The Legacy wrote:1. Is FTL Overdrive still being developed? I haven't seen an update in two years in either the forum thread or the depository.
The original Overdrive, which IIRC was being written in C#, is no longer being developed and has been abandoned for quite some time. Vhati has restarted the project in Java, but
it proved to be too big (since it's basically like developing FTL, but instead of two people, it's just one guy)
2. Is there a way to modify the maximum upgrade level of the reactor power?
3. Is there a way to reprogram the crew's abilities to something else, beyond the default races, outside of the cosmetics of name and graphics?
Nope
Is there also a way to add more than eight crewmembers to a player (or NPC?) ship without crashes or other issues?
For the player - without crashing: no, with crashing: perhaps (have the ship start with more than 8 crew members). IIRC, enemy ships can go above the limit without any complications, but I'm not sure.
4. Is there a way to add more than four weapons? I've tried it, and though it seems to work, it does cause problems with the interface. Thus...
You
can, but as you have found out yourself, the UI doesn't really like this.
5. Is there a way to change the positioning of the UI, to make room for changes to the stats of various systems?
Not sure what you mean by 'changes to the stats of various systems', but there's no way to move the UI elements.
6. Is there a way to create new room designs, and to modify the effects of upgrading a system beyond their vanilla defaults?
Again, not sure what you mean here. If by 'room designs' you mean interior images, then yes, you can change that, but you can't have them change based on the system's level. It might be possible to emulate this with glow images though, but they depend on the skill of the crew member manning the system.
It's also not possible to change the way systems work. For the most part, system bug out when upgraded beyond vanilla limit (eg. engines reset evade to 0).
7. Is there a way to create new ships instead of overwriting the existing ones and their variations?
Nope.
The Legacy wrote:After testing, one half of it seems to work; req="rock" and lvl="0" enables the option even on a ship without a rock on board. However, it also works when a rock IS on board. If there is a way to set this to ONLY work if there's no rock on board, you'll be golden.
That's because FTL treats the 'lvl' attribute as a minimum requirement, not the
exact level that is required. Though what you have found is indeed interesting, that you can have the choice require at least two crew members of a specific race. Dunno about the other modders, but I didn't know that.
The Legacy wrote:in the code, the lvl field reads as "if lvl >= (variable entered) then (this is true)". Thus, by entering "9 || lvl <= 0" into the field (such as <choice req="rock" lvl="9 || lvl <= 0" hidden="true">), it would make the line read in the compiled part of the code as "if (lvl >= (9 || lvl <= 0)) then (this is true)"
Good thinking, but tricks of that kind work only on interpreted languages like Javascript or Python
FTL's data files use XML format, and the game itself is written in C++, which is a compiled language.
In XML, the value of attributes is a string, so you can place whatever you want in between the quotation marks. It's only a matter of how the code later interprets that string... FTL happens to look at the 'lvl' attribute as an integer. If the string isn't a number (eg. "<1"), then it returns a default value, most likely 0.
).