[SCR][MD][TC][AP] LIFE-V0.95b (update: 06-May-2014)

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Shush
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[SCR][MD][TC][AP] LIFE-V0.95b (update: 06-May-2014)

Post by Shush » Mon, 25. Nov 13, 13:48

Update:

06 May 2014: LIFE-V0.95b: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uqdh1bvlujrw5ze/fCGDguWIO3

- Globals have changed, so you will have to redo your configuration settings.

- A new automated installer is available for beta testing, it provides functionality to generate correct payloads and to deposit them into the correct locations for a number of different installation configurations.
  • * Vanilla or light to medium modified X3TC 2.5
    * Vanilla or light to medium modified X3AP 3.1
    * Medium to heavily modified X3AP 3.1 with XRM 1.30d
    * Medium to heavily modified X3 with TC plots 2.2a for AP 3.1
- The installer has been tested extensively, but it is still Beta and therefore subject to appropriate caveats.
  • * Do NOT run the installer on your only copy of X3, even though it's extremely unlikely that it will corrupt your X3 installation, I will not be held responsible if it does.
    * Backup your saves, backup your scripts, backup your mods and backup or have the means to re-install/re-download your X3 installation, just in case the infinitely improbable does occur.
    * Do NOT run the installer over scripts that have names that could match to the following wildcard pattern, *plugin.LIFE*xml; the first thing the installer does is blow away any old installation files using the above brute force wildcard pattern. If you do have files that could be caught by this monstrosity, then back them up, then install LIFE, then restore them.
    * The installer should cater for most mod configurations, but if you are merging LIFE with a mod that has it's own conversation file that I haven't catered for, then you still need to use the old insert method described in the conversations merging readme.txt file.
    * The installer checks for the X3TC.exe in whatever X3 folder it is given, (through the registry or the user), and will not install if it does not find this file; if you really feel the need to set up some kind of crazy hacked sandbox, then just create a dummy X3TC.exe file and install away.
    * No matter which installation configuration you choose, the installation folder is always the root folder of X3 where X3TC.exe is contained. Do NOT point the browse dialog into your addon folder or your pr0n directory, it shouldn't install, (because of the X3TC.exe check), but if it does I can guarantee you it won't work.
    * The installer creates a LIFE folder in your X3 root folder, which for now houses the uninstaller. Eventually there will be a wad of extra files providing company to the uninstaller, but for now if you want to uninstall using the installer, this is where you will do it.
- Added 'Non Organic' options to 'NPC Actors Speech/Face/Race' and 'Player Actors Speech/Face/Race' in Configuration -> Audio; this option works exactly the same way as the 'Actor Name' option, but instead of falling through to a random name if the actor's name is not matched, it disables the speech for that actor. This option is made available for mods that use ships of non drone class as drones and for mods that have synthetic or non-organic pilots.

- Added 'Disable or Enable Player Race Actor Names:' in Configuration -> Audio; this option replaces the Player's Name for all Player Owned ships, (when they initially try to speak), with names based on the 'Player Actors Speech/Face/Race' option. This option should not be used for mods that do their own renaming of pilots, (e.g. CODEA).

- Added a 'conversations_XRM.xml' file to the conversations bucket, I somehow inadvertently missed that XRM has a minor change to the mission conversations. *Note* the installer automatically does everything for you, so this shouldn't cause too much drama.

- Added 'Completely Deactivate LIFE:' to Configuration -> System; this is used for a complete uninstallation of LIFE. When using this option, make sure you give any wayward scripts or MD cues around 60 seconds to deactivate, then save, quit and uninstall using the installer or manually. Once you restart X3 and re-load your new LIFEless save game you should be golden without having to endure any save game corruption.

- Added a 'Missions' option to the Configuration menu; all mission configurables will now be available here.

- Added 'Bailed Pilot Chance as a percentage:' and 'Bailed Ship Hull Damage as a percentage:' to Configuration -> Missions; these options allow you to change the frequency of 'Little Class' ships bailing from none to lots, setting either of the values to zero should effectively stop all bailing.

