Comprehensive SMAC->SMAX changelist

[Buster's Uncle]

This ought to give you a pretty good idea of it, if you ignore that my folders are, naturally, full of custom factions - the first screen ought to be the original seven.

[ete]

On BC and MN giving evidence of prior habitation which harms flavor: Monoliths. Prior habitation evidence was there from the start, and those landmarks were in SMAC.

@BU: I like the idea of showcasing some cool new community factions more than having clones of defaults. Giving wider choice of factions is great for repeat playability.

I've been doing some fiddling. A prospective smac_in_smax mod file is attached.

I've managed to remove fungal towers from view. Making them air units didn't work, but turning them into foils does. They don't appear on the initial map and only appear for one turn when produced by a pod. I've given them cloaking devices so that they're even harder to spot.

That sounds good. Not perfect, but should make FTs do basically nothing.

Spore Launchers can be replaced easily and transparently (and I've done so, only tell at the moment is I've left the name different for testing reasons).

Replaced by MWs?

Replacing sealurks with isles of the deep doesn't work properly because slot 10 (isle of the deep) use a hardcoded .cvr file if you set the display option to auto-generate (-1), but slot 15 (sealurks) will display a normal foil unit with the appropriate weapons if you set it to -1.

The only possible fix without .exe modding are to draw an isle of the deep graphic in units.pcx (but then it won't rotate like normal IoD). (Trying to drown the unit by making it infantry won't kill it if it spawns in water).

Right.. maybe copying each angle of the IoD image into units.pcx would give it correct rotation?

Don't know how to properly remove Battle Ogres. Probably not possible as those slots are hardcoded to both spawn from pods and be unrepairable and unaffected by monoliths. Looks like they'll have to be a .exe thing.

I think the Mk1 Ogre is also hardcoded to be given to the usurpers.

For now, I set them to be "Unity Robotic Formers" with clean reactors, which is less weird than the ogres.

hm, I think ideally we'd want the pod pop for BOs to reroll the pod pop until it got a non-BO event? Otherwise you've either got a new event or imbalanced chances for existing events, even if you figure out how to turn the BO into some other SMAC pod event.

Depending on how the game handles native life generation, having no fungal towers could make native life weaker than normal. But we could buff that.

Yep, seems sensible.

I've also replaced the opening film, menu background and maps of planet (copied and renamed the files from smac). The buttons are still green, though.

Good stuff

I've played a very pleasant game with this mod on today and everything works as intended. (Currently sealurks use the sealurk art but act as IoD).

Left to do in non-exe modding:
Change back to the SMAC tech tree. (#TECHNOLOGY)
Remove alien crossfire entries from the datalinks.
Possibly re-write the borehole interlude
Change default second set of factions (#NEWFACTIONS)
Change list of custom factions (#CUSTOMFACTIONS)
Add the best of the custom units CMN's have been using to make the AI smarter

New exe-modding necessary to provide tools to make this mod:
Change button colours
Provide switches to enable/disable native lifeform types from being spawned or appearing in pods
Provide switches to enable/disable units appearing in pods
Provide switches for landmarks

Useful but not strictly necessary .exe modding
Make the special abilities associated with particular slot numbers in #UNITS (no repair + no monolith interaction, fungus walk) into normal special abilities.

Sounds great . I'd also add in switching the graphics of the middle faction select UI for something without progenitors, if there's an artist who can make that happen. Oh, and a few misc text files like labels.txt may need tweaks here and there to remove progenitor references.

@ete
In your list, you also have stuff about adding new weapons and armour. I think that's quite contentious and could be out of scope for a "smac in the smax engine" project.

At that point I was writing it as a SMAC->SMAX changelist and referring to SMAX specific modules which need removing, nothing to add  don't worry

@others
Do we want to remove all smax technologies, units and facilities or are there some that clearly add to the game and should not be removed even from this quite conservative mod?

Alternatively, am I wrongly characterising this as a quite conservative modding effort?

