Special changes on certain missions? Options

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

I've now encountered already on several different missions a special change in the game behaviour and want to know if anyone knows how it was done.

The first is in mission scb11ea /eb: There you have to capture the tech centre so you are able to build the stealth tank. How was it done that the stealth tank has for this mission a different prerequisite?
The second is in mission scb12ea: There you have to capture the normally uncapturable adv. comm. centre.
The third is in mission scg07ea: How does the game remember which building you destroyed in the previous mission, in case you don't destroy the airfield with your commando?
On some other missions they also changed the name of the technology centre to prison.

Are all these special changes hardcoded or is there any way to reproduce them in self-made maps?

This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: Aug 20 2009, 06:15 PM

[Nyerguds]

I've looked at that code.

As for the GDI mission 6 thing, well, every time a building is destroyed, it stores that building's ID in a special memory location. This is checked after mission 6, and if it's the Airfield's ID, it adds 2 to the mission number instead of just 1.

This value is also used to unlock the special GDI ending with the ion cannon, though it checks some more stuff for that.

I'll look into the mission 7 stuff though. Never heard that theory before. The new all-reveal code I found will help to confirm or disprove this.

There's other stuff like this, like the fact all GDI-helicopters 'sleep' in Nod mission 7, so allow the player to capture the Orca. I've changed this option to a mission-specific ini key in C&C95 v1.06c


[edit]

Holy crap, you're right. The building is gone in mission 7. Awesome

It seems that it only works for buildings of which they only have one though, like the CY, hand of Nod, radar, refinery. The power plants and silo had no effect.

I think this is because it simply blocks the reading of that building type from the ini in the next mission. I'll test this by adding a second Nod (or even GDI) CY on mission 7 and trying it out again, and see if other buildings of the removed type do appear.

[edit again]

lol this is bizarre... the first Nod building of that type read from the ini was removed. When I added 2 other CYs to the top of the buildings list, a GDI and a Nod one, only the Nod one I added was removed. The one in the enemy base was still there. When I switched the buildings around on the list, the one in their base disappeared and the other one remained.

Apparently it reads the ini keys in the order they're put in the ini, and not by number... odd

[edit yet again]

Oh this is funny... the buildings (and units and infantry too probably) in the ini don't need numbers before them at all. They just need SOME unique string before them, and numbers are the easiest. I replaced one of the numbers by "boo", and the building still appeared on the map. I noticed before when debugging that the game seems to have a way to simply "make a list of all keys in a section" and then go though them one by one. It doesn't even check the first part.

This post has been edited by Nyerguds: Aug 24 2009, 10:00 PM

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

There's other stuff like this, like the fact all GDI-helicopters 'sleep' in Nod mission 7, so allow the player to capture the Orca. I've changed this option to a mission-specific ini key in C&C95 v1.06c

i always used a separate house for this
e.g.
Player=BadGuy
Computer=GoodGuy

[BadGuy]
Allies=BadGuy

[GoodGuy]
Allies=GoodGuy,Special

[Special] ([Multi5] or [Neutral] work too as they have the same GDI remap)
Allies=Special,GoodGuy,BadGuy

[STRUCTURES]
000=Special,HPAD,256,100,0,None

BadGuy is enemy to Special so the player can capture the hpad, while the hpad is special and ally to badguy. So the helicopter won't attack the player.
The result is pretty much the same. A capturable helipad with a passive helicopter.
But this way you can have both. Some helis which attack the player and some which stay passive. I assume your key would make them all sleep, so with your method you can't have both.

This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: Aug 31 2009, 12:55 PM