- Moved 'Disable or Enable Popup Messages:' from Configuration -> System to Configuration -> Missions.

- Fixed, (mostly), Bailed Pilots showing fight and trade icons during MD windows of opportune spazness.

- Fixed Neutral races leaking into News generation.

- Fixed Drones, Astronauts and Spaceflys causing spurious G.O.D. events due to null killers.

- Configuration: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=365070

- Old Updates: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=362139


Summary:

- LIFE's current version is 0.95b, where 'b' signifies Beta.

- LIFE is a set of MSCI scripts and Mission Director XML files that, well, tries to awaken the rather static X3 Universe.

- LIFE has currently been tested on X3 AP 3.1, X3 TC 2.5 and XRM. LIFE will not work with X3 Reunion. See PDouma39's excellent posts for more compatibility results: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... 1&start=31.

- LIFE is made up of a number of different modules:

a) The old school X2 news articles provided by the Galactic News System, (GNS), see: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=260555.

b) A live real time dynamic news system built on top of the GNS that provides system wide information on station attacks/destruction, bounties, skirmishes, conflicts and outright wars. These news events are not faked in anyway, battles in sector or out of sector are recorded in real time and used to generate flavoured news. The news will also display articles for special events, such as the following, (for NPC's as well as the player's involvement):
  • * sighting/destruction of UFO's.
    * missing ships in Unknown, Xenon and Khaak sectors.
    * hit and runs of astronauts and bailed pilots.
    * ships/stations destroyed by explosion shock waves.
    * same race violence.
    * deaths of well known bounty hunters.
    * rescuing of bailed pilots.
    * suicides.
    * collisions with stationary objects.
    * death by mines.
    * death by the Galactic Obliteration Device.
Friendly stations within a sector will spawn light bulbs allowing you to interact with the local system's news representative or you may setup a hotkey that allows you to access news anywhere within a sector. (*Note, LIFE differentiates between sector owners and station owners, so you may not have access to a sector's news but still be able to interact with a station's news in that sector and vice-versa).

c) A bounty system that generates the top 8 fugitives per race, (accessible within that race's sector or from a race's station that contains a news representative), showing the number of victims they have slaughtered, their last known position, (sector), and the bounty on their head. Also displayed is news about bounties that are collected, (by NPC bounty hunters as well as the player), if the player kills a fugitive with a bounty on his head, then the player is rewarded by that race's news representative the next time he accesses that race's news.

d) A sector wide emergency broadcast channel that only friendlies can use and listen too; using the unused voice samples within X3's data files to attempt to liven up the normally all too quiet sectors. Ships under attack, (in sector), will use this emergency broadcast channel for a number of different situations, including:
  • * under attack, (different voice samples are used based on ship class, shields/hull damaged and even being attacked by missiles).
    * death scream.
    * smack talk after finishing off an opponent.
    * movie quotes for leveling up.
e) Explosion shock waves; these incorporate forces that accelerate ships, damage ships and provide screen shake, (for the player), for any ships within the vicinity of the explosion. The closer the ship is to ground zero, the larger the force and damage and the further that ship gets flung across the sector. Ships and Stations will produce shockwaves, the bigger the entity that is exploding the larger the shockwave, you can even get domino effects in rare situations where a large shockwave triggers one or more other shockwaves of damaged objects that are close enough to ground zero.

f) NPC leveling; NPC's are able to level based on the number of kills they obtain, this works OOS as well as in sector. As an NPC ship levels up it's abilities also increase, with level 10 being the maximum which provides a 50% increase to an NPC's speed and turning ability. A leveling NPC will receive maximum equipment, tunings, shields and weapons by the time it is level 5. Each time an NPC levels, it's hull will regenerate to 100% over a user defined period of time, (default 30 seconds, it can be disabled), and will receive a fresh compliment of it's most deadly equipable missile in an amount equal to half of it's remaining cargo space; this continues even after level 10.