All those not in SMAC should go. People who want SMAX stuff can add in exactly what they want, and many who want it will be purists.

Attached mod doesn't have the video in it because it's too big. Just copy opening.wve from movies to openingx.wve in the mod.

Also, I may be using the wrong maps of chiron, haven't tested that part yet.

@BUncle, et. al
I think keeping the existing smax faction select screen is a good idea. Replacing the second set of factions with an alt set is also easy and a good idea.

Excellent progress

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm not married to using the clones; just throwing it out there as possibly the best of both worlds for those averse to X, to get something a little fresh but not too different - I'd think the opinion of guys like diessa and kyrub is what matters.  [shrugs]  For me, more different is better, but this project isn't for me.  Showcasing the community's modding work is definitely a great idea if the target audience is comfortable with that.  Dio's retro-factions is probably a better idea for them than my alt. version clones.  Dunno.

[DrazharLn]

On BC and MN giving evidence of prior habitation which harms flavor: Monoliths. Prior habitation evidence was there from the start, and those landmarks were in SMAC.

I had the dumb. Of course.

@BU: I like the idea of showcasing some cool new community factions more than having clones of defaults. Giving wider choice of factions is great for repeat playability.

I agree that using non-clones would be a good idea. That doesn't preclude using some of BUncle's artwork, though. He's made some great faction art over the years.

I've managed to remove fungal towers from view...

That sounds good. Not perfect, but should make FTs do basically nothing.

It's a bit of a kludge and is detectable by the player in rare cases. It would be better to make the native life togglable, of course.

Spore Launchers can be replaced easily and transparently (and I've done so, only tell at the moment is I've left the name different for testing reasons).

Yep. They work fine and the planet AI seems to use them exactly as it does other mindworms.

Replacing sealurks with isles of the deep doesn't work properly because slot 10 (isle of the deep) use a hardcoded .cvr file if you set the display option to auto-generate (-1), but slot 15 (sealurks) will display a normal foil unit with the appropriate weapons if you set it to -1.

The only possible fix without .exe modding are to draw an isle of the deep graphic in units.pcx (but then it won't rotate like normal IoD). (Trying to drown the unit by making it infantry won't kill it if it spawns in water).

Right.. maybe copying each angle of the IoD image into units.pcx would give it correct rotation?

Units that use an image from the 2d sprite sheet (units.pcx) don't ever rotate, so we'd have to just choose one rotation for the sealurks if we were to do that. There are multiple images per unit, but they're used for the different morale levels, not rotations.

Don't know how to properly remove Battle Ogres...

For now, I set them to be "Unity Robotic Formers" with clean reactors, which is less weird than the ogres.

hm, I think ideally we'd want the pod pop for BOs to reroll the pod pop until it got a non-BO event? Otherwise you've either got a new event or imbalanced chances for existing events, even if you figure out how to turn the BO into some other SMAC pod event.

The battle ogre pods are really rare anyway, so I don't think it's that big a deal. But yeah, the best solution here requires more control that alphax.txt gives us. Hopefully yitzi or kyrub can help out here.

I've played a very pleasant game with this mod on today and everything works as intended. (Currently sealurks use the sealurk art but act as an IoD).

Left to do in non-exe modding:
Change back to the SMAC tech tree. (#TECHNOLOGY)
Remove alien crossfire entries from the datalinks.
Possibly re-write the borehole interlude
Change default second set of factions (#NEWFACTIONS)
Change list of custom factions (#CUSTOMFACTIONS)
Add the best of the custom units CMN's have been using to make the AI smarter

New exe-modding necessary to provide tools to make this mod:
Change button colours
Provide switches to enable/disable native lifeform types from being spawned or appearing in pods
Provide switches to enable/disable units appearing in pods
Provide switches to disable the cloning event
Provide switches for landmarks

Useful but not strictly necessary .exe modding
Make the special abilities associated with particular slot numbers in #UNITS (no repair + no monolith interaction, fungus walk) into normal special abilities.

