FTL Captains Edition: Call for Events/Textlists

[stylesrj]

Here's an idea for an event:

Engi boarders!

That's right! We've had all sorts of boarding parties invade the ship, but what about the bad-at-combat Engies paying a visit? Maybe it happens in Mantis sectors where a single Mantis boards with his crew of reprogrammed Engies.

Or it could be an event like Virus.

You encounter a damaged Engi vessel. A quick scan shows no lifesigns onboard. Salvage anyone?

1) Search the ship
You find a bit of Scrap (Medium Reward) and an oddly-blinking terminal. You shut it off and move on.
Or
You board the ship and accidentally trip some sort of automated system. The ship reactivates and the crew teleports on your ship. There is no choice but to destroy them, someone has reprogrammed the Engies to fight. (Fight an Engi ship with no crew (so it's automated) while fending off 2-6 Engi boarders. Standard reward for destroying an enemy ship)

2) Leave it alone
No reward and you move on.

3) Have the Engi look at it

Your Engi boards the vessel and looks around as to what happened. They spot a blinking terminal and interface with it. They react suddenly to a massive jolt of electricity and you quickly bring them back to your ship as the Engi vessel reawakens and teleports its hidden crew onto your ship.
You grab your blasters and discover that you Engi has been reprogrammed to fight alongside the intruders!

Engi Crew is now an Enemy. 2-6 Engies come onboard, face automated Engi ship, etc.

After the battle is over and you collect the wreckage for Scrap:
As you survey the carnage, your former Engi suddenly reassembles itself. You prepare to shoot them again in case they're hostile but it explains that it reprogrammed the virus inside the ship and has used it to enhance its systems and the ship.

Reactor upgrade, 5HP hull repair and you now have a maxed out Engi named "Virus."

[Biohazard063]

Hey there, just started writing an event in code, I've finished the start of the encounter but some questions pop-up as I've never written an event from scratch.
Here's what I already got by the way :

Code: Select all

<event name="CE_ANOMALY_ENCOUNTER" unique="true">
   <ship load="C_AUTO_CRUISER" hostile="false" />
   <text>Coming out of FTL jump, sensors pick up what seems to be an AI-Autocruiser. First inmpression seem to conclude it's offline. It could make fine scrap or might hold some imoprtant information.</text>
   <choice hidden="true">
      <text>Investigate the AI-ship.</text>
      <event>
         <text>Getting closer, you notice crude writing on the AI-ships hull :"THE ANOMALY" Before you can investigate further, the AI-ship springs to life and powers his weapon system. Aimed at you...
         <ship hostile="true" />
      </event>
   <choice hidden="true">
      <text>"We've seen this trick before. Let's go."
      <event>
         <text>The ship remains silent as you charge up the FTL and prepare to leave.</text>
      </event>

Obviously I want to write a custom end to this, as in where the ships "surrenders" close to the end, problem is I don't see how I need to create that.
I'm reverse engineering the entire thing again as I've grown accustomed to. Going of from the Kazaaak event for most of this.
Questions :
1. So option one has you fighting an auto-cruiser but how do I get it to "surrender" and how do I call up that event ?
2. Is question one even possible as I'm using a ship blueprint already used ? As in, wouldn't it automatically load up the surrender event this ship already has? And would writing an end for this encounter change it for all events in which you fight this ship ? Guessing I could just copy the ship's blueprint and call C_AUTO_CRUISER_2 or maybe just C_AUTO_ANOMALY...

[Sleeper Service]

Is question one even possible as I'm using a ship blueprint already used ? As in, wouldn't it automatically load up the surrender event this ship already has? And would writing an end for this encounter change it for all events in which you fight this ship ? Guessing I could just copy the ship's blueprint and call C_AUTO_CRUISER_2 or maybe just C_AUTO_ANOMALY...

Exactly. You'd need to create a new ship event for this to work. Ship events are what regulate surrenders, ships fleeing, crew death and ship destruction for enemies. They are stored in ship_events.xml, have a look at them to see how they work.

[RAD-82]

Coding was incomplete, so I added the missing closing tags (both choices and the whole event) so it would stop annoying me. Google Chrome even noticed a couple of typos that I didn't bother to notice, so those are also fixed.

Code: Select all

<event name="CE_ANOMALY_ENCOUNTER" unique="true">
   <ship load="C_AUTO_CRUISER" hostile="false" />
   <text>Coming out of FTL jump, sensors pick up what seems to be an AI-Autocruiser. First impression seem to conclude it's offline. It could make fine scrap or might hold some important information.</text>
   <choice hidden="true">
      <text>Investigate the AI-ship.</text>
      <event>
         <text>Getting closer, you notice crude writing on the AI-ships hull :"THE ANOMALY" Before you can investigate further, the AI-ship springs to life and powers his weapon system. Aimed at you...
         <ship hostile="true" />
      </event>
   </choice>
   <choice hidden="true">
      <text>"We've seen this trick before. Let's go."
      <event>
         <text>The ship remains silent as you charge up the FTL and prepare to leave.</text>
      </event>
   </choice>
</event>

[Biohazard063]

Exactly. You'd need to create a new ship event for this to work. Ship events are what regulate surrenders, ships fleeing, crew death and ship destruction for enemies. They are stored in ship_events.xml, have a look at them to see how they work.

