Altar Mod Resources

[Abulafia]

Hi all,

 

Due to the games industry's reluctance to produce any decent tactical rpgs since god only knows, I've come back to Aftershock yet again, and been having enormous fun with it - both using ACM and the original WRB mods.

 

First of all let me say a huge thankyou to ShadoWarrior, Okim, rman, psychophat and too many others whose names escape me for all the love you guys poured into the game. I've enjoyed the mods you folks worked on immensely and they turn an ok game into something worth playing again and again.

 

I'm now at the point where I'm tweaking the game a little myself and it would be immensely handy to be able to access the wiki resources that altar provided to "official" modders. Unfortunately seems long dead and I can't find a direct link anywhere to this information, not that surprising as it was bound by NDAs I understand.

 

I've had some luck working out what the "effect INT" values mean by studying the equipment.txt file, but a list of them would save me a ton of time and effort, if such a thing is still out there. Another list I'd love to find is which skill and stat modifiers actually work and which don't - as far as I know mechanical, dodge and stealth adders definitely don't work. Are there any others?

 

I've got a load of other questions which I'm going to list here, just in case anyone's done something similar and feels kind enough to share their findings with me, to avoid reinventing the wheel too many times.

 

1. What have folks found to be the most useful text editors? I'd like to change the ai units armaments, which looks like a ton of changes to multiple files. I know Okim's mod does this (those cultists, Jesus!) so it's possible, but are there any utilities to make the process a bit more painless?
   
2. I know AOE damage over time won't work unless the weapon uses the "grenade" or "rocket" type STR, but how about instant AOE damage? Is it possible to create working AOE damage weapons that use the "Gun" type STR?
   
3. What does the attribute "Propelled" do on weapons? Every single weapon in the game has "Propelled BOOL F", not a single one has it true.
   
4. Is there a way to change the basic healing rate in the game, and/or the effect of accelerated healing. At the moment I find healing too long pre medic 3, and laughably short afterwards, so I was going to monkey with that a bit. With the limitations in place I'm assuming the very best that can be hoped for is to lengthen the global heal time but move accelerated healing to medic 1, which should smooth things out a bit. I'm not even sure if this is possible, though.
   
5. Is it possible to mod slots onto melee weapons? Is it possible to create weapon addons with no graphic model, without causing horrible things to happen? I have an idea for a slightly clumsy work around that would give me body part targetable melee weapons.
   
6. Are there any changes that can be made to the trainings, apart from moving the set abilities that currently exist around? Is it possible to even rename a training . I've considered recycling medical equipment training as camoflage devices to enable cloaks to be separated out from scout equipment, but I'm worried the name change would screw with the ai unit configurations. Of course I could just leave it with the same name and move it around, which should be ugly but workable. The plan was to change the requirements for anything that requires medical training to medical bonus, which has virtually no impact on the game as you don't usually see advanced medikits until you have a l2 medic anyway. That gives me a "spare" training to use as a requirement for other things.
   
7. Has anyone ever played around with working around the multiple weapon accuracy enhancers effect? I'm looking at restricting accuracy enhancers to the scope slot only, and reworking flechette ammo and accuracy circlets to have no +accuracy effect, which should avoid the 100% accuracy bug. I stil need to crunch the numbers to see what happens when you push range high without changing accuracy, I'm assuming you get no change in hit chance at ranges lower than the accuracy range, but a much slower drop-off between 50% and 10% hit chance. Hmm I also need to see if accuracy circlets contribute to the 100% accuracy bug, or if they can be left alone. I know flechette ammo definitely does.
   
8. Does the Dodge skill actually work? My own testing so far has been inconclusive as I was using an actual game to test with and my test subjects were possibly slightly different sizes (human female and psionic) which may have skewed things. I was seeing a drop from 80% to 73% hit chance comparing excellent and superheroic dodge. I'm going to console up a proper test with greater disparity and identical body types, but if someones tested already I'll save myself some work.
   
9. Does anyone know what the penalties are for targetted shots? I'd love to slightly rework sniper weapons so called shots become more of a sometime thing until your snipers get their skill up to godly levels, and indeed make leg and arm shots useful occasionally. At the moment, in both ACM and WRB a skill of excellent and a scope seems to be enough for a 100% headshot on just about anything. Balancing this is going to be a bit of a monster though, and knowing how aimed shots affect the to hit formula would help enormously.
   

Right, that should do it for now. Probably a year's worth of work in the answers to that lot.

 

Thanks again.

 

Abulafia.

[DerelictableX]

Hi!

 

1. I simply used notepad to modify them, maybe Okim can help you with the in-game squad editor.

 

2. I think, it's impossible to make AOE effect with 'gun' type.

 

3. I don't know what that effect does, nor some others.

 

4. I don't understand properly this, but i think there's no way to change the "heal permanent" ability, nor any others. But of course, you can swap all abilities.

