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damocles

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  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. There's no function called at the end of a turn, but you can check for the very beginning of another players turn using OnStartTurn(playerID). So if you check for player 2's turn starting, then you know that player 1's turn has ended. The thing to watch out for though is that this function is also called when a player starts an interrupt turn. It's a good idea to keep track of whose turn it is by tracking when all the players have had a turn. It's a bit tricky, but it's all there is
  4. damocles

    Script happens.

    There are two main problems with your script... 1) There is no function that can return the health of a unit (unless I've missed it). 2) Retreat logic only retreats sometimes - more often the unit would rather stand and fight. If you want to force run them, then use unitsetscriptlogic and unitmovetowaypoint. The only solution I can think of for the VP problem would be to use the onUnitDamageUnit function. Then keep an array of units that have been damaged as well as a corresponding array with how many times each unit has been damaged. Then if they have been damaged 4 times and are still able to fight, make the run away. A bit of a complicated approach, but it should work okay.
  5. I learned the editor when S2 came out. A bunch of us over on the Nival forum spent ages fiddling and trying out stuff, and we started an "unnofficial manual" thread because this was all before the editor manual was released. Then the manual taught me a few things, and the rest I either picked up here and there, or I figured out by fiddling around. The scripting I learnt from the editor manual and from looking through the Nival scripts (there are several functions they forgot to mention in the manual). I was already a good programmer in various languages so it wasn't hard for me to pick up Lua and the S3 function styles. As for the waypoints scheme, I currently have it planned as a two stage process. The first stage is to keep track of any unit that is damaged by the player using the onUnitDamageUnit function. The second stage would then be, at the start of the enemy turn, to cycle through the units in the list and make them behave accordingly. I'm thinking I'll use two approaches to their behaviour. One will be to run to the nearest safety waypoint as described above, but the other will be to give them a kind of fake hearing range. I always thought it a little odd that the enemy can't hear silenced weapons even when they are fired from a couple of feet away. So I'll do some distance checks and if they can hear the weapon being fired, then they have a location where to begin investigating (there's a "swarm" logic that causes the unit to circle around a location). I may also create a "communications distance" where any units that hear silenced fire will communicate it to nearby units and they will all swarm the area. All of these distances and reactions can be setup as simple variables that the modders can change to suit their mods. It would be pretty easy for modders to use this system once I create it. It will simply be a case of copying the new functions to the s3common.l file in their modfolder/scripts/ folder. Then adding a few small function calls within their mission scripts. As for your learning to mod, stick with it and just keep experimenting. As long as you are fiddling with a mod copy and not the original files, then you can't do any serious harm. And look at the Nival maps, there's a ton of tricks they use that you can figure out by looking through them. The S3 editor is one of the hardest editors around to learn, but once you get used to it's strange quirks, it is very powerful. The one thing I haven't figured out yet would be making it possible for a team to work on a mod over the internet. It uses SQL servers, which could be setup for internet access, but then someone would need to leave a server on all the time with the files. Not to mention that the SQL setup for the S3 files is not very secure, and as such could leave the server vulnerable to hackers. I think it was more designed to be used over a secure LAN rather than the net. one final thing - if you want to learn to mod S3, it helps if you understand at least one programming language. Almost every interesting sequence or event in the game is done via scripting. The S3 scripting is easy to learn, but if you know how to program another language, it will give you the edge in making useful scripts.
  6. Yeah, one more - ask them if it's possible to disable or somehow bypass the custom character screen. It's not vital, but it would save me a lot of work. The dialogs are the biggest thing though. Ask them if they have a dialog .xls file they could give us. I'm sure I could figure out how to use them from that. Thanks.
  7. The idea of comic books is not really much use to me. I need to be able to use all the dialog scripting functions in the lua scripts. The comic idea would be good for just telling the story, but I am more interested in the interactive stuff. Getting certain actions to start after and during cartain dialog lines are spoken. That kind of thing. I also want to be able to create dialogs to ploay as acknowledgements. Without dialogs, there's not much point continuing my mod. So many of the missions are already heavily reliant on dialogs and dialog feedback scripting.
  8. I've been thinking about this problem too. I think I have it figured out and when I get it working, I'll be sure to post the goods here. Basically, the approach I'm thinking of doing is to have a ton of waypoints, each with the name safety_point_x where x is a unique number. Then, at the start of the enemy turn, the script will check each enemy. If they are in an alarmed state, but cannot see a hostile character, then they will be forcibly run to the nearest safety point. The script will also mark that enemy as having just moved to there. If the enemy is shot at again, they will run to the next nearest safety point. As the modders, we are in a position to think how the players will go through the mission and see which enemies are likely to be sniped from silenced weapons. We then place safety points in safe locations near the high probability enemies. Another approach I'm looking into is to undermine the stealth abilities. They are ridiculously overpowered right now. You can walk up to enemies, wipe your nose on their sleeves and they won't even blink. I'm thinking about adding a minimum distance check, possibly based off of the enemy unit's level and a value the mapper sets for each msision. It would be pretty easy to run checks to see if they enemy can see the player. It would simply require keeping a list of units that the player has seen recently and checking them to see if they have a line of sight to the player. If the player is within the specified distance, then force the units to see each other. I think there's a function that forces visibility somewhere... Like I said, once I get around to writing these scripts I'll post them up here. But my main concern right now is not AI but making dialogs
  9. So no-one has any idea about dialogs then? This is not good. Dialogs are the last major hurdle stopping me from creating the mod I want to.
  10. It's not the cellar layer, and moving the wealls away fom the stairs didn't work. It's really weird - there's an invisible solid wall that exists on every floor in the same place. I eventually got around the problem by moving the stairs around to the other side of the column and giving them more room. There are still annoying invisible walls, but now there is room to move around them. Not the best solution ever, but it works. Sort of.
  11. Take a look at these: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dave88/images/SS31.jpg http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dave88/images/SS32.jpg The first pic shows a staircase, and the second is the same staircase but showing the above floor also. For some bizarre reason, the path finding absolutely, completely, unalteringly refuses to walk across the middle set of stairs (centre of the images). It will do anything to avoid using those stairs. And when there's no other option, it says "path not found". I've tried rebuilding them, I've tried moving them, I've tried different types of stairs. I;ve tried removing all walls and objects so there is only the stairs. It's like there's an invisible wall there. Anybody else experience this and perhaps know of a solution?
  12. damocles

    ChapterBases???

    Ah, my bad. Sorry for that. At least you found it now.
  13. Som has anyone tried playing around with these yet? I'm at a stage where I would liek to include some dialog into a map, but am not sure how. So far all I know is that it uses excel files for the dialog, but I have no idea what to add into the file. I assume it will contain info about who is speaking, what they say, etc. Probably also contains links to the audio file to play for each sentence. It seems Nival didn't see fit to include an example file, so I have no idea where to start. Perhaps I'll go badger them for an example...
  14. Wasn't the hammer and sickle mod made by one of the Nival team?
  15. Unfotunately, very few people mod for S2/S3. The editor and database methods are so complex that most people give up quickly. I know I've given up several times, but I love the game too much, so I keep coming back to modding it. I know a lot of people were put off by the serious issues in the first release of the editor. They patched it and improved it more with S3, but it's still a pain in the arse to do anything more than a basic map. Definitely one for hardcore modders only.
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