g) Dynamic mission generation; civilian as well as military craft will issue maydays and provide missions to kill their current attackers. None of this is pre-generated, this mission system reacts in real time to current sector events. Rewards for these dynamic missions are not generated out of thin air, the rewards generator attempts to use the current possessions of the NPC's cargo hold/weapons bay/shields bay. Dynamic conversations are generated, (they are optional and are provided purely for flavour and they will be expanded), based on the state of the current attacked ship.

h) Pilots of class little ship can and will bail in fights independently of the player, some of them will become available for dynamic missions involving their rescue from certain death, (i.e. lack of oxygen, radiation poisoning etc). Remember to have cargo space and life support unless you like hearing them splat on the windscreen of your M6. News articles are generated based on the results of these missions and even if the bailed pilots are killed/run over.

i) Preliminary Station News has been implemented, this will develop into a fully fledged mission system involving scenarios like:
  • * save the station from it's attackers, (any ships docked to the station will undock and support your efforts).
    * save the hundreds of bailing station occupants, (these will appear as swarms of astronauts bailing out of a near death station), and get them to safety.
    * save defending ship's pilots who have bailed out of their wrecked ships.
    * setup defences against further attacks whilst the station is repaired.
    * provide raw materials in large quantities for the repair of the station.
j) A standardised menu based configuration system that provides complete control over the entire LIFE system as well as each individual module, each module can be enabled/disabled and controlled by the millions of tweakable parameters.


Installation:

- LIFE is now trivial to install; download and execute the installer, choose the appropriate installation option for whatever major mods you are running and voila done. You can download the installer from here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uqdh1bvlujrw5ze/fCGDguWIO3

- If you are playing X3 in a language other than English, then you will need to rename the "t/9500-L044.xml" file, (after you have installed), so that the last two digits of the filename represent your language; use the language identifier table below:
  • 49 - German
    48 - Polish
    44 - English
    42 - Czech
    39 - Italian
    34 - Spanish
    33 - French
    07 - Russian
You then need to change the last two digits in the 3rd line within your "t/9500-L0XX.xml" in the same way, (using your favourite xml editor). e.g. for a German installation, "t/9500-L044.xml" would be renamed to "t/9500-L049.xml" and the 3rd line of "t/9500-L049.xml" would be changed from <language id="44"> to <language id="49"> *Note* LIFE's menu's, mission text and news articles will still be in English.

- For those of you who prefer the old manual installation method for language file or conversation file hacking, then you still have access to the original separate archives, "LIFE-VX.XXx Director.zip", "LIFE-VX.XXx Scripts.spk" and "LIFE-VX.XXx Scripts.zip". You can download these three archives from here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uqdh1bvlujrw5ze/fCGDguWIO3

a) Navigate your way to your X3 AP 'addon' directory and create a 'director' directory within the 'addon' folder if one does not already exist.

b) Within LIFE-VX.XXx Director.zip you will find two directories, 't' and 'director', copy the contents of the zip's file 'director' folder into the 'director' folder you just created/found.

c) Copy and rename the appropriate conversations_XX.xml file from the contents of the zip's file 't' folder into the 'addon/t' folder, (read the readme.txt file for specific instructions for integrating LIFE's conversations.xml file into AP or TC or an external mod). *NOTE* for most mods, (i.e. XRM), simply copying the appropriate conversations_XX.xml file and renaming it to conversations.xml is all that is required.

d) Copy the 9500-L044.xml file file from the contents of the zip's file 't' folder into the 'addon/t' folder.

e) Use Cycrow's plugin manager to install the "LIFE-VX.XXx Scripts.spk" into your X3 AP installation or alternately do it manually yourself using the LIFE-VX.XXx Scripts.zip archive, (unzip to addons/scripts).

f) You can now launch X3, there will be a visual indication of LIFE's installation and initialisation success through a dialog box.

g) Assign a key to 'LIFE: configuration' in the controls/extensions menu and optionally assign keys to the other LIFE keyboard shortcuts.

h) For TC do exactly as above, but without the addon extension in the shown folder paths.


