how are we doing with mods?

[jeme223]

well im getting annoyed seeing the same events over, and over, and over again and i know that modders are working on mods left and right, i was just wondering what the status of mods was? have you all figured out how to make it so we can add ships without replacing old ships? how about adding new events and whatnot? anyways, i hope to see some great mods that add customization and variety to the game! (or some sort of sandbox mode that continues on forever constantly getting harder until you die.)

[Whale Cancer]

The ship selection screen is hard coded, so there is no way to add ships without replacing old ones. That being said, there is a good mod manager out there (by a gent named Grognak, if I am correct) that makes selecting ship mods relatively simple (or so it seems, I am going to be converting my modded ships to his format tomorrow).

[jeme223]

gotcha, and at this time there is no way around this?

[Kieve]

...how about adding new events and whatnot?...

There are a few, mostly tied in with some bigger projects. Personally, I'm poking at one that involves giving you more options when you encounter the rebel fleet. Things like risking a second encounter to salvage scrap & armaments from a "Rebel Fleet" fight (instead of "Here's 1 Fuel, now run!"), taking on bigger Rebel ships, or even reprogramming their autopilot on a collision course with the rest of the fleet to buy you some time (teleporter dependent). Stuff that'll make an encounter with the Rebel Fleet seem less like "aww crap I ran out of time in this sector" and more like "Come at me, Bro!"
Inspired by STL's "Hold the Line" mod, but taking things a few steps further.

[swixel]

The ship selection screen is hard coded, so there is no way to add ships without replacing old ones.

Here I was thinking that an offset of 580 (Win32 HS, not steam or GOG, though I don't have GOG, so I couldn't say) and a couple of signatures could resolve this ...

Code: Select all

\x55\x89\xE5\x81\xEC\xB8\x00\x00\x00\xC7\x45\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\xC7\x45\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x8D\x2A\x2A\x8D\x2A\x2A\x89\x10\xC7\x40\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x89\x2A\x2A\x8D\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x89\x2A\x2A\xE8\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x8B\x4D\x2A\x89\x2A\x2A\xC7

\x55\x89\xE5\xB8\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\xE8\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\xC7\x85\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\xC7\x85\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x8D\x85\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x8D\x55\x2A2A\x89\x10\xC7\x40\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x89\x60\x2A\x8D\x85\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x89\x2A\x2A\xE8\x2A\x2A\x2A\x2A\x8B


I think what you meant was "no easy way"

(Caveat: that sig is right, but it's in the .text region ... so I need to change my scanning approach, or find something higher up to call ...)

[Alblaka]

There are quite a few different mods being developed as we speak. Comparing to those released on the forum, I would dare to say my AW-project is on a larger scale then the other things, but there may are people holding back their own progress as well
Eitherway, we recently finished the major batch of new weapons (around 50) + rebalancing of old ones, Feanturi (lead spriter of IndustrialCraft) is currently drawing them and I intend to meddle into event&sector coding across today. Probably even going to put up a thread asking for people to submit event (ideas) as a sort of community-driven event expansion. And then I'll probably add 'Uncommon' and 'Rare' weapon variants and refit the standard ships :3 F.e. had the idea of giving the Osprey 40 missiles and 4 Leto launchers as start equipment whilst removing the arty beam (though leaving it purchaseable).

PS:Oh yes, and we got a author for DSA/D&D/Masquerade-Adventures for Event-content as well

[Moosicorn]

There are quite a few different mods being developed as we speak. Comparing to those released on the forum, I would dare to say my AW-project is on a larger scale then the other things, but there may are people holding back their own progress as well
Eitherway, we recently finished the major batch of new weapons (around 50) + rebalancing of old ones, Feanturi (lead spriter of IndustrialCraft) is currently drawing them and I intend to meddle into event&sector coding across today. Probably even going to put up a thread asking for people to submit event (ideas) as a sort of community-driven event expansion. And then I'll probably add 'Uncommon' and 'Rare' weapon variants and refit the standard ships :3 F.e. had the idea of giving the Osprey 40 missiles and 4 Leto launchers as start equipment whilst removing the arty beam (though leaving it purchaseable).

PS:Oh yes, and we got a author for DSA/D&D/Masquerade-Adventures for Event-content as well

Awsome can't wait.

[swixel]

Ignoring for a moment it's only the Humble Store Windows version I have tested ... I've just managed to get the first trampoline up to bypass data.dat in favour of a local data/<file>. Brief testing shows it working, so that's something. Resources are also hardcoded, which would require a similar hack to bypass it.

The Steam version is too heavily protected to warrant any effort; the anti-debugger nonsense it's sporting is enough to make me not able to support it at this time.

In terms of other things ... I now know where the ship selection panel is in the binary ... but it looks like I'd need to rewrite the scene, or detour half of the graphical stuff to rebuild it (ugh). I've also got the blueprint loader ... though I'm not sure what to do with it.

Some crew stuff's also been hooked, but nothing fun has been done yet.

That said, it's 1am now ... >_>

Quick edit: Short of the devs/Steam removing the ridiculous DRM, I'm not supporting the Windows Steam binary for detours ... there's just no point / it's too time consuming.