Fulby Posted December 24, 2003 Share Posted December 24, 2003 UFO Aftermath ALPine provides a system for "plugin" style modding for the game UFO: Aftermath by ALTAR Interactive. By creating mods as ALPine plugins, multiple mods can be applied to the game at once. ALPine features a Graphical User Interface for players to select and apply the plugins they wish to use, and a Plugin Installer to simplify adding new plugins. With this version, ALPine no longer brings up any console windows when it's processing plugins. It's less annoying, looks better, and you can leave it in the background and view other windows if plugin processing is taking a while. A few other changes: The Mod Wrapper now supports mods with names "mod*.vfs" as well as "*cfg.vfs". The GUI layout has been changed to better use the space. ALPine 3.0 requires UFO: Aftermath version 1.3. Click here to visit the download page. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LT Mor Posted December 24, 2003 Share Posted December 24, 2003 What's "GUI" ? :dontgetit: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Llama8 Posted December 24, 2003 Share Posted December 24, 2003 Graphical User Interface. As against something like DOS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulby Posted December 25, 2003 Author Share Posted December 25, 2003 Acronym Finder, for all your TLAs and ETLAs Fulby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted December 25, 2003 Share Posted December 25, 2003 Cool! I can't test it yet though, since I'm at home on Christmas vacation... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aralez Posted December 25, 2003 Share Posted December 25, 2003 Yehhaaaaw!! Nice to see the mod wrapper fix!!! Hail to Santa Fulby!!! :xmas: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulby Posted January 5, 2004 Author Share Posted January 5, 2004 ALPine 3.0.1 is now available from the ALPine website. The only change in this version is to improve the error messages the GUI displays. It now displays a stack traceback, which lists the Lua files in use and the line number which caused the error. This should allow plugin creators to track down the cause of errors more easily. Fulby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boks Posted January 5, 2004 Share Posted January 5, 2004 Hey Fulby, you've done a good job on ALPine.I was wondering if you're planning to add more than one parameter option so that users can customise a plugin more.For example in the Blood Patch that I've recently created, I'd like for users to customise the length of time the blood stays on the floor and the amount of blood released. At the moment I plan to attempt this with just the one parameter but it would be a lot easier for myself and the plugin users if there were two. I'm not sure how many other mods would make use of the second parameter, but it would certainly be a nice feature to have Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackAlmaz Posted January 5, 2004 Share Posted January 5, 2004 i have one problem...cause i cant install those paches....its no longer competable with my game no mater how many times i tried......i still have 2.8.1.....can u help?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulby Posted January 5, 2004 Author Share Posted January 5, 2004 Hey Fulby, you've done a good job on ALPine.I was wondering if you're planning to add more than one parameter option so that users can customise a plugin more.For example in the Blood Patch that I've recently created, I'd like for users to customise the length of time the blood stays on the floor and the amount of blood released. At the moment I plan to attempt this with just the one parameter but it would be a lot easier for myself and the plugin users if there were two. I'm not sure how many other mods would make use of the second parameter, but it would certainly be a nice feature to have It would be difficult for you, so you want me to do something difficult instead? Cheers I was originally going to use an IP address box as the paramter edit box, because this has 4 fields and hence 4 parameters. Each is limited to a maximum number of 255 though so I used a normal edit box instead. Just a bit of history you probably didn't want to know What I'd suggest is using the parameter as a two digit number, the first specifying the amount of blood (1-9) and the second the length of time (1-9). I used a similar system for a (currently unreleased) plugin. It's even extensible for people wanting three parameters Fulby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulby Posted January 5, 2004 Author Share Posted January 5, 2004 i have one problem...cause i cant install those paches....its no longer competable with my game no mater how many times i tried......i still have 2.8.1.....can u help??I assume you mean ALPine is no longer compatible with UFO version prior to 1.3? If so, there's not much I can do about it. You could try renaming "modalpine.vfs" to "alpinecfg.vfs" and see if that works. Fulby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boks Posted January 5, 2004 Share Posted January 5, 2004 It would be difficult for you, so you want me to do something difficult instead? Cheers I was originally going to use an IP address box as the paramter edit box, because this has 4 fields and hence 4 parameters. Each is limited to a maximum number of 255 though so I used a normal edit box instead. Just a bit of history you probably didn't want to know What I'd suggest is using the parameter as a two digit number, the first specifying the amount of blood (1-9) and the second the length of time (1-9). I used a similar system for a (currently unreleased) plugin. It's even extensible for people wanting three parameters Fulbyhehe, thought it would be simple enough to implement, but I understand where you're coming from . Probably not too many plugins would make use of it and the one param will do the job anyway . The two digit solution was one of the ways I was thinking about, or using a delimeter between each value, eg. 1:2:3 (if I wanted a third param). Seeing as you're familiar with Lua, I don't suppose you know if there's a function for seperating a delimeted string such as "split" in vb and "explode" in php (I think), do you? Or would I need to trawl through the Lua docs? Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulby Posted January 5, 2004 Author Share Posted January 5, 2004 The parameter is passed as a number (non-negative integer to be more specific), you can't actually enter non-numeric characters. The Lua reference manual (section 5.5) will give you more details, but given a number with digits "abc" (i.e. 123: a=1, b=2, c=3) do: c = math.mod(PARAM, 10)b = math.floor(PARAM/10)a = math.floor(PARAM/100) I think that should work. You'll then need to check that each parameter is within the range you want. c should default to 0 if the parameter only has 2 digits, same with b when the parameter is a single digit. Fulby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UfoMan Posted January 6, 2004 Share Posted January 6, 2004 Speaking of multiple parameters and Alpine plugins, I was wondering if there was anyone who knew how to make a Personal Combat Teleporter out of an Alpine plugin for version 1.3 of Aftermath? Kind of like the teleporter that was available in XCom Apocalypse. The one parameter would be rate of recharge varying from no time to a long time. The other parameter would be when the device is introduced into the game - from right at the beginning, to early, middle, or late game. Does anyone know how to use the modding tools or Alpine in order to make a Personal Combat Teleporter for Aftermath? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted February 4, 2004 Share Posted February 4, 2004 I've been thinking of a small problem with ALPine Fulby. Not really ALPine itself that is the problem, but the download of the plugins. When you download a plugin, windows think it is a zip file. As a result, if you do not choose "All files" instead of "Zip file", it renames the file to someplugin.alp.zip. As a result the plugin is opened in winzip instead of the ALPine installer. Are there a way to avoid this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulby Posted February 4, 2004 Author Share Posted February 4, 2004 What browser are you using? I just downloaded an ALP file using both Mozilla Firebird and IE 6.0 - both downloaded without adding a .zip extension and without any changes in the dialog boxes. IE recognised the file as type "ALPine Plugin", which may have prevented it from scanning the file to identify it. I assume .ALP files are associated with ALPine on your system but it's a possible reason for IE to try and determine the file type. Fulby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted February 5, 2004 Share Posted February 5, 2004 Hmm, it seems WinRaR is making trouble. I have associated the .alp files with ALPine, and double clicking them is working fine. But when I try to download, IE6.0 says "WinRaR ZIP archive", and stores it with .zip as a surname.... Anyone else have this problem? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cpl. Facehugger Posted February 5, 2004 Share Posted February 5, 2004 Why don't you just delete the .zip part of the name? Wouldn't that solve the problem? Off topic: Have you recieved the latest (5.2?) rebalance mod yet, Slaughter? I would love to try it out tonight *hint hint* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted February 5, 2004 Share Posted February 5, 2004 Yes, I can do that, but it's a little annoying, and a problem for people that know less about this than me (if they in fact have the problem). The 5.2 mod is in the Other mods section Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cpl. Facehugger Posted February 5, 2004 Share Posted February 5, 2004 I swear that wasn't there ten minutes ago! On topic: Have you tried using opera, or some other browser other than IE? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted February 5, 2004 Share Posted February 5, 2004 No, but most people use IE, so that's the more important one for it to work in... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulby Posted February 6, 2004 Author Share Posted February 6, 2004 What happens if you associate zip files with WinZIP, does IE still add the extension to .alp files? I ask because most people use WinZIP, so that's the more important one for it to work in Fulby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted February 6, 2004 Share Posted February 6, 2004 I don't have WinZip, so I wouldn't know. But since no one else is complaining about this, I guess it is mostly a WinRaR problem (since, as you say, most people use WinZip (even though it SUCKS )). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted February 13, 2004 Share Posted February 13, 2004 Did you know this Fulby? You can probably do nothing about it, but... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulby Posted February 13, 2004 Author Share Posted February 13, 2004 Haven't the foggiest sorry . Fulby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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