 

5. You can add slots for everything, without graphic model, but I think it's impossible to use the "target body parts" without modifying the game's exe.

 

6. You can use the "unused" abilities I think.

 

7. I don't think this bug can be changed with a simple mod.

 

8. I dont' know if the dodge effect works or not.

 

However the stealth skill works, but it must be a very high number, and you cannot change with the "effect INT 12", just with the "effect INT 23".

[Okim]

1. notepad
   
2. possible and quite funny as it instantly damages all in its range, but it requres a hit to be scored at weapons target or terrain.
   
3. never seen one actually
   
4. hell knows
   
5. yes it is possible, but you will have to modify a model. In addition this attachment must be a sniper scope type:)
   
6. you can add a new training, name it whatever you wish and even run the game, BUT (!) you will have to manually add it to all soldiers in the game including mutants, rets and wargots. This is somewhat 200+ entries Localizaionpack file stores all texts in the game. You can rename whatever you wish here
   
7. what is this 100% bug?
   
8. it does. At least my soldiers have exceptional difficulties hitting cultist scouts with excelent dodge and speed
   
9. targetted shots are hardcoded as well as many many other things
   

[Abulafia]

1. notepad
   
2. possible and quite funny as it instantly damages all in its range, but it requres a hit to be scored at weapons target or terrain.
   
3. never seen one actually
   
4. hell knows
   
5. yes it is possible, but you will have to modify a model. In addition this attachment must be a sniper scope type:)
   
6. you can add a new training, name it whatever you wish and even run the game, BUT (!) you will have to manually add it to all soldiers in the game including mutants, rets and wargots. This is somewhat 200+ entries Localizaionpack file stores all texts in the game. You can rename whatever you wish here
   
7. what is this 100% bug?
   
8. it does. At least my soldiers have exceptional difficulties hitting cultist scouts with excelent dodge and speed
   
9. targetted shots are hardcoded as well as many many other things
   

 

Thanks very much to you both for the quick replies guys!

 

1. Looks like you're agreed on notepad, I'll stick with that!

 

 

2.Good news. I was thinking of changing rockets and launched grenades to direct fire weapons, to get around the horrible physics of launched stuff. Good point that misses won't explode though. Will the rocket animations work with "Gun" type, just at bullet speed?

 

5.Shame, modelling is going to be beyond me. And yes, I'd figured out I'd have to make a katana handle, or whatever, that required sniper equipement, and give commandos sniper skill. The reason I thought it might work was the original glitch with underbarrel laser sights allowing aimed shots before patch 1.2. As I understand it from ShadoWarrior's mucking around with the Barett, called shots is linked to the sniper equipment requirement, so anything with one will do the other (which is why his Barett won't do aimed shots as it has the "Sniper Bonus" requirement instead). Of course I could just make Katana's require sniper training but that's kind of weird.

 

6.I was worried that something like that would be the case, thanks.

 

7.I'm starting to think it's not a bug, per se, just a badly implemented formula. It's the effect where multiple accuracy enhancements suddenly make a weapon 100% accurate out to its maximum range. From playing with the to hit formula in Excel I now see why this happens, and it's fixable - but it'll mean rebalancing pretty much all the weapons accuracy FLT and range FLT values, plus tweaking the addons themselves. It happens because the to-hit formula goes badly wrong when accuracy FLT is >= range FLT, which multiple weapon add ons causes to occur with most weapons, especially with shooters with half decent skill. I'll make a separate post on this, as I've incidentally figured out exactly how shooter skill affects accuracy.

 

8.Good to know! Means its worth fixing fluid motion vambraces by changing them to add to agility, although it'll make the psionics rather fast too.

 

9.Thought so, although now I understand why accuracy is screwy I can probably fix this too, without having to mess with the underlying stuff.

 

Thanks again!

 

Abulafia.

[Okim]

2. No they will not. You`ll have to make a new particle effect. Otherwise you`ll see only muzzle effect. BTW, there will not be any explosion effect when the weapon with gun type will hit its target. And all gun type weapons have an instant fire mode meaning that it hits the moment it is shot.

 

5. just copy/paste a scope pointer from any model into katana`s model file and adjust its position in MEEALOV (if you wish to make a visible attachment). Be warned though that you`ll be unable to make a 'built-in' type of attachment. You`ll have to manually add all attachments to a weapon in game.

 

7. IIRC range is a max range of a weapon and accuracy is the range when the weapon should get a 100% hit chance in normal situation. At least this i what i though all this time and that`s why i never bothered at all with weapons having 100% accuracy.

[Abulafia]

2. No they will not. You`ll have to make a new particle effect. Otherwise you`ll see only muzzle effect. BTW, there will not be any explosion effect when the weapon with gun type will hit its target. And all gun type weapons have an instant fire mode meaning that it hits the moment it is shot.

