Modding Questions
 

I'm curious about a few things I'm trying to do and I'm not even sure if its even possible to do ,perhaps someone else out there can help:

* Is there a way to add cargo to a ship at the start? However I need it to go to a specific ship and not all three of the starting ship types.

* Right along with that, is there a way to set user variables for specific ships, rather than all three of the starting ship types?

* Are devices the only things that can be usable in combat (ie the chromium gong or klakar beacon)? Is there any way to use that for weapons as well?

* With the FIRE command, according to the docs the only flag available for it is autotarget, how could you set it to just fire directly in front of the ship? Actually how do you even get this to work with ANY other weapon besides wp_furies, nothing else i've tried does anything, is there a specific flag in the wp file thats missing?

* is there any way to add a condition for a quest that checks for items installed on the ship? I've tried it before with 'haveitem' but I don't think it works.

I'll add more as I think of them

Re: Modding Questions
 

Don't have any answers to your questions, but if you don't get enough feedback here you may also want to try out the forum over at Infinite Space Federation:

http://www.freewebs.com/strangefederation/

Check it out!

Re: Modding Questions
 

The FIRE command fires directly forward of one of the player ships when you don't use the autotarget.. For example:

FIRE wp_projvrtx

This fires the particle vortex cannon when you use the "gong". This isn't terribly useful though, as it won't always pick the first ship in your flotilla.

Setting variables etc can be done in a mission-specific quest. Each mission (in mission.ini) can launch up to eight quests by using multiple QEST commands.

Variables: Make a quest similar to haven.ini except instead of creating items, use the UVAR command in the star entries.

STAR 0
FLAG existing
PLNT hope
UVAR myvariable somevalue
END STAR

Items: The easiest way is probably to add to the above quest a check if you're at the Terran homeworld (ie. Hope), and if so, add the item. This should trigger as soon as the game starts. End the quest at that point to make sure it'll only happen once.

CONDITION 0
TYPE homeworld
STR0 terran
END CONDITION

PAGE 0
REQ0 0
ACTN endquest break
ITEM widget
END PAGE

The "haveitem" condition only works on cargo, sorry http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Modding Questions
 

Couple more questions:

* Is there any way to change the string for the mirror effect on the starmap? FOLD ENGAGE VIEW RETIRE ENTER are all there, but I didn't see a MIRROR anywhere in the strings.ini file. Is there a line that can be added?

* Is there a list somewhere that says what colors each of the <color=###> commands are equal to?

* When making devices, is there any way to add STAR commands and CONDITIONs at all?

* Is there a rough approximation for what the move and turn values convert to in real world terms (km/h or mph or whatever)?

Re: Modding Questions
 

Also, how does the verbose command work?

I take it that its some sort of debugging tool, but how do I use it? I keep getting an event or something thats taking back to windows and I'm having problems isolating it.

Re: Modding Questions
 

In Windows, the command line options can be added to the target line in the shortcut. Right-click on the shortcut to Weird Worlds, select "properties", then "shortcut" tab. In the "Target" field you'll see the path to weird.exe. Just add any command line options to the end of the line, separated by spaces.

When working on a mod, you might want to make a new shortcut with options like: -game yourmodname -skiplauncher -verbose . This will make it launch your mod without having to select it in the launcher.

The -verbose option makes the game print out a lot more debug info into the stdout.txt that's in your Weird Worlds folder.

The MIRROR label seems to have been left behind when I moved text into the strings.ini. Sorry http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

The color tags in text are simply RGB, where the value for each component varies from 0 to 9. E.g. 900 would be bright red, while 090 would be bright green.

Devices only use PAGE entries.

The movement speeds in general are in metres/second while turning speeds are in degrees/second.

In the case of starship hulls, the MOVE parameter is the speed in m/s when using a thruster whose PAR0 is 100 (ie. Fusion Tube). The TURN speed is similarly affected by the thruster... Basically the thruster strength is like a percentage of the movement or turn speed. When you use a Reactionless Thruster with strength of 210, the ship moves and turns over twice as fast as defined in the hull file.

