[Modding] R&D and current findings

Discuss and distribute tools and methods for modding. Moderator - Grognak
StealthCl0wn
Posts: 78
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2012 6:55 pm

Re: [Modding] R&D and current findings

Postby StealthCl0wn » Sun Sep 16, 2012 8:19 pm

That doesn't work, I get this error.

Image
StealthCl0wn
Posts: 78
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2012 6:55 pm

Re: [Modding] R&D and current findings

Postby StealthCl0wn » Sun Sep 16, 2012 8:39 pm

Huzzah, I got it to work after downloading and inserting it 12 times.
CaptainShooby
Posts: 20
Joined: Sun Sep 16, 2012 4:54 pm

Re: [Modding] R&D and current findings

Postby CaptainShooby » Sun Sep 16, 2012 8:56 pm

StealthCl0wn wrote:Huzzah, I got it to work after downloading and inserting it 12 times.


Well done! I honestly don't know what could cause the error you were getting.
StealthCl0wn
Posts: 78
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2012 6:55 pm

Re: [Modding] R&D and current findings

Postby StealthCl0wn » Sun Sep 16, 2012 8:57 pm

Turned out I saved it as ".bat" rather than ".dat", my bad :p
Zuriki
Posts: 30
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2012 1:58 pm

Re: [Modding] R&D and current findings

Postby Zuriki » Mon Sep 17, 2012 12:48 am

Quirk: The START_GAME event can't have unique choices, it will inherit it's choices from START_BEACON.
Blogg123
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2012 1:19 am

Re: [Modding] R&D and current findings

Postby Blogg123 » Mon Sep 17, 2012 1:29 am

StealthCl0wn wrote:That doesn't work, I get this error.

Image



I figured out that editing values in Data.dat is a bit awkward. So far I have discovered 1 rule that you MUST to follow.

Say if you edit the damage value of a weapon, the default damage is 2. That means the max damage for that weapon is 9. Whatever value it is at default, the edited value HAS to have the same number of digits in it.

For example, If the default damage of a weapon is 12, then the max damage would be 99, and the least would be 10. You have to stay in the double digits for it to work.

If you want to edit the number of crew members you start off with, and the default is 2; you can only have a max of 9, and a minimum of 1. The edited number has to have the same number of digits in it as the default. This works with almost every value (except for the "shots" value of a weapon, even if set at 9, it will only fire a max of 5 shots).

The second rule that takes place in some circumstances, don't set most things to 0. There might be some exceptions, but I know this is true with damage, cooldown, and the amount of shots that are fired.

Hoped I helped some people :D
Btw, I made this account just to get this out in the forums for people XD
marinepower
Posts: 10
Joined: Fri Sep 14, 2012 6:40 pm

Re: [Modding] R&D and current findings

Postby marinepower » Mon Sep 17, 2012 2:02 am

Some things I found out:
Majority of the events are in events.xml
Not sure how events are loaded in sectors, but it seems sector 1 pulls from the newEvents.xml list, which in turn pulls some events from events_pirate.xml.
Cannot edit much besides the text on the start_up event. Frustrating, because I was hoping to create a 'customize your own build' type system that would show a menu like so:
1)Add Scrap
->1)250
->2)25
->3)5
->4)Back to menu
2)Add Augmentation
-> LOW / MED / HIGH augmentation
3)Add Weapon
-> LOW/ MED / HIGH WEAPON
4)Finish
->Exit Event

This would still play into the games customization since the results would be fairly random, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be possible. And the TIP: text is simply pulled from a list of different options, so you can't plop events or choices in there.

You can create your own weapons, but you can only make them as variants of existing ones. All you need to do is copy an existing weapon blueprint, change the identifier to something else, then set that weapon as your ships starting weapon (also in blueprints.xml). Interestingly enough, some values are floats, so you could have a constantly firing laser with a speed of 1.5 (or event 0.25) seconds. I've also managed to set the length of the glaive beam to 200, which literally cuts across entire ships. Quite fearsome.

During events, you can set custom behavior for ships (for example if you want them to surrender during the fight).
You load a ship during an event using <ship load="NAME" hostile="true" /> You can them change alliances of the ship during battle using <ship hostile="TRUE/FALSE"/>. The actual events the enemy ship can trigger during a fight are fairly straight forward and you can browse all the different examples in events_ships.xml.

Lastly, you can assign resources during an event using
<autoReward level="MED">weapon</autoReward> for weapons. The other options are 'stuff', 'fuel', 'scrap', and 'augmentation'.
You can assign additional crew members using
<crewMember amount="1" /> You should never assign more than one because it crashes the game if your crew ever grows to more than 9 people. (Probably why their own events that give more than 1 crew member are commented out).
If you want to have an option for the player to buy something, you can use:
<item_modify>
<item type="scrap" min="-50" max="-60"/>
</item_modify>
in a <choice hidden="false"> element. (Otherwise, they can't see how much they're paying when they click the choice)

You can heal the ship with <damage amount="-5"/>, and hurt it with positive values.

There's still more you could do, but the examples in the above xml files I listed should be plenty to figure out what's going on.
I know this is kind of a rambling post, but hopefully it will help someone.

PS. Now that I think about it, maybe the most useful thing to do is figure out what all possible elements and their attributes are and how they relate to one another? Would probably be the most helpful modding resource we could make.
So a choice element is a child node of an event element, and can have the attributes "hidden", "req", and "level", and we could have a list of all possible values for each. (Could be pulled programatically from the XML, I might actually write a program to do that).
Arcalane
Posts: 23
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2012 5:04 pm

Re: [Modding] R&D and current findings

Postby Arcalane » Mon Sep 17, 2012 5:18 am

Some really basic findings, but it's trivial to add new room/etc. graphics; you just need to stick 'em in the right place and they load nice and easy.

I hope someone takes the ship/room layout findings and turns them into a graphical ship layout editor. That would be amazingly helpful.
Zuriki
Posts: 30
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2012 1:58 pm

Re: [Modding] R&D and current findings

Postby Zuriki » Mon Sep 17, 2012 5:38 am

I was (am) working on something like that, but my free time is limited.
Magitek
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2012 5:58 am

Re: [Modding] R&D and current findings

Postby Magitek » Mon Sep 17, 2012 6:01 am

The first sector is not hard-coded, it loads the default sector "STANDARD_SPACE" initially.