Compatibility:

- See PDouma39's excellent posts about mod compatibility, (yes LIFE is compatible with XRM): http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... 1&start=31

- LIFE has been tentatively set as BSG compatible, subject to some serious play-throughs.

- LIFE has been tentatively set as Terran Conflict plots 2.2a for Albion Prelude 3.1 compatible, subject to some serious play-throughs.

- LIFE has been tentatively set as Phanon Corporation compatible, subject to some serious play-throughs.


Dependencies:

**LIFE-V0.57a onwards no longer have the CommunityPluginConfiguration dependency**

- LIFE has one inbuilt dependency, the GNS which is fully integrated into LIFE. i.e. there is nothing for you to install or worry about when it comes to dependencies.


Configuration:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=365070


Known bug's:

- *FIXED* Very rarely explosion shock-waves are sending hapless victims clear across the sector, this is most likely an overflow issue with my fixed point maths calculations.

- *FIXED* Rare X3 hang in the MD instantiation spawning for attacked ships.

- *FIXED* Spontaneous combustion in Kingdom End; see Update 0.71a

- *FIXED* Bailed pilot dynamic missions not stepping to rescued after being scooped up by player; see Update 0.71a

- *FIXED* M8's and TM's are not stepping from combat to reward as part of a distress mission, it's not possible to have a valid actor and hence a conversation with the way Egosoft have defined the M8 and TM's class. This was fixed by excluding them from dynamic distress missions.

- *FIXED* Occasional ships are intermittently stepping through their dynamically generated mission incorrectly, leaving a ship with an invalid conversation offer.

- *FIXED* It was reported that the Player's MD Queue ship was visible, (I couldn't reproduce this finding in my test beds), nonetheless I added some extra switches to the MD Queue ship creation code.

- *FIXED* Lots of race/notoriety issues with news representatives and the news hotkey.

- *FIXED* Goner's news representatives do not spawn correctly on Goner temples.

- *FIXED* TC activation bug: current workaround is to disable and then re-enable LIFE in it's configuration menu.


TODO's:

- Reserve a LIFE specific t/text file, this only needs to be done for mods that modify the original GNS t/text file.

- Bounties need to be offered on the player's head, not just NPC heads.

- More variety in the emergency broadcast system; this one is tough as even though there is a wealth of untouched samples within X3's audio data, it's non trivial to access all of it in a standardised way from both the MD and from the MSCI. There is also the potential to record more voice samples, but it won't be me doing or organising that.

- The current Dynamic Mission Generation is just the tip of the iceberg.

- Aggressive AI for the NPC's that are capable of leveling up. i.e. they actively scan sectors for dropped tunings, cargo, weapons etc. they actively hunt the player down, (if he is an enemy with a bounty on his head), etc.

- Station Missions, see Summary i) above.

- *PARTIAL* Strafing and some decent aerial/space maneouvers for Leveling NPC's, see: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=359766

- *DONE* News articles need to be generated about station events not just ship events.

- *DONE* Rename GNS specific scripts so that LIFE can co-exist with other GNS based mods.

- *DONE* Add MD and MSCI code to allow player fleets to be part of LIFE, currently there is no activity through the emergency broadcast channel or the dynamic news generation for player owned ships. This makes the Player Information Network in player controlled sectors kind of dull as currently the only reported news is War news.

- *DONE* NPC leveling is functionally all implemented, the only thing that is missing is the adding of tunings to the NPC ships, this is a balance issue that I will leave until later.

- *DONE* A proper reward system that uses items within the current victim's inventory rather than magically generated rewards. So that a kitted military ship might throw you a decent weapon if you save it from certain death, or a civilian might bail on his ship, leaving it for you as it is almost scrap and from his point of view not worth repairing.


