Unique Crew Names, Art, And Animations?

[Cooly568]

I had a huge idea for a new mod recently which would add a new, somewhat hard to beat, sector, which would have at the end of it a powerful rebel, and after you defeated that rebel you would get a very powerful crew member.
My question is, can I replace the art, animations, and name generation of a crew member?
I want the crew member to only ever to be able to have one name.
Is this possible?

[Whale Cancer]

My question is, can I replace the art, animations, and name generation of a crew member?
I want the crew member to only ever to be able to have one name.
Is this possible?

No, no, and no.

You can replace the art and animations for an entire race, but because you can't make races (yet?) you can't make a unique NPC.

You can add a crewmember with a specific name, but that is all. You also can't make the crewmember anything more than an unskilled crewmember.

This is using the basic XML modding, this may be possible with more advanced modding techniques (but, so far, no one has released anything using those theoretical techniques).

[Kieve]

What you can do:
-Specify a specific name and race for added crew.

Code: Select all

<crewMember amount="1" class="human">Bob</crewmember>

Class is their race and a specific name can be placed between the <crewmember> tags.

-Create new sprites for a "custom" crew member. The new custom race will only have human attributes though. This is hardcoded. There are work-arounds for this, but they seem limited to personal projects involving code injection, and not publicly released.

What you can't do (right now anyway):
-Customize the attributes of a crew member. You can't set their masteries, and special abilities (amount of HP, fire resistance, etc) are all hardcoded in. See above.

Also keep in mind that coding events for an entire sector is harder than it sounds, and the event XML scripts are extremely touchy. It's very easy to mistype one bit of code or forget a closing tag and get runtime errors on game load.

[Whale Cancer]

What you can do:
-Create new sprites for a "custom" crew member. The new custom race will only have human attributes though. This is hardcoded. There are work-arounds for this, but they seem limited to personal projects involving code injection, and not publicly released.

It was my understanding that the new custom race will also default to the human sprite. Have you tried this? If so, I wouldn't mind adding a bunch of varied human sprites to my mod.

What you can do:
Also keep in mind that coding events for an entire sector is harder than it sounds, and the event XML scripts are extremely touchy. It's very easy to mistype one bit of code or forget a closing tag and get runtime errors on game load.

This. So many times this.

[Kieve]

It was my understanding that the new custom race will also default to the human sprite. Have you tried this? If so, I wouldn't mind adding a bunch of varied human sprites to my mod.

You're right, I was mistaken. Even a sprite repaint is impossible right now.

[Mr. Mister]

Mmm. But maybe you could have a little exe that patched your continue.sav and gave the neecessary experience points to your crew? Sounds overcomplicated.

Of course the alternative is helping in developing FTL: Overdrive.

[Cooly568]

So FTL Overdrive is a focus on making the game more modifiable.
So this could plausibly be a thing in Overdrive?
I would help with Overdrive but I don't have much time and I know next to little about coding.

[Icehawk78]

Mmm. But maybe you could have a little exe that patched your continue.sav and gave the neecessary experience points to your crew? Sounds overcomplicated.

Of course the alternative is helping in developing FTL: Overdrive.

You could, but this would limit your usage to only Windows and would force the player to save and quit mid-game to apply the "patch".

[henryheyhey123]

[quote]


You can add a crewmember with a specific name, but that is all. You also can't make the crewmember anything more than an unskilled crewmember.
quote]

Actually you can change the name to just one. This is proven by the mantis cruiser ship unlock where you save the mantis thief. He has the custom name and will always have it every time you save him. Take a chunk from his text and, theoretically, you should be able to do it

[Icehawk78]

Actually you can change the name to just one. This is proven by the mantis cruiser ship unlock where you save the mantis thief. He has the custom name and will always have it every time you save him. Take a chunk from his text and, theoretically, you should be able to do it

That's exactly what the post you (attempted to) quote said. However, you can only set the name for the gained crew - nothing else.