 

5. just copy/paste a scope pointer from any model into katana`s model file and adjust its position in MEEALOV (if you wish to make a visible attachment). Be warned though that you`ll be unable to make a 'built-in' type of attachment. You`ll have to manually add all attachments to a weapon in game.

 

7. IIRC range is a max range of a weapon and accuracy is the range when the weapon should get a 100% hit chance in normal situation. At least this i what i though all this time and that`s why i never bothered at all with weapons having 100% accuracy.

 

Thanks again Okim.

 

2. Haven't got this to work yet. I changed the LAW to gun type and it fires, but no hit/miss comes up in the combat log and the shot does no damage. Maybe because there's something I need to change on the ammo too?

 

5. Hmm, I'll look into this. It's actually an invisible attachment I'd want. I haven't played with MEEALOV, which I assume is a model editor?

 

7. Range is max range of a weapon, accuracy is the range it should get a 50% hit chance.

[DerelictableX]

I think, you can check the accuracy formula here:

 

https://forum.altargames.com//index.php?sho...curacy&st=0

[Okim]

Hmm. This makes sense. I supposed that accuracy is rather 50% than 100%. I`ll look into this in my future update of ACM.

 

Such conversations may contain lots of interesting stuff, you know

[Abulafia]

I think, you can check the accuracy formula here:

 

https://forum.altargames.com//index.php?sho...curacy&st=0

 

Thanks DerilictableX, yeah that's the formula I've been using in my spreadsheet. It produces some interesting results.

 

The "accuracy" figure that gets displayed on the squad screen (which is just "accuracy FLT"/"range FLT") is really quite misleading, and has probably led to some unwise weapon design decisions by both Altar originally and subsequent modders.

 

By setting "range FLT" much higher than "accuracy FLT" you can still get accurate weapons (although the accuracy displayed on the squad screen will be low), but their accuracy follows a much smoother curve as range increases, AND, as a bonus, shooter skill has a much more pronounced effect on such weapons.

 

I think both the original designers and subsequent modders avoided doing this because they didn't want weapons with a displayed accuracy of 10 or 20%, as that looks like a really inaccurate weapon.

 

I've come up with a graph showing how to-hit chance varies with percentage of maximum range for various (squad screen) accuracy values. As soon as I sort out an image hoster I'll put it up.

[Abulafia]

Hmm. This makes sense. I supposed that accuracy is rather 50% than 100%. I`ll look into this in my future update of ACM.

 

Such conversations may contain lots of interesting stuff, you know

 

So true!

 

Unfortunately the real accuracy of guns, especially when you factor in weapon mods and shooter skill, isn't very intuitive - it's quite hard to predict how accurate a gun will be from the numbers you give it.

 

Do you keep a separate list of the range FLT and accuracy FLT values you've set in ACM? If you do, and you're ok with giving it to me, I could run up a version of my accuracy spreadsheet for you. It would be a lot faster for me than searching through the equipment.txt file for all the numbers (which is what I did for the WRB values, but that mod has a LOT less guns than ACM so it wasn't too much work).

 

To factor in weapon add-ons I'd need to know which slots each weapon has, what slots you've allowed each add-on to use and the range and accuracy values you've set for each add-on.

 

What the sheet does is show the true to-hit figure (for a standard size target) at set ranges from 5m out to 150m for each gun and each level of shooter skill. I'm putting in a comparison screen, maybe over the weekend, where you can pick combinations of add-ons from drop down menu's and compare the results, then I'll add in damage values.

 

My aim is to have a sheet that will show true dps (factoring in hit chance) for all weapons at all ranges, which should be immensely useful for balancing weapons against each other.

 

Two things I'm trying to work out is whether shooter skill uses the weapon values before or after add-ons are calculated and what recoil actually does (my best guesses are a flat minus to the hit chance of the previous shot, or lowering accuracy FLT for each subsequent shot and recalculating the hit chance). These aren't too hard to test, it's just I'm still learning how to mod so creating the test weapons I need is a bit slow.

[Okim]

Do you keep a separate list of the range FLT and accuracy FLT values you've set in ACM? If you do, and you're ok with giving it to me, I could run up a version of my accuracy spreadsheet for you. It would be a lot faster for me than searching through the equipment.txt file for all the numbers (which is what I did for the WRB values, but that mod has a LOT less guns than ACM so it wasn't too much work).

 

I`m quite satisfied with what i have now, so no thanks. My weapons are exactly what i want them to be.

[Abulafia]

I`m quite satisfied with what i have now, so no thanks. My weapons are exactly what i want them to be.

 

Big bad and dangerous, from the times I've played ACM

 

That's cool, and you'll have tested by look and feel anyway. If in the future you want a quick and dirty fix to avoid the auto 100% effect, just ensure all weapon mods that increase accuracy also increase range by the same amount.

 

Incidentally did anyone ever work out a way to make the accuracy effect of add ons show in the equipment screen? It would be damn handy for my testing.