Technical:

- If you enable debugging within the LIFE configuration menu you'll occasionally get subtitle debug messages. But if you grab a decent windows tail -f clone, (XTail, WinTail, etc), you can in real time watch the 10 glorious log files and how they interact as the X3 universe unfolds. The log files are situated in "My Documents/Egosoft/X3AP", i.e. one directory up from your save files, named as:
  • * 99999 plugin.LIFE.config
    * 99998 plugin.LIFE.generate.news
    * 99997 plugin.LIFE.station.signal.attacked.killed
    * 99996 plugin.LIFE.ship.bounties
    * 99995 plugin.LIFE.ship.signal.attacked
    * 99994 plugin.LIFE.ship.signal.killed
    * 99993 plugin.LIFE.mdcomms.debug
    * 99992 plugin.LIFE.mdcomms.queue
    * 99991 plugin.LIFE.ship.leveling
    * 99990 plugin.LIFE.ship.ai
- I've appended LIFE specific text such as dynamic news template text and menu text to GNS's t/9500-L044.xml text page, but as the GNS has reserved 9500 this shouldn't be an issue.

- I've appended LIFE specific mission conversations to t/conversations.xml, this will probably cause issues with any mod that also modifies this file, but it is trivial to cut the LIFE specific sections out and paste them into the modified one on a per mod basis.

- I have data structures, (Queues), representing attackers and attacked throughout the universe for each race that allow the MD and MSCI to exchange data. These are implemented as wings attached to invisible and indestructible ships in sector 0, 0 at remote positions. I'll need to check that sector 0,0 exists and that there is nothing at those positions.

- I use Neutral Race.notoriety as a signalling mechanism between the MD and MSCI, any mod that uses the Neutral Race's notoriety will cause issues.


Background:

- Why now?

I started this project in the middle of 2010 when I had a three month hiatus from work, as I progressed there was more and more noise being generated about the imminent release of X-Rebirth. A couple of weeks before I had to return to work, I downed tools and began to visualise everything that X-Rebirth could be...

Fast forward to today three and half years later and we have a typical Egosoft new engine release, awesome promise and potential, but buggy as hell with a low performance reality.

I've always loved the X series and I always will, but X-Rebirth needs at least a few solid months of tender love and care until it is ready to be played as it was envisioned. Until then I've decided to pick up where I left off and release LIFE.


Awesome Tools:

- XPluginManager, XCreator

- X3ModManager, X3 Editor 2

- Exscriptor

- X-Studio

- Cycrow's cheat scripts, invaluable for setting up numerous test scenarios

- NSIS Open Source Windows Installer: http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page


Shout Outs:

- The above tool developers.

- Cycrow, for being a machine.

- The XTC team, your GNS was what inspired this project in the first place.

- ScRaT, for his excellent menu tutorial and his MD forum insights.

- PDouma39, for his excellent alpha testing, bug hunting and mod compatibility research.


Old Updates:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=362139
Last edited by Shush on Tue, 6. May 14, 06:27, edited 98 times in total.

Nicoman35
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Post by Nicoman35 » Mon, 25. Nov 13, 15:20

Wow, sounds promising!
As always the obligatory questions - XRM compatibility?

Kadatherion
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Post by Kadatherion » Mon, 25. Nov 13, 15:33

Nicoman35 wrote:Wow, sounds promising!
As always the obligatory questions - XRM compatibility?
I see some overlapping features (like the bounties one), so I guess it isn't. Which is a shame, but it really sounds very promising, so hopefully given time it might be developed to be - maybe partially - integrated in XRM too.

I'm especially fond of the fact it's built around the GNS... might be that finally we are gonna have something really taking advantage of that resource? I'll definitely keep an eye on this :thumb_up:

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joelR
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Post by joelR » Mon, 25. Nov 13, 16:45

XRM bounties can be disabled in the AL menu so it will work fine.

