Mod: Variations in Friendliness

[sgqwonkian]

Originally Posted by ExplorerBob

One problem has popped up, though, when trying to extend variable relations to the Zorg; I've noticed that sometimes, the game has systems with no objects in-system, which is an annoying tip as to the state of the relations. While the current code does place plasma blasters and cone cannons on Hope, based on relation state, this is only for testing, so that I can restart the game until I get an altered-relations game. I don't want the rest of the galaxy to be affected by the state of variable relations.

Try inserting this bit of code into any quest that seems to generate an empty planet (or, if you can't tell which quest is doing it, insert this to every new quest that doesn't have a STAR block, or whose only STAR block references Hope / Glory).

STAR 0
STRC yellow
END STAR

CONDITION 0
TYPE explore
STR0 0
END CONDITION

PAGE 0
REQ0 0
ITMS 1 tech
END PAGE

That should put a random item at the stars that are turning up empty. It should mask the problem nicely - the players will never be able to tell that anything unusual loaded at all.

[ExplorerBob]

It turns out that the lack of items on planets is because the itemless star is where the ship should be -- only it fails to generate.

If/when you have the time, please take a look at this code and see what you think of it. "Wormapathy" is generated by haven.ini; wormhate and wormlove are generated by the lovemuk and hatemuk files. It's been a while since I released the other files, but I think they should still be compatible?

The idea is to have three types of merc, one for each diplomatic state. hatemuk should trigger a Muktian mercenary; the others trigger allies that are functionally equivalent.

Composition of the zip file should be similar to last time; few tweaks to the love/hate files to get them to work better, and the currently-malfunctioning mercs.

[sgqwonkian]

Have you ever tried to mod a quest that uses the THIF or SABT commands? I did, a while back, and I found there's all sorts of problems. Neither of those two codes will work with anything but the "explore" CONDITION. Put any other trigger on the quest, and it'll never take an item from you. There's some other weirdness specific to those codes as well, like THIF needing to be in the first PAGE, and it parses haveitem differently then it should. Point being, all the codes pertaining to Esmerelda are really wonky, and only reliably work in the specific scenarios used in the maingame. Stray far from the example, and it'll break.

So, after much tinkering and testing, I've come to the conclusion that MERC has similar restrictions. The problem isn't your code, it's the the very coding of the game itself. As near as I can tell, the MERC command doesn't work with CONDITION TYPE uvar. (It may just be that CONDITION uvar evaluates after the point where the game needs to already have launched the special MERC hiring window and protocol.)

I draw this conclusion most based on these two observations:

1. If I change all your MERC entries to ALLY, it generates the ship in every scenario and combination.
   
2. If I change all your ALLY entries to MERC, it never generates a ship.

I'll go add that to the big debugging list at the wiki.

So, your possible choices for the mod under discussion seem to be:

• Revert to the default quest without modding it, since it works.
• Remove the CONDITION TYPE uvar, and set them all to MERC.
• Set that one MERC to ALLY instead, but keep the uvar CONDITION and use alternate text to hint that he's an outlaw.
• Move the MERC code to the first PAGE, and test to see if that works. I doubt it will, but given how weird the THIF and SABT codes are, I can rule it out till it's been tested.
• Surprise me with something clever, new and fun that's not on this list.

Sorry it took so long for me to figure out the problem. It wasn't till this morning that I thought far enough outside the box to realize the issue might not be your coding. The past couple days, I'd been looking for a typo that didn't exist.


One more thing. I found this other possible bug (depending on how you view it, you might see it as a feature) in the mod. Wormhate overrides the Mantle of Babulon. I had the mantle and met the Muktians. They gave me the "cruel Slorn" speech, like we were gonna fight. Then they gave me the "return of the ancient ones! We exude ooze in jubilation" greeting in a second window. Then they attacked me. You might want to go tweak mantle_muk to make it less surreal.