[Discussion] Generic X3TC S&M questions III

[X2-Illuminatus]

It's an awful long time since I had a look at that, but back then (X3TC times), you weren't able to add own video files. Only replacing existing ones worked. I doubt that this was changed with X3AP. Since, there are several videos just showing the congratulations screen, you have at least some "spare" (file) numbers you can use.

for what are this 2 addtional values/properties?

Hard to tell without further context. If I had to guess, I would say they are merely used to determine, when the video should be played.

[Aldebaran_Prime]

It's an awful long time since I had a look at that, but back then (X3TC times), you weren't able to add own video files. Only replacing existing ones worked. I doubt that this was changed with X3AP. Since, there are several videos just showing the congratulations screen, you have at least some "spare" (file) numbers you can use.

for what are this 2 addtional values/properties?

Hard to tell without further context. If I had to guess, I would say they are merely used to determine, when the video should be played.

I tested a bit more - and found unfortunately no way to get the video in 00850.dat to be shown. In the orginal TOTT mod they were able to play some addtional files, but this team also decompiled and modified some .obj files - but this knowledege is lost because the team had broken apart.

So I had a look at the several number of congratulation videos. In the TC Folder structure under mov (also for an AP installation) the files 00812.dat til 00822.dat contains all different versions of congratulation videos. The videos in 00816.dat til 00822.dat contains all the same video - so they are ideal to be replaced with own videos.

I renamed my video as 00819.dat and placed in in the add/mov folder ( in the hope, that the Mission director engine of AP will look first in the AP/mov folder to play a video. But this didn' work either - it still plays the congrat video of the TC/mov folder. The next try was to delete the 00819.dat in the TC/mov (in the hope, that MD searches somehow all mov folders in a order) - no sucess again.
Only the replacement of the 00819.dat in the TC/mov folder with my own version of 00819.dat brought my AP MD script to play my custom video.



I didn' checked yet all original MD scripts of TC and AP from ES which of them may use the "standard congrat videos" - but a first check shows, that at least the AP MD scripts does not use the videos 819 to 822 - which will be a good base for my further work.

[JSDD]

... i have a little question regarding the mission director:

does the event <object_claimed/> trigger when the player has boarded a ship ??
if not, which event is suitable to check if any object (bigship) in a group has been boarded ??

[Ketraar]

Its been too long, but I think it does trigger, should be easy to do a test though.

If it doesent checking value {object.boarding@object} for boarding progress and afterwards owner is a good alternative. But it may depend on what you want specifically.

MFG

Ketraar

[JSDD]

... thanks 4 your answer

i'm trying to make a little plot which allows the payer to get access to 4 unknown sektors (therefore i will load a separate map)
part of this plot is to escort a paranid ship from sacred relic to harmony of perpetuity
every few minutes the OBS (opponent balancing system, a vanilla library) spawns enemies (xenon)
to remove captured ships (class fighter) from the group i use this piece of code:

Code: Select all

<cue name="PLCL_step9_enemy_captured" version="1">

  <condition>
	<check_any>
	  <any_object_captured group="PLCL.enemies"/>
	  <any_object_claimed group="PLCL.enemies"/>
	</check_any>
  </condition>

  <action>
	<do_all>
	  <remove_object_from_group object="{event.object}" group="PLCL.enemies"/>
	  <reset_cue cue="this"/>
	</do_all>
  </action>
  
</cue>

... but i'm not sure if boarded ships (bigships) will also be removed by this code

another point i figured out:
the description of the MD instruction <set_sector_owner/> says that its "not recommended" to reward the player with ownership of sectors
why ?? is it specific to albion prelude ??
(the ownership of these unknown sectors i've set explicitly in the map file, using r="10")

[Ketraar]

Your code should work for boarded ships (the _captured bit does it).

Player owned sectors have some issues, some debug spam possibly related to jobs and such, hence why in the vanilla versions its faked. basically its a Unknown sector labelled as player owned.

For a modded game its not a too big of a deal though, technically there wont be much difference. In any case unless some script or code depends on it you can use the fake owner overlay type command and it will look the same for anyone not looking into your code.

MFG

Ketraar

PS.: quick reminder that all my info has gathered some dust, so take that into account.

[c2colton]

Is it possible to have 2 (or more) variants of a custom ship in-game?

I am looking at editing the Reliant from Star Trek to be used as a cargo variant as well as it's current fighter class.