Shush
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Post by Shush » Mon, 25. Nov 13, 21:42

Kadatherion wrote:
Nicoman35 wrote:Wow, sounds promising!
As always the obligatory questions - XRM compatibility?
I see some overlapping features (like the bounties one), so I guess it isn't. Which is a shame, but it really sounds very promising, so hopefully given time it might be developed to be - maybe partially - integrated in XRM too.

I'm especially fond of the fact it's built around the GNS... might be that finally we are gonna have something really taking advantage of that resource? I'll definitely keep an eye on this :thumb_up:
I'll download XRM and begin testing for compatibility issues tonight when I get home from work.

There's a few things LIFE does that could cause issues, but none of it should be insurmountable. All the modules within LIFE can be individually enabled/disabled, but it is more likely the implementation of MD communications features that is likely to cause issues.

The bounties within LIFE are generated and handled by the dynamic news system which is built on top of GNS, unless another mod specifically uses GNS or is incompatible with GNS, then their shouldn't be any conflicts.

- I've appended LIFE specific text such as dynamic news template text and menu text to GNS's t/9500-L044.xml text page, but as the GNS has reserved 9500 this shouldn't be an issue.

- I've appended LIFE specific mission conversations to t/conversations.xml, this will probably cause issues with any mod that also modifies this file, but it is trivial to cut the LIFE specific sections out and paste them into the modified one.

- I have data structures, (Queues), representing attackers and attacked throughout the universe for each race that allow the MD and MSCI to exchange data. These are implemented as wings attached to invisible and indestructible ships in sector 0, 0 at remote positions. I'll need to check that sector 0,0 exists and that there is nothing at those positions.

- I use Race 2.notoriety as a quick signalling mechanism between the MD and MSCI, any mod that uses Race 2's notoriety will cause issues. This will need to be fixed on a per mod basis dependent on which mods add extra races which shouldn't be too difficult.

This is all I can think of right now, I'll do the XRM tests and update the original post with the results tonight.

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Post by Mad_CatMk2 » Fri, 29. Nov 13, 03:21

Nice WIP Shush, looks like it'll be quite an immersive add-on to the game.

I suggest though that when an AI pilot levels up to not repair hulls to 100%. It feels too weird and fantasy RPG game-y for that to happen. And what if the player is engaging a strong ship (say, M6 or higher), and the AI levels up when he is at 5% hull? That'll be a pretty tough fight :wink:
I fly an OWP. What about you?

Shush
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Post by Shush » Fri, 29. Nov 13, 06:04

Mad_CatMk2 wrote:Nice WIP Shush, looks like it'll be quite an immersive add-on to the game.
Cheers.

Mad_CatMk2 wrote:I suggest though that when an AI pilot levels up to not repair hulls to 100%. It feels too weird and fantasy RPG game-y for that to happen. And what if the player is engaging a strong ship (say, M6 or higher), and the AI levels up when he is at 5% hull? That'll be a pretty tough fight :wink:
Yeah I had misgivings about it myself, but from memory NPC's never get themselves repaired which if still true means their ultimate destruction is going to happen much sooner rather than later.

Given that NPC's have pretty woeful AI and tend to get trashed by the player, I was trying to give them a fighting chance.

Somehow they need to repair their hulls after a fight just like the player does and without writing a complicated script this was by far the easiest way to do it.

I could put the NPC in flee mode and when it gets far enough away from the fight, (assuming it can), then give it 100% hull or maybe build a state machine for it's combat state that can be polled to see when it is out of combat. I'll see what I can come up with.

I had a bug in 0.55 whereby really high level NPC's were given ridiculous amounts of tunings, it was kind of funny watching a Titan tearing it up at 680m/s and turning on a dime.

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Post by Mad_CatMk2 » Fri, 29. Nov 13, 07:37

That's one helluva fun titan to be in, crew turns to pulp with those riced out specs :lol:

In my (XRM) games, I recall seeing damaged ships docking at a shipyard. I think they repaired, too, but I'm not too sure how it works with Jobs and all that.
I fly an OWP. What about you?

