Game mod creation: About link between techs of modern times and AC

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by Crimson Sunrise
The event could be a major natural disaster or battle or terrorist attack that renders land uninhabitable, spurring a race to the stars (Alpha Centauri or elsewhere).

Actually, I used that trick in the marssurvivors scenario. I gave the voice of planet' project another movie which seemed fitting to me (nano factory). The idea was that, and I quote 'those little homuncili', were given intelligence but indeed no longer obey humanity. The fungus (renamed lichen in the scenario) was then a home for those nanorobots and the planet was filled with that. The 'ascend to transcendence' was then a project on which humans try to escape this 'takeover'.

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
One other thought - you can dumb down the name of the base technologies, thus starting from lower tech. It would be a tough balance, but you start off with black powder, then smokeless powder, machine guns, artillery, etc. Then you can have Farm Machinery, etc. Hold it, this would be a historical SMAC mod. Maybe an idea for a different thread.

Yes, that's all possible. But why bother? There are games who already have these 'history' thing. Besides, how would the existing graphics fit in in a historical setting? It's hardly likeable that a scout, renamed 'musketeer' or something, can be the strongest units 'till you find machinegun (laser).

[johndmuller]

There are a number of things that appear to be hardwired into the game, such as most of the features of the SP's, some of the aspects of the NL units (wired to their slots in the #Units list), etc. A lot of this can be dealt with in one way or another, but needs at least to be taken into account and kept track of (for example, most of the aspects of the techs are controlled by various other tables - for which the techs serve as prereqs - or those flags), but there may be other oddities, inconsistencies, anachronisms, etc., that need to be explained away. Some things may just have to be lived with (for example, I think a couple of the graphics for certain NL units seem to be hardwired, or at least hidden somewhere) as may be some of text (i.e., Darsnan replaced IoD's with 'Krakken' or something in a recent scenario, but the game continued to warn that of an 'IoD spotted near xxx').

Entirely doable though, IMhO, and sounds like a good and rewarding project, but quite a bit of detail intensive work, including the creation of new graphics most likely.

Some of the stuff will no doubt require the players to modify some of their AC main directory files to make it work, which requires some caution in order to not screw up PBEMs with the normal setup.

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by johndmuller
Some things may just have to be lived with (for example, I think a couple of the graphics for certain NL units seem to be hardwired, or at least hidden somewhere) as may be some of text (i.e., Darsnan replaced IoD's with 'Krakken' or something in a recent scenario, but the game continued to warn that of an 'IoD spotted near xxx').

The "Sea Kraken" replaced the Sealurk, and the "Kra-Lek Sea City" replaced the IoD. The warnings accompanying the appearance of these units are in the script.txt file, and are relatively straightforward to edit. The Datalinks descriptions are in the helpx.txt file.

The other 3 files you may want to edit are the interludex.txt, conceptsx.txt, and labels.txt.
The way I keep my two versions of SMAC(X) seperate is that I have done a second loading of SMAC(X) onto my D: drive, complete with Googlie's No CD Crack, and then put icons for each loading onto my desktop: one for SMAC(X), and one for my mod, Beta Lyrae. Finally, if that isn't enough to help me keep them seperate, why I have a different textures file for my mod, Beta Lyrae, giving the map graphics a much different appearance than SMAC(X).
As far as the unit graphics are concerned, why the Network Node has some tutorials on how to edit these, IIRC, and from my understanding the Node is working on a mod "Return to Earth", which looks quite interesting so far. FYI.


D

[johndmuller]

As far as the unit graphics go, I don't believe that I've ever found the source of the IoD graphics (or for that matter, the standard non-native units either); the only ones I've seen are those in Units.pcx, and some of the stuff in there looks to be treated a little differently (like the artifacts and the battle ogres) - there are also 4 MW-looking things on the bottom of the units.pcx and I don't think they are Locusts, which would otherwise be unaccounted for also.

It might have been my imagination, but I thought that the Kra-Lek cities looked a little different than IoD's, like the cities were a bit less irregular around the perimeter.

[GeoModder]

IoD's are created by the same mechanism that puts new weapons/abilities/armor on a existent chassis. I suppose the pic of an IoD is hardwired in that.

The main difference is that pictures in the units.pcx file can't have a simulated move, meaning that they always show the same side to the player. IoD's have an change of direction when moving to other tiles like all other chassis.

But you're right about that Kra-Lek city thing. I tried to let MW have the same 'moving around' effect by giving them that IoD property, and what I got was an almost-but-not-quite IoD in the game.

[binTravkin]

Ive found that maintaining 2 similar threads in different forums makes some difficulties, so I announce that from now on this thread will be the main!

Heres a link for that second thread,some different ideas mentioned there,so you can check out:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=107776