Forgot one. The pod dropping a unity gunship is also new, I think. That could be removed, but I don't think there's much reason too.

Sounds great . I'd also add in switching the graphics of the middle faction select UI for something without progenitors, if there's an artist who can make that happen. Oh, and a few misc text files like labels.txt may need tweaks here and there to remove progenitor references.

The image to edit for the faction select screen is pickfac.pcx. It should be fairly easy to create a replacement once a set of new factions has been selected.

[DrazharLn]

Played for a while longer (I had forgotten how fun SMAC is). Even with the spore launchers disabled, I once got a message saying that spore launchers had destroyed a terrain enhancement. I never saw any, though.

I also got a message saying that "Mindworms 16" (my replacement name for the spore launchers) had destroyed a terrain enhancement.

I've seen two sealurks so far. Unfortunately, both were broken. I could see them through the fog of war all the time and neither moved in all the time I could see them. One of them spawned on land and couldn't get out, too.

So, looks like disabling them will take some exe fiddling. The AI also seemed really incompetent (hardly any terraforming).

I've attached a save where you can clearly see the beached sealurk (near the Gaians).

[ete]

I'm guessing they destroyed enhancements by sitting on them, or the message is just wrong. Either way maybe we could fix with text? Switching the message to something like "Mind Worms swarm near <base>" is one option? Or leaving the message as-is if the worms are actually destroying terraforming by sitting on the square and using destroy enhancement.

Sealurk bugs sound annoying. And yea, without kyrub's fixes AI terraforming is appalling. Which is part of why I'm so keen on this project

[DrazharLn]

You're right. The appropriate file is Script.txt and I've changed it appropriately.

Depending on if the #SPORESLAUNCHED and #SPOREFOREST events are called, the game could still be destroying your enhancements with phantom units.

tutor.txt also retains a mention for #SPORELAUNCHER which is presumably called the first time they're seen. I could remove it, but I haven't tested what the game does yet if it can't find a string for a tutorial. I'll do that later with the drone riots tutorial or something.

Latest version of the mod (minus movie) is attached.

[diessa]

I think that the Borehold Cluster could remain, but it ought to have the interlude changed. The interlude establishes a more active, recent alien presence. If that was changed, then I could see it, the Manifold Nexus, and Monoliths being compatible. The issue isn't that something/someone was there before, but we need to take care about drawing clear connections to the aliens presented in SMAX; I think that keeping it mysterious, open, and ancient is fine. I don't mind the nexus, either, but it can be problematic knowing that it was added to be a object that aliens were fighting over. It constraints the possibilities and openness of the alien presence. As I said, with minor changes all could possibly be kept, but we need to recognize the connections between the original and expansion that were added post-hoc. They aren't necessarily bad so long as we question their purpose and value to the game.

[Geo]

IIRC, the interlude mentions the borehole cluster as only 'slightly younger' then the surrounding monoliths, so the timescale shouldn't be an issue.

[diessa]

Yes, Geo, good point. I found the interlude file and confirmed that it is only slightly newer. The shocking part of it is that they came from the stars (so no surprise there). If the BC interlude doesn't contradict, then we have some options. I think there is a case for and against them, but it seems that the decision won't have a significant impact.

[DrazharLn]

I've done most of the .txt work today. Here's a summary:

Done previously:
* Sort of disabled towers
* Replaced spores with worms (incl. event text)

Done today:
* Restored the SMAC tech tree
* Disabled SMACX weapons, defenses, facilities, secret projects and special abilities that were accessible from the SMAC tech tree.
* Removed alien crossfire entries from the datalinks (helpx.txt and conceptsx.txt) (actually just made most of them invisible)
* Removed references to alien crossfire stuff in datalinks.

I did a diff between the smac files and the smacx files when performing the regressions and only left mechanical differences where Yitzi had made them. Which is to say, I did a thorough job and I'm sure the tech tree etc are as they were in SMAC.

