#0001 -- ThirdSide And More... Options

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HyperPatch Development Discussion #0001

Alright, first discussion topic of the sub forum!


Topic Theme: Adding full support for more than two houses into the game engine.

Ok then, now how should i go about coding this up? Remember this includes everything that is house related, Loading Screens, Sidebars, EVA Speech and so on. There are many ways to do so, but i want to hear what works best for the modders themselfs!

Remember to think simple, while try to expanded as many hardcoded problems as we can. I can add new INI keys to HouseTypes, so if you wish, you can suggest a full list of keys to be definable on the HouseType in the INI.

Have fun and remember, its just a game at the end of the day, dont take it too seriously!

Basically anything goes here, as long as your polite and respectful to peoples views and to myself, i wont take action towards you like deleting your posts or even getting you banned from the Tiberium Web forums itself if it has to come to that. I want to lay them rules down in the first post, and i hope people stick to this.

-Hyper

This post has been edited by CCHyper: Aug 3 2009, 12:12 AM

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I think it would be even more useful to be able to change the different text lines too. e.g.

HouseType.LoadingScreenTextLine1=Analyzing Combat Zone Topography...
HouseType.LoadingScreenTextLine2=Compensating for Ambient Light Values...
HouseType.LoadingScreenTextLine3=Compiling Wartime Conventions...
HouseType.LoadingScreenTextLine4=Gathering Intel on involved Factions...
HouseType.LoadingScreenTextLine5=Creating theories on likely enemy plan...
HouseType.LoadingScreenTextLine6=Secondary check of combat zone...
HouseType.LoadingScreenTextLine7=Deploying forces to combat zone...
HouseType.LoadingScreenTextLine8=Final analysis of outcome...

This can be done, though i would have to limit the strings to abotu 64 char only, to save hassle on small loading screens.

Maybe even allow to specifiy a certain graphic file, so you can have some kind of animated loading screen, e.g. with a progress bar instead of text.

Now this would be hard to do, allowing PCX, SHP and/or VQA support on loading screens would require a lot of code, but ill keep a note of it.

A progress bar could be done by usingthe code the online game dialog uses.

A key for the position of the text could be also useful, so the loading screen status window isn't fixed to the right side. e.g.

HouseType.LoadingScreenTextXY=545,245

This is a good idea, ill add this, shoudl be simple too from what i have seen, though something more like HouseType.LoadingScreenText1XY=, HouseType.LoadingScreenText2XY= and so on would be much better.

How about moving the Veteran factors from General to the Houses. So Nod could gain more speed when veteran than GDI, but GDI a bit more firepower etc.

Did RA2/YR have something like this? If so does it work well? I might be able to copy the code over

Pilot,Crew,Technician,Engineer,Disguise and Paratrooper too. So each Side can have different escaping infantry from destroyed buildings/units.

I cant believe i missed these! Of course ill add these, so how about this too?

HouseType.BuildingType.CrewTypeA=[UnitType or InfantryType, 8 char str]
HouseType.BuildingType.CrewTypeB=[UnitType or InfantryType, 8 char str]

Would give you a nice MCV or E2 (random choice) when the building is destroyed

And then if you want to customise a certain building, you would have...

BuildingType.CrewTypeA=[UnitType or InfantryType, 8 char str]
BuildingType.CrewTypeB=[UnitType or InfantryType, 8 char str]

And while you move already BaseUnit, you could move RepairBay,HarvesterUnit and PadAircraft too. (though i'm not sure if PadAircraft is necessary as the Nod aircraft works fine even if the original entry says PadAircraft=ORCA,ORCAB without mentioning any Nod aircraft)

I can move these too, no problem!

Note though, PadAircraft= is ONLY used when a BuildingType what acts as a helipad has HoverPad=true on its section, and then still, it will ONLY take the first value from PadAircraft= and place this AircraftType on the helipad once it is constructed.

Oh shi-
this is all beautiful.

Orly?

If MultiplayerAICM gets moved I think it'd be useful to move also the global difficulty sections ([Easy], [Normal], [Difficult]), which give much more control for the AI's difficulty than MultiplayerAICM.

This is indeed a idea, but i dont want to go that far into the AI yet, is amessy web

Or, did the difficulty keys already work with Houses? I have a little "flashback" how I once gave [GDI] Cost = 0.5, but I don't remember if it worked in-game or not (it works in RA1).

Do you think you could test these for me? That i would know if i have to work on these...

In fact I actually think it might be even more beneficial if PadAircraft could be assigned to the building even; that way 1 house could have multiple helipads that all come with a different aircraft. It'd also be nice if modders would be able to make certain aircraft only able to land on certain helipads...

I have plans for this on Building Types, BuildingType.PadAircraftA=[AircraftType, 8 char str] and BuildingType.PadAircraftB=[AircraftType, 8 char str].

And doesnt Dock= control what a TechnoType can land/dock with?

Making aircraft able to take off and land not vertically would also be nice, but I'm guessing that'd require you to make a new locomotor.

I remember VK working on something like this in NPatch, it dont require a new locomotor, but its a lot of work...

Anyway, about the menu/loading screen resolutions; how about adding support for 1 wide-screen resolution as well (I'd suggest 1280x800)?

Ill think about it...

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

Did RA2/YR have something like this? If so does it work well? I might be able to copy the code over

No, the veteran bonuses are global and the same for all sides too.
I think you mixed that up with the country specific bonuses where you can adjust the sides Airspeed, Armor, Cost, GroundSpeed, ROF, BuildTime. This was used to give the same unit different properties on different subfactions.
In TS they seem to exist already, as they stand already in rules.ini and game.exe but are unused. It should be tested if these work already.

HouseType.BuildingType.CrewTypeA=[UnitType or InfantryType, 8 char str]
HouseType.BuildingType.CrewTypeB=[UnitType or InfantryType, 8 char str]

Would give you a nice MCV or E2 (random choice) when the building is destroyed

And then if you want to customise a certain building, you would have...

BuildingType.CrewTypeA=[UnitType or InfantryType, 8 char str]
BuildingType.CrewTypeB=[UnitType or InfantryType, 8 char str]

If the BuildingType specific ones overwrite the global ones, it would be ok.
A key which sets the number of escaping units could be also useful.
BuildingType.CrewNumberA=[Byte 0-255]
So you can restrict the escaping units to 1 engineer on a conyard.

I'm not sure if possible but how about a key which sets the range of health the escaping units have?
BuildingType.CrewHealth=[Byte 0-100%]
the escaping units would then have a random health from CrewHealth to 100% (e.g. CrewHealth=100 would mean all escaping units have full strength; 0 a random health between dead and full strength)

And doesnt Dock= control what a TechnoType can land/dock with?

Unfortunately it only gives some kind of priority list, where the aircraft prefers to use the specified entries when searching automatically for a helipad. But when ordered manualy it can land on other helipads too.
E.g. a GDI harv with Dock=GDIRefn could still dock on a Nod refinery. Or the GDI orca can land and reload on Nod helipads too.
This should be fixed to be really exclusive, so if the unit doesn't has a certain building in this list it really can't dock with it.

This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: Jul 30 2009, 03:12 PM