Re: Modding Questions
 

I noticed in the kawangi and ravian hull files under one of the weapons there were some flags after the xy coordinates: 'hidden' 'nouse' 'trigburn'/'trigblow'. I assume these are fairly self explanatory, but are there any other flags? And also I was having problems in making a ship explosion that does damage to everything around it like the wp_kawangiblow. I want to keep the same idea, but use a different visual effect for it (a shockwave). I've been messing around with it for a few hours and its driving me crazy. These particle effects just confuse me for some reason.

Re: Modding Questions
 

The weapon system flags are:
hidden - not shown in displays, can't install/uninstall
nouse - not used except when triggered by following flags
trigkill - trigger when the ship starts to burn
trigburn - trigger continuously while burning
trigblow - trigger when it stops burning and explodes

The way I'd do a shockwave-like death effect is similar to the Tchorak missile explosions... Make it shoot many small projectiles with a 360-degree spread, and use a single shockwave particle (like the one used for gauss cannon impacts) as a "muzzle flash". Note that this won't do damage to any friendly ships.

Re: Modding Questions
 

Aight, broke the cardinal rule and added a few things at a time before I checked...

getting an error whenever I explore a planet, found this in the stderr.txt file:

Fatal signal: Segmentation Fault (SDL Parachute Deployed)

not exactly sure what that means, would the stdout.txt file have more info?

Re: Modding Questions
 

Oh, and before I forget,

is it possible to make a weapon that fires, explodes at a certain distance (a la the multi-missile), and releases a swarm of fighters instead of missiles?

I'm thinking of the way the ravian debris work, though I'm guessing it's quite a different effect since this wouldn't be a trigburn or trigblow effect.

Re: Modding Questions
 

Here's the stdout.txt file if it helps

Re: Modding Questions
 

I think the stderr.txt file would be of more use. It's generally where I look. I had a similar problem the other day with a credits.ini overflow. Most things, (like # particles in weapons) seem to just stop loading at some point if you overload them. I spent a long time looking for that error with the credits.ini. My suggestion would be to remember every seemingly silly thing you altered (credits.ini crashed the game only when I tried to fire up a simulator or a game, but not on the intro screen) and then look in the Engine Limitation on The Modmaker's Guide: http://www.digital-eel.com/modguide/engine_limits.htm
This is, at least, a start.

Also if you're having problems with the particle effects, the way I got my brain around them was to start with a weapon I wanted to make, and then strip out all the EMIT bits from the template weapon, leaving only the initial projectile part and its sprite. Then add more in one at a time.

I am not the expert on this, but I don't know of any way to load fighters without a fighterbay. If you figure out that there is a way, tell me about it. I could use it. YOu can do the following (which is in a weapon I have in my mod, but don't plan to release): Essentially make a version of the particle vortex cannon, only limit its firing arc, set it to homing, shut off spin, and replace the beam with a gun. It works well in some respects. YOu can make a drone that will turn and run down point defense rather well, and go up against fighters. The downsides are these: If you make it shootable, it'll last 3 seconds (though you can make it shootable, and make the target something really small SIZE 3 for example) because it can only endure one hit from anything. If you don't make it shootable, it's less realistic, but it'll gain you some fighter time. The next problem is more serious, though. If you don't make it "nocollision" it will fly straight to a cap ship and crack on its hull. Putting nocollision on them seems to defeat the point to me. You can stall this with prefpdef and preffter, but that will only buy you so much time.

-Jeremy

Re: Modding Questions
 

Well after poking around a little bit and examining the engine limitations I found that the max number of quests is 64, and apparently I had reached that limit... I think. Is that 64 quests listed in the game.ini file or is that 64 quests actually activated in a real game, because quite a few of the quests I have include KEYS with them that make them mutually exclusive, so I shouldn't think I would've reached the 64 quest max.

Whatever the case may be, after I took out a quest or two from the game.ini file it started working again.

Re: Modding Questions
 

One way to track down what you've changed lately is by sorting files by date.

The max quests limit was increased to 128 in v1.2... Are you on a Mac?

Phlagm is correct, only ships can launch (real) fighters. The drone idea sounds fun though.

Re: Modding Questions
 

Does anyone know if there's an equivalent to -verbose for Mac? I keep getting crashes, and it's a pain in the butt trying to figure out what's creating them.