Still to do, not exe modding:
* possibly some changes to tutor.txt
* change the nutrient, mineral and energy datalinks entries so they actually explain the limitations at the start of the game.
* work out when btsealrk.pcx and friends are used.
* work out when sealrk_sm.pcx and friends are used.
* Change default second set of factions (#NEWFACTIONS)
* Change list of custom factions (#CUSTOMFACTIONS)
* Add the best of the custom units CMN's have been using to make the AI smarter


I played around a bit more, popping pods, trying to work out which images are used for what (to know what replacing the sealurk, tower and spore launcher images would do), popping pods and checking how visible towers are.

I found that towers are almost invisible to the player (and in any case disappear after one turn if on land). The cloaking seems to work correctly and you can only see them if you're next to them.

It's also possible for more towers to be generated as the game goes on. These will disappear quickly but could be detected by sensors. It's also possible for towers to appear and for the terrain they're on to be submerged on the same turn. This will produce a permanent tower.

I had the AI play a game while I spectated Yang, but, despite my encouragement, the mindworms never touched his terrain enhancements, so I didn't get to see the changed script for those events. Should probably work, though. For now the script displayed to the player includes the game's name for the script in all caps for debugging.

I also checked the pod popping dialogues and none of them make explicit reference to fungal towers, spore launchers or sealurks: there's an isle of the deep pod and a generic native life pod. So that's all fine.

Latest version of the mod attached.

[DrazharLn]

I went ahead and modified tutor.txt to remove the Spore Launchers entry. It's now an almost-replicant of the mind worm entry. I also removed all the references to the alien factions while I was there.

If the community could pick a new set of factions to bundle with this and if someone could investigate when the bt<native lifeform>.pcx and <native lifeform>_sm.pcx files are used and if the spore launcher ones need removing, then we're very almost done with things that can be done outside the binaries.

For the friendly .exe modders, these are the most useful new alphax features for this project in order of importance:
Switch to disable sealurks/fungal towers/spore launchers being spawned or appearing in pods
Switch to disable ogres appearing in pods
Switch to disable the cloning event
Switch to disable Unity Crash Site
Switches to disable the other landmarks

To make things a bit neater, it would be good if either we had a way to stop custom units appearing in the datalinks and/or if you could make disabled native life and ogres not appear in the datalinks (I've tried and I don't think this can be done from text files)

@Whomever was discussing the unity chopper previously:
It was possible to pick up a unity chopper from pods in SMAC, too.

edit: actually attached file.

I think I've done rather more than I really have time for on this project, so I encourage someone else to take my files and experiment along the lines I suggested or just test to see what the sealurks do or whatever. Using a mod manager has helped the development process, so you might want one of them, too.

Best of luck, everyone. If someone could send me an email when the AI patches get moved across, that would be nice, too.

[ete]

Excellent work! I can't test from here, but if I recall correctly you can hide units from the datalinks like:

*Sea Formers,           Foil,     Formers,      Scout,      9, 0, 0, Disable, -1, 00000000000000000000000000
Supply Crawler,         Infantry, Supply,       Scout,     10, 0, 0, IndAuto, -1, 00000000000000000000000000
Probe Team,             Speeder,  Probe Team,   Scout,     11, 0, 0, PlaNets, -1, 00000000000000000000000000
Alien Artifact,         Infantry, Artifact,     Scout,     12,10, 0, Disable,  2, 00000000000000000000000000

the sea formers. And I'll start a topic to discuss collect default custom units.

[DrazharLn]

That looks like it should work, but it just doesn't. Slot 5 is just hidden no matter what you put in there. All other slots will always be shown no matter what their names are.

I think the unit is only actually made by scenarios and the time warp event and the asterisk is just there to signify that for some reason.

[Geo]

I think the unit is only actually made by scenarios and the time warp event and the asterisk is just there to signify that for some reason.

That would imply seaformers are not predefined like land formers are for the AI.