sigget

I'm excellent man! It's been a while since I had a hobby project like the one you guys know me for. I'm too busy enjoying life, and lets face it, 8 hrs a day in front of a computer screen is way more than enough. Instead I'm spending my time enjoying life, music and travel. Keep an eye out and you just might get a glimpse of me and my backpack ;-P What are you up to these days?

Hi piibii, i was just asked about this old adventure of mine and when i googled it to find the tool google showed me this thread! :-D I guess this isnt relevant at all these days but id like to answer you anyway. Go ahead and bundle it, if you feel like including a credit or an acknowledgement then please do, but u dont have to. I consider the tool to be in the public domain, it's belongs to you just as much as it belongs to me. Good luck and have fun!

Hello again old friends! A friend told me yesterday that there's a third game in the series. I haven't played it, but i thought i'd check in to see whats new. I never did play the sequel, but i did ask around to see if my tools still worked around the time it was released, or maybe shortly after. Which i was told they did. From what ive read on the official site, both in the modding section and in the forum over there vfstool will still do the trick for Afterlight. So i guess you're set, and with ALTAR now providing documentation chances are mods will be even richer for this game. Good luck to all of you modders out there! What else is up, what have i missed since my last login ages ago?

My mail account was closed due to inactivity. Guess everything bounced. Everything is great with me, i finally found full-time employment as a programmer. So i dont have much spare-time over for projects. But i suppose i could still sign up for the modding team. I work with databases daily and have written code for reading excel spreadsheets in the past. There's surely someone of the other modders with great ideas that could use a hand or a useful utility or two. As you know from my track record im not really a moder myself but do enjoy writing tools for modding. Suppose you might be seeing more of me in the near future!

Hi again old friends! Just thought i'd check in and see whats new in the forums. I havent tried AS yet and was wondering whats happening on the modding front. From my quick look on the latest topics i learned that they're still using the .vfs-format. No need for any new tools from me then i guess. I hear ALTAR has started a modding team that they'll support with tips and documentation, very good news indeed. Any news from them on their progress? Happy X-mas from sigget!

Nice going! Let me know if there's anything i can help you with.

Ive compared it to version 1.3 now and found that the medic training doesnt match the settings in the skilltool. Since i have no idea what version i used to make skilltool i still need you to post those files!

Yes, i dont remember what version i used when i wrote the skilltool so everything is welcomed!

Could anyone supply me with the config files for the different versions? If i remember correctly the settings are in these files: tactical\configs\game\listofskills.txt tactical\configs\game\listoftrain.txt Zipped and mailed would be the best, and dont forget to say what version they're from. Or perhaps just post them here, since they're only like 2 Kb or so.

Ill have a look at it this weekend. You might even get those tooltips you requested earlier Slaughter

It would be more fun to play this RPG game if you had a skill tool that allows you to select which game versions skill settings to display?

Are you guys sure they've changed the skills for version 1.3? I suppose i could rewrite the skills program so that it takes its values from the installed gamedata.vfs. Or perhaps it would be better if it had the different configurations available from a menu. Anyway, is there an interest?

I suspect they tried having support for facing soldiers but found it was too hard to play with, that the area visible for each soldier wasnt easy enough to determine. In the E3 interview with Martin he said that Aftershock will have a feature where the visible view of a soldier is colored. Which reminds me of the Commandos -games.

Hehe, i think ill be using (Removed by Slaughter) to indicate strong language in my posts from now on!

To be honest i doubt ill be able to insert into these archives. The reason is that they're so tightly linked to the database, and i havent been able to fully understand it yet. And the fileformats of the data files are also in formats that will have to be cracked. A lot of work. I might spend a little more time on the database formats since i have spent a lot of time on it and dont like the idea that i tried and failed. =)

Okay, have a look and let me know what you think

It doesnt necessarily require thousands of files. Again, take Q3, it has something like 3000 shaders (in q3 these define materials). They're stored in files named .shader and can contain several definitions in each file. For example goth_base.shader contains the materials for the old-looking bases. In Aftershock you could in a directory named weapons have a file called 'human_weapons.txt' containing: uzi { reload_delay 0.25 fire_accuracy 0.0001 ... } shotgun { reload_delay 0.45 fire_accuracy 0.05 ... } and so on. when a mod is installed it adds a file in the weapons-directory perhaps called avp.txt containing: predator_nuke { reload_delay 5.0 fire_accuracy 1.0 ... } Passing it through postgres sounds like a good idea. And it would remove the problem of incorrect references. Im not sure if you mean that it was a nightmare keeping the excel files in sync or if you're talking about coding integrity verfication into the game. Anyhow, the more independent a mod becomes, the more easy it will be for the creator to keep his files in sync, so he might not need the postgres-solution. And this way expansion packs are easier to make! *wink* I borrowed the syntax from q3 .shader -files, in Aftershock they would of course be in the pseudo-XML format.

Exactly. Using an SQL-server is very flexible, but what overkill. Especially for the typical game that only reads in its configuration files once or once per level. If the data is so massive that it cant be held entirely in ram, then the sql-server starts making sense again, since it could then perform quiries on the data. And ALTAR wouldnt have to be editing several files, as i said, the text files are generated from excel spread sheets, generating to multiple files shouldnt be much harder. Excel is very customizable and exports functionality for external applications to read and process excel spreadsheats. I think the: "scan directory and parse all files"-approach would be great. Its been used by countless games and is great for modding. For example take the .shader-files in Q3. Slaughter, would you pass this on to ALTAR?

I wouldnt =) I just cracked the formats of War of the Ring and they was in the form of a database. I dont think there'll ever by mods for that game since inserting into the database would be very difficult and time consuming to code. And text files are faster to read than database tables. I'd go with designing weapons, units and so on in excel and wrinting to textfiles just as they did with Aftermath but instead write them into several files. One for each weapon/unit/etc so that extra weapons and so on are easy to add for modders. Makes the game a bit more dynamic.

Then its probably worthwhile to still develop tools for Aftermath, since they're likely to be customizable to support Aftershock aswell later. So keep up the good work on model editors and such =)

if i remember correctly there are no scripts, apart from the normal mission types there are the fixed missions, area51 and rescue old greys and those, i concluded that they are hard coded steps of the game, they can of course be changed into using other textures and maps but for the scripting part, no such customization.

Could it be that you're not using the right language for the patch? For example the english patch wont install on the german game. Shouldnt at least =)

So the tables will have turned then, the humans are attacking the earth not the aliens. I suppose that wont change the gameplay much, its not like we started with 60 bases in aftermath and had to defend them. One thing i think they should try and focus on is getting the detail of the levels more evident. In aftermath and many other games the world is really very detailed but you're always as such a distance from it that you never get to fully appreciate it. Which is a huge shame.

Done! I made this really neat graphical tool. Should be easy to use for everyone. http://www.geocities.com/sigget2003/wotr

Hehe, well, yes and no, it uses DirectInput and DirectSound, but not Direct3D. Instead it uses OpenGL for the graphics.