Okay. So, from what I can tell, I will have to create the ship again under a different blueprint name.
Then create something like this for the events_ships.xml :

Code: Select all

<ship name="C_AUTO_CRUISER_2" auto_blueprint="C_SHIPS_AUTO_CRUISER">
   <surrender chance="1.0" min="4" max="4" load="EVENT_THAT_LOADS_WHEN_SHIP_IS_AT_4_HULL" />
   <destroyed>
      <text>Text to display when you destroy the ship</text>
      <autoReward level="MED">standard</autoReward>
      <choice hidden="true">
         <text>Continue...</text>
      </choice>
   </destroyed>
</ship>

So I'm guessing "ship name" will be the new name I give the other blueprint.
And that will also be the name I will have to add to blueprintList name C_SHIPS_AUTO_CRUISER.
Does adding the blueprint name to the autolist take care of what weapons and such the ship can have?

[Sleeper Service]

Yep, the referenced ship blueprint list in after auto_blueprint= defines which ships can appear in the event. Ship lists are stored in autoBlueprints.xml.

[stylesrj]

I know if I want events to have a chance of being integrated they should be in code but I've got this idea and the imaginary gauntlet was thrown...

viewtopic.php?f=12&p=94046#p94046

(huh... there should be a CE event for Wally...)

So... *picks up gauntlet*

You arrive in a completely unremarkable system. Then a man in yellow robes materialises on your ship and says "I'm looking for my friend Wally. Have you seen him? He should be somewhere in this sector."

1) Wally? Why not find where he is?
Quest beacon!
2) We don't have time for this
Nothing happens.

Quest Beacon:
You enter what appears to be an unremarkable system. Your robed friend informs you that Wally is usually surrounded in red and white. Your scanners pick up several entities with that colour scheme.
1) That ship!
a) That wasn't Wally! It's a pirate! (Defeat pirate, standard rewards. New quest beacon)
b) Found Wally!
2) That planet!
a) No Wally here. New Quest Beacon
b) Found Wally!
3) Give up
Nothing happens. Quest over.

The new quest beacon leads to pretty much the same events until you find him or give up.

If you find Wally:

The robed man is happy you found Wally. Somehow you think the events were rather childish. For your patience and diligence at finding Wally, he rewards you. His friend also wishes to serve on your ship (High Scrap reward, maybe a Human crew named Wally).

[Biohazard063]

Yep, the referenced ship blueprint list in after auto_blueprint= defines which ships can appear in the event. Ship lists are stored in autoBlueprints.xml.

So... I don't actually need that since I already have :

Code: Select all

<ship load="C_AUTO_CRUISER_2" hostile="false" />

Just learned that enemy weapons and systems are set in the ships blueprint... not by adding the ships blueprint name to a list.

So the ship is done (load up the original in superluminal, chance the blueprint name and save...) I added artillery to it though. As a non-starting system. Believe that means it can have artillery but not necessarily.

All that remains now is writing the events_ships.xml, testing and finally submitting my first completely custom event. Yay !

[Sleeper Service]

Cool! Although as an event this is very close to the CE auto cruiser encounters. It does not really offer meaningful choices and as a combat event it is extremely static. Vanilla events that lead straight to combat usually draw their texts from a text list, which at least hides to some extend that you encounter the same event again. Your event will always illustrate the same circumstances and ultimately its main intention seems to be promoting your player ship. *shrug*

[Biohazard063]

Cool! Although as an event this is very close to the CE auto cruiser encounters. It does not really offer meaningful choices and as a combat event it is extremely static. Vanilla events that lead straight to combat usually draw their texts from a text list, which at least hides to some extend that you encounter the same event again. Your event will always illustrate the same circumstances and ultimately its main intention seems to be promoting your player ship. *shrug*

I've seen those lists... Seeing how I already need to create a separate version of the auto-cruiser, I can always try to create a list for that as well.
Shouldn't be that hard to write 3 or 4 different flavor texts for the first encounter.
The surrender event would've been the main hook to the entire encounter though. Even if it doesn't get in, it would still be a good practice run... which I clearly needed. So I am planning on finishing it. The plan from the start would already have been to make it look like just the next auto cruiser encounter, until it "surrendered".
I don't see a lot of events (if any) where you have to do stuff or get blue options after the fighting has been done (except for the Zoltan Diplomacy and piracy options) hence I thought it stood a chance. I'll convince you yet !

As far as promoting my own ship goes, well, I think only people who have seen my own mod before might remember it.
People unaware of it would probably see the end I had in store for this event and then go "Ah, that's why it's called that way."
Besides, changing the name will take 2 seconds. Heck, changing the entire ship wouldn't take more than 2 minutes.
Still, seems like some work to get just 1 event in...

Now that I think about it, hasn't this happened before ?
I recall an event that loads up the ship named C_PIRATE_CRUISER_ARTILLERY (Yes... used that hull myself as well once...)
I don't recall the ship being used anywhere else... and either I'm missing out, but other than the ship looking great, the event doesn't seem to lead anywhere either (as far as blue options goes... can't seem to locate the event itself though.)
All that just to wonder what the odds are for an event that requires more than simply editing 1 events.xml to actually make it in...

Either way, it will be good practice for me no matter what.
One of the reason that I started with one so "complicated" as this one, instead of just one with just text and options.