I used the "edit ship" option from the plugin manager, but when I install the new file (renamed and all) it just replaces the already installed one. I did not check the "replace ship" option, and was just curious if there is a quick fix that someone can point me towards.

Thanks in advance!

[Ketraar]

You can change ships name when spawning (via script) or you can just go and make 2 entries using same model.

MFG

Ketraar

[JSDD]

1. remove the plugin manager, install x3editor2
2. open your TShips with the x3editor2, find your custom ship in there
3. copy & paste TO END (!!!) the entry of the custom ship (now you have a clone of it)
4. give the new entry (ID = PASTED_OBJECT or something like that) a new, more "meaningful" ID, e.g. SS_SH_A_M1_STARTREK_VAR1 (not necessary, but recommended)
5. go to "variation index" of the new entry and change it to ...

1 for "vanguard"
2 for "sentinel"
3 for "raider"
4 for "hauler"
...

[Cycrow]

Is it possible to have 2 (or more) variants of a custom ship in-game?

I am looking at editing the Reliant from Star Trek to be used as a cargo variant as well as it's current fighter class.

I used the "edit ship" option from the plugin manager, but when I install the new file (renamed and all) it just replaces the already installed one. I did not check the "replace ship" option, and was just curious if there is a quick fix that someone can point me towards.

Thanks in advance!

If you edit the ship, you need to make sure you change the ID of the ship, you cant install 2 ships with the same.

[ascendence]

hey guys,
I'm completely new to the game and forums,
and i would like to ask you guys what are must-have mods to start the game out with?

any total conversion / re-balancing mods?
also any graphics mod are appreciated.

hope you guys can help me out!

[Idleking]

Litcube's.

Nuff said

[Xe-131]

Litcube's.

Nuff said

+1, awesome mod, saved my interest in the game series.

My own question: how can I change the music for one particular sector? I'm aware of the method of changing the name of a particular soundtrack, but there's a sector in particular that I'd like to change the music for without changing the music for the other sectors that share the same soundtrack. I had a quick look in the script editor, but I couldn't find anything to help me.

Any ideas? Thanks

[Ketraar]

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="director.xsl" type="text/xsl" ?>
<director name="test" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="director.xsd">
    <cues>
    <cue name="alter_sector">
      <condition>
        <check_all>
          <check_value value="{player.age}" exact="10s"/>
        </check_all>
      </condition>
      <action>
        <do_all>
          <alter_sector x="1" y="3" music="8104"/>
        </do_all>
       </action>
      </cue>
     </cues>
</director> 

The x/y coordinates represent the sector coord within x3_universe.xml, whereas the number after music is the sound file.
C&P into xml file with unique name and put in /director folder.

MFG

Ketraar

[Xe-131]

Okay, I tried pasting the code into notepad, changed the coords to (1,1) as a test (pretty sure that's Power Circle or Kingdom End), and put "83000" as the music code (83000 is a .mp3 file in the soundtrack folder that I put in), however it didn't work.

I called the file "musicchange.xml", as it was a unique name and then I could see what it did.

I put the .xml file into the /addon/director folder.

What could have gone wrong?

Thanks

[Ketraar]

0,0 is Kingdom End. the Coordinates in the map file start there, not at 1,1.

MFG

Ketraar

[Milite Ignoto]

Probably this had been already answered, but i searched it and didn't find so... what I have to do to open (or extract) .dat files? I have no problem with using X3 editor for .cat, but I really don't understand how to open the .dat.

[Cycrow]

The cat and dat files are pairs.

when you open the cat file, it also opens the dat files.

essentially the cat file just lists the contents and the dat files contain the actual data

[Milite Ignoto]

Thanks for the reply!So, editing the .cat also change the corresponding .dat?

[X2-Illuminatus]

Correct. Whereby you shouldn't change files within existing cat/dat pairs, but rather create an own cat/dat pair where you put your changed files. (The number of that cat/dat pair should be one greater than that of the highest cat/dat pair.) That way you can easily roll back changes you made without having to reinstall the game and you have all your modified files in one place.
Alternatively you can put the modified files within their folder structures into the game folder directly. For example a modified "Tships.txt" can be put into a folder called "types" within the X3TC gamefolder, so that Tships file would overwrite all other Tships files.

To save the hassle of finding the newest files, i.e. the ones you want to modify, you should use the virtual file system (VFS) option of the X3 Editor 2.