Notepad.

posted on March 12th, 2014, 2:13 pm

I figured as much.

The thing I'm worried about is the ship that don't appear at the beginning on the mission, but seem to come off the map or a specific place. In other words, triggered by some kind of condition or timer. Are they even part of the initial map?

also - how do you "add ships to the specific map editor odf's"?



EDIT:
Drat. double drat.

Added some new ships (for klingons), but they refuse to work. I don't get it. I even copied the .sod name and pasted it into everything (.odf name, tech1.tt, fulltech.tt, gui_global, etc..) to make sure there isn't a typing error , made the icons/wireframes, but only some appear.
The excelsior, the kron, the choq - they don't appear in the build list (and yes, I've added them to the shipyards).

*scratches head*

posted on March 12th, 2014, 10:27 pm

A bit of assistance pls....


I'm trying to export my GalaxyX using the 3D max export script.

I basicly imported the galaxy model (from the classic edition) and used it's hierarchy, I just replaced the existing mesh with mine and added/moved hardppoints. then I exported. But I only get the damaged bit to show, as if hte main hull isn't exported.

Now looking at hte hierarchy, it almost look like A1 hierarchy.

It looks like this:

scene_root
|+root
| |+lights
| |+hardpoints
| |+geometry
| |+damage
|
|
|+my galaxy mesh
|+ c_tm_material

Obviouly the lights, hardpoitns, etc have futher stuff beneath them.
Should my mesh attach to the root?


EDIT:

Did that and now the model SEEMS to export allright. CV viewer is crappy but I cna see hte whole model.
Yet the game instantly crashes (no error message) when starting an instant battle with the Federation...

EDIT2:
the ship uses a 1024x1024 texture... could that be an issue?

posted on March 13th, 2014, 3:48 pm

Well....does anyone have any idea as to what might be the issue?

I can't relly move forward wiht other sships till I tackle this.

posted on March 13th, 2014, 9:58 pm

Yay.. added more ship and managed ot get all of them working.
Now every major faction (except for the Borg) have 4-5 new ships.

Say, to get the AI to build them in Instant Action, you jsut need to add them to the federation_built_list, cardassian_build_list, etc... right?


Now if I can only get my models to export properly.

If I supply the 3DMax scene and textures, can someone look it over?

posted on March 14th, 2014, 1:05 am

Yes, to get the AI to build the new ships you'll have to add them to the build lists. Keep in mind there are 5 build lists per race. The xx-build-list isn't used though. You'll only need to add them to xx-defensive-build-list, xx-endgame-build-list, xx-offensive-build-list, and xx-instant-action-build-list

However, you'll also have to add them to the tech tree for each race so the AI knows what it needs to build them and where they're built from.

I can't help you with the 3dmax stuff. Don't have it

posted on March 14th, 2014, 9:59 am

Cool. I got it working. The AI is now building all kinds of ships.

Still need to look into exporting.

I got several models that I made for BoTF2 that never materialized, so they are sitting on my HDD collecting dust.

Would be nice to put them in-game.

posted on March 17th, 2014, 5:06 pm

Ok, I uploaded a rar with 2 max scenes of the Galaxy-X (not the final, final model) and the maps.

https://www.mediafire.com/?3y9c6m35f88n5og

If someone can take a look at WTF I'm doing wrong, I'd appreciate it.




Also:
how do you "add ships to the specific map editor odf's"?

posted on March 18th, 2014, 1:53 am

To add ships to the map editor files look in the odf/other folder. Scroll down about 1/4 of the way and have a look at all the files that start with the letter e. Each race has 5 files comba, named, ncomb, rstat, and stati. Each race as their first letter at the beginning so borg are eb_xxx, cardies are ec_xxx and so on. Some files are general files and others are for map objects.

You can only have 12 entries in each file so just follow the nomenclature inside and add whatever ship/station you want to them. If you did it correctly then once in the map editor you can hit whichever F key corresponds to each ship/station to place it.