Initial modding/engine/editor questions.

[Poor Yurik]

Here are my initial questions which I'm sure everyone is trying to figure out as well:

 

1) How do I tag a piece of wall to start off semi-destroyed? I tried deciphering this from checking out the existing maps but all buildings seem to be grouped into sub-templates.

 

2) Is there any way to get objects like Doors and terrain objects to snap to grid like floors and walls do? The goal would be to cut down on the busy work of aligning doors to structures.

 

3) I'm guessing there is no water in the engine (and by water I just mean semi-transparent or solid animated textures for stuff like impassible sectors under bridges)....none I've seen anyway. Is there any?

 

4) Do any of you guys see any code hidden in there for any sort of branching/choosable dialogue?

 

5) Does there appear to be any possibility to have units recruitable mid-mission? Like start off as ally and if you talk to them they are added to your team?

 

6) Is there any way, for mod purposes, to let a player pick his team but have them all start off at a certain level of exp with choosable perks or even mod-maker pre-assigned perks?

 

7) Anyone find a good way to put roofs together? I can't seem to figure it out. All the roof pieces seem to be small side pieces rather than those big tile roofs in the game. Are those seperate static models uniquely modelled for certain buildings?

 

8) Is there any support in the engine for sky boxes? I figured they might have implemented them in some form at one point and decided it wasn't a worthwhile pursuit due to the camera restraints...but it would be badass for cinemas to have a backdrop.

 

Some of my questions spring from the fact they there seems to be alot of easter eggs/hidden features/not fully implemented things that aren't readily apparent in the actual game. For any other game I'd just believe that anything outside of the game's scope wouldn't be possible without heavy coding but S2's geoscape among others things gives me hope in more hidden features/potential

 

Btw hi guys...long time lurker, first time poster

[Poor Yurik]

PS. I'm also trying to figure out how to assign npc's to stationary machine guns and how to access the snow tile textures.

 

Lastly, trying to figure out how to assign npc's to waypoints :0

[Poor Yurik]

I just figured out how to properly apply snow with no seams (where you'd see the underlying terrain texture, in my case I'm using "transparent").

 

Ok, here's how it works. Snow in the game is applied as Terrain Spots. Just right click on the terrain somewhere and say "new terrain spot". In the terrain spot properties you can choose any terrain spot you wish, but for this instance we'll choose Snow under the Russian section.

 

Ok, now you have a spot on the terrain that looks like snow. As you can see in the spot's properties, the size of the spot is 10x10. This is very important.

 

Now, you can copy and paste via ctrl+c/ctrl+v multiple copies of that snow spot. But you'll soon find that it's basically impossible to properly align the spots manually. They don't snap to the grid at all so their alignment breaks down into the decimal range.

 

Here's where that 10x10 size info comes in handy. Your map is just a pretty flat grid to the spots, regardless of terrain variation. In your initial spot's properties, take a look at the PosX and PosY fields. This is the other piece of the puzzle.

 

Ok...now drag your spot so it's at a bottom corner of your map. Observe the PosX and PosY. Round the number to a whole. If it's 20.534214 x 20.32938 just change both values to 20. The spot is now aligned properly, even though you might not have noticed any difference due to the minor position change. Next up, copy and paste a new spot. Drag it to the side of the original spot. You'll quickly understand that because the spot is 10x10, each shift over is 10 units in the Pos fields. So if you have 3 spots in a row, their values would be as such:

1) PosX 0, PosY 0

2) PosX 10, PosY 0

2) PosX 20, PosY 0

 

If you make another row of spots, just copy/paste, select all the duplicates, then change the PosY field, it'll change for ALL the spots (if you changed PosX in this instance, they'd all be placed on top of each other which is something to watch out for). Now just click on each individual spot and make sure it's Pos X is correct and you are done.

 

Hope this helps, I wrote this while exhausted so hopefully it's not totally unintelligable . I'll write more tutorials as I figure out more aspects of the editor.

[Poor Yurik]

Is it just me or is Terrain Spot Priority totally broken?

 

It seems no matter what the values are set to the engine just arbitrarily decides which spot will be dominant over another. Gah....

 

There's gotta be a better way to get this working.

[Biggles]

OK, some answers.. but beware these are just from what I've read posted here and on the NIval forums or in interviews with the developers.

 

1) No Idea ... wish I knew.

 

2) Same again, this is really tedious... BUT, I found that you can make a template of a door or window and the use that instead of building it up from scratch each time!

 

3) Developers have said no water

 

4) Developer's have said no branching dialogue. BUT, this was a gameplay decision, it may be possible with the scripting, it's just that they didn't want players to kill off people they needed to talk to.

