File functions, Mods and the Patch Project

[Shril]

posted on April 28th, 2011, 7:04 pm

Last edited by Shril on April 28th, 2011, 7:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

From this time on I will call this the "FOccurrence Syndrome". A regular, even though subjective appearance of outstanding breakthroughs in modding history enforced by genius modding teams. So far Fleet Operations has had the highest density of FOccurrences in modding history (that I have seen) in particular achievements that had major impact on the modding scene and fan base, that changed things in a way noone would have ever dreamed of.

So in this case DOCa and Optec have the FOccurrence Syndrome (heavy peculiarity) and thus producing a high amount of FOccurences during their life time, which are so far:

- Change the shield color in Armada II - once considered to be a holy grail in A2 modding
- The introduction of a ranking system (an RPG element!!!111woot) into A2
- The Patch Project 1.2
- The Unique TechTree but Still being Balanced Approach  (UTSBA it's like kissing your elbow)
- The Tunngle Achievement
- The ZIP Approach

posted on April 28th, 2011, 9:16 pm

I will agree with balancing being one of the finer things these guys have done. It is great that they came up with 5 whole races that are completely and totally played differently, but evenly matched. A2 was Cookie cutter. Because Sovereign ≠ Cube

posted on April 29th, 2011, 12:51 pm

I have but one word: WICKED!

Thank you Dev team, you guys are the greatest! May your usernames be remembered for all time!

posted on May 2nd, 2011, 11:00 am

Does this mean the Ctrl/A function in the map editor woll be restored soon?

posted on May 2nd, 2011, 12:58 pm

Fleet Ops uses Ctrl + E for the same purpose

posted on May 3rd, 2011, 2:27 am

Dope slaps self. "Duh"

posted on May 4th, 2011, 6:01 pm

I like Ctrl+E better than the stock Ctrl+A.  It was not smart to assign Ctrl+A to select all units and activate the map editor, which would lead to many issues on single-player games.  What version of Fleet Ops changed the map editor to Ctrl+E?

posted on May 4th, 2011, 9:39 pm

Beta1 I believe

posted on May 10th, 2011, 6:25 pm

I haven't checked this thread out in a while and I just saw this.

- Change the shield color in Armada II - once considered to be a holy grail in A2 modding

Does it count as a FOccurrence for me if I managed that with stock code, including having the shields differ according to race, in A1? I posted a basic how-to on AFC and MSFC with a screenshot.

posted on May 10th, 2011, 6:40 pm

Fleet Ops doesn't use any special system other than renaming the Stock commands for this if I recall

All the information on how to do this was posted some time ago by Doca on A2files 

posted on May 10th, 2011, 6:46 pm

If I remember correctly, many (if not all) of those commands were reverted for better compatibility for mods.  It also fixed most (not all) of the out-of-sync errors with wormholes.

posted on May 10th, 2011, 6:50 pm

Reverting commands has nothing to do with OOS wormholes.
The commands related to shieldGeometry were not renamed (the only ones that weren't) since they were undocumented and are basically garblegook names in Stock 

posted on May 10th, 2011, 7:04 pm

That's the line I used, but that's attached to weapons, not ships and stations like FO. Also, the following doesn't work:

shieldGeometryName = "fshield"
      "kbattle.odf" kshield

Due to that, the people at AFC thought the line was mostly useless except for stuff like green weapons make green shield impacts. Even then you needed to use sprites for color because the game engine would try to color any mesh used green to red just like the stock shield effect.

What you need to do is use a different weapon for each shield effect and make extensive use of the hitChance line in addition to making the weapon with the visible torp, beam, or pulse not generate any shield effect.

The upshot is that you can have nearly FO quality shields in stock A1 or A2. The downside is that all weapons need to have 100% chance to hit or you'll see stuff like a torpedo sailing by while the shields light up anyway or a weapon hitting and the shields not flaring.

For FO to have shields work the way they do they can't be using a renamed version of this line. Maybe something derived from it, but it would have to be really different either way.

posted on May 10th, 2011, 7:15 pm

Interesting - I've never experimented with it in Stock unfortunately and only can repeat what I see      (the command is however renamed according to Doca's notes; the rest of the features are probably derived like you suggested, and use the same renamed-name)

[DOCa Cola]

posted on May 10th, 2011, 7:28 pm

Last edited by DOCa Cola on May 10th, 2011, 7:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

yes, for the shields a set of new command was introduced that is 'attached' to each ship type, without to have to change anything to the weapons, has absolutely no limitations and is easy to implement and use. no (green-red) coloring is done to the shield models in FO.
when i have written that i had plans to extend the command so it can be used with a lot of different shield models that are weapon specific but i think we concentrated on the ship class specific shields instead as this was of course much more interesting.
the commands can be put on craft's:

Code: Select all

ShieldHit
ShieldDown
ShieldAdd
ShieldSub
ShieldSpecial1 //SHIELD_REFLECTING
ShieldSpecial2 //SHIELD_INVINCIBLE
ShieldSpecial3 //SHIELD_MANHEIM
ShieldSpecial4 //SHIELD_CLAIRVOYANT
ShieldHitCritical

for each effect a separate sod can be defined

the command is however renamed according to Doca's notes; the rest of the features are probably derived like you suggested, and use the same renamed-name

there shouldn't be any renamed commands left since the last few patches. the default shield sod names are still renamed though. i had no problems putting my stock armada 2 installation as "mod" in fleet operations with only minor modifications