 

5) Yes. Using the scripting you can assign the 'side' that a unti belongs to. In theory you could have it so if you killed a civilian all the civilians turned enemy and other such cool tricks.

 

6) Once again, you can script a 'SetLevel' so when you enter a mission you get bumped up. See the demo missions for example.

 

7) They actually merge together when placed next to each other. It's tricky at first, but it works. They 'may' also automatically fill gaps... most of the official levels have half completed roofs that are complete in the game!

 

8) Not sure. There seems to be references to Sky textures, but haven't seen them used at all.

 

9) .. there is no nine. ohh hang on.. that's spoons. Number nine, number nine, number nine....

[vs322]

To "tag" a wall to be partially destroyed you actually need to place explosions inside the wall or near it.

 

First you need to have the "RPG items" tab open (views->resource tab-> then check "RPG items" its under the RPG items sub-section).

 

Once you have the RPG items resource tab; in the "Technical" folder there is explosions. Just drag it onto your map and place it where you want the center of your hole to be. You then need to set the "power" and "radius" in the properties. (500 for power and 3 for radius is a good place to start experimenting.)

 

One problem with explosions is that they don't effect objects - it won't blowup stairs or railings etc..

 

Hope that helps (and that you still read the forms -he he)

 

-vs

[KoMik]

Too bad that in S^s there is no way to move objects in game (make somekind barricades with tables and furnitures) or lift them (chair, barrel, rack, snowball) and throw agains your enemy. But maybe we will see something like that in turnbased games future...

 

Objects can be destroyed in properties window: ObjectPhase (0=unbroken and 1,2,3=<broken)

 

Roofs should be done in solids- and intermediate solids-layers with link (also with floors). How to use those solid-construction pieces is very easy to learn.

[damocles]

1) How do I tag a piece of wall to start off semi-destroyed? I tried deciphering this from checking out the existing maps but all buildings seem to be grouped into sub-templates.

 

answered above. And by the way - if you double click a sub-template it will ask if you would like oto pen and view/edit it. Once in the subtemplate, you can press the back arrow (top left of toolbar) and go back to the previous map.

 

2) Is there any way to get objects like Doors and terrain objects to snap to grid like floors and walls do? The goal would be to cut down on the busy work of aligning doors to structures.

 

CAPS LOCK key is your friend.

 

3) I'm guessing there is no water in the engine (and by water I just mean semi-transparent or solid animated textures for stuff like impassible sectors under bridges)....none I've seen anyway. Is there any?

 

Alas no - no water. Not even shallow water.

 

4) Do any of you guys see any code hidden in there for any sort of branching/choosable dialogue?

 

There is a little bit using the dialog message functions, but it was never really completed as the devs chose to go the no branching route instead. The only real way to branch would be multiple dialogs with messages that ask the player a yes/no question.

 

5) Does there appear to be any possibility to have units recruitable mid-mission? Like start off as ally and if you talk to them they are added to your team?

 

This is done in the game, where you get boris to join your team. There are functions that let you change unit alliegances and make them join the team. I forget their names off hand but they are probably in the index.

 

6) Is there any way, for mod purposes, to let a player pick his team but have them all start off at a certain level of exp with choosable perks or even mod-maker pre-assigned perks?

 

Yup. There is a giveXP function and a couple of others that affect XP/level/perks. The scripting index is your friend

 

7) Anyone find a good way to put roofs together? I can't seem to figure it out. All the roof pieces seem to be small side pieces rather than those big tile roofs in the game. Are those seperate static models uniquely modelled for certain buildings?

 

Alas you will have to place every little peice to make the roofs. And to make them seamless, on the layers panel, tick the "linked" checkbox for the two layers that you want to join (EG solids and intermediate solids). Also, if the roof spans multiple floors, check the link boxes for the fllors at the top of the layer panel.

 

8) Is there any support in the engine for sky boxes? I figured they might have implemented them in some form at one point and decided it wasn't a worthwhile pursuit due to the camera restraints...but it would be badass for cinemas to have a backdrop.

 

Yeah there is minor support, but again it was something that never got completed. I haven't really played with that yet so I can't help much there.

[damocles]

And on the subject of terrain spots and snow....

 

the CAPS LOCK key turns on/off grid snapping - also affects terrain spots. So you can drag them into perfect seamless positions without having to enter the numbers.

 

And yes the terrain priority number is a bit borked, however pressing space will make the current spot appear above all others.

[Slaughter]

Excellent. I'd like to have a modding FAQ set up for the game. This is all good stuff! Sooo, who wants to set up the FAQ?