PDouma39
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Post by PDouma39 » Fri, 29. Nov 13, 09:27

I like your mod and tested it shortly in my game, unfortunatedly as I found out(I forgot this one) I allready am using the old Galactic News System in combination with the Military Base Responce Mod, which generates live news articles if stations of all races (except pirates, yaki, xenon and Kha'ak) are attacked.

Therefore when using your mod I do not get any notification through the old plugin, but instead have to com some person on a station to see the latest 'what's going on', I have to get used to that. Normally I would assign a hotkey to the GNS and when in race sectors I could allways read the GNS

Is it possible for you to make for LIFE-GNS also a hotkey to show the latest news and events? And does LIFE-GNS show the MBBR-gal.news events or would those same events allready be covered in the LIFE-GNS? Thanx.
Awareness in life is rewarded by many

Shush
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Post by Shush » Fri, 29. Nov 13, 10:10

Mad_CatMk2 wrote:That's one helluva fun titan to be in, crew turns to pulp with those riced out specs :lol:

In my (XRM) games, I recall seeing damaged ships docking at a shipyard. I think they repaired, too, but I'm not too sure how it works with Jobs and all that.
Hehe yeah those inertial dampeners better have been upgraded.

WRT NPC hull repairs I'll work something out, I agree the instant leveling repairs is at odds with the immersion I am trying to achieve.

PDouma39 wrote:I like your mod and tested it shortly in my game, unfortunatedly as I found out(I forgot this one) I allready am using the old Galactic News System in combination with the Military Base Responce Mod, which generates live news articles if stations of all races (except pirates, yaki, xenon and Kha'ak) are attacked.
I'm surprised you could get the two GNS's to exist, I can't remember if I renamed my version of the GNS's script files as I did heavily modify them, but for sure you should have gotten issues caused by the collision of the 9500 text files.

PDouma39 wrote:Therefore when using your mod I do not get any notification through the old plugin, but instead have to com some person on a station to see the latest 'what's going on', I have to get used to that. Normally I would assign a hotkey to the GNS and when in race sectors I could allways read the GNS
Haha that's a feature! lol I spent a long time making the MD react to dynamic events, instead of just a sector wide key or a fixed actor; I coded the MD to react to your notoriety, the sector race, the number and type of stations etc in real time. In other words, if you lost rep in that sector, the news guy would go away, if you killed him by destroying his station he would disappear and vice versa if you obtain enough notoriety in a sector a news guy will appear at an appropriate station, (usually trade or stock exchange). Anyway what you want is easy enough to do, I'll put in a key for the GNS into the controls/extensions section.

PDouma39 wrote:Is it possible for you to make for LIFE-GNS also a hotkey to show the latest news and events? And does LIFE-GNS show the MBBR-gal.news events or would those same events allready be covered in the LIFE-GNS? Thanx.
I'm not sure what news events are generated in MBBR, but I am about to expand the dynamic news generation in LIFE to include station events, i.e. stations being attacked, collisions with stations, ufo's buzzing stations, space flies spotted near stations etc.

PDouma39
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Post by PDouma39 » Fri, 29. Nov 13, 10:27

Thank you for replying so fast.

I did copy your files over the existing GNS files, so no issues there, just the plugin was still there strangly enough, I later removed that old plugin.
And thanx for the upcoming key for the GNS, looking forward to the new expansions you have planned for this mod.
Awareness in life is rewarded by many

Mad_CatMk2
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Post by Mad_CatMk2 » Fri, 29. Nov 13, 10:44

Wait I'm confused, is your version of GNS supposed to supersede the original GNS? Or are there supposed to be two entries (i.e. two hotkeys, reegular and LIFE enhanced)?
I fly an OWP. What about you?

PDouma39
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Post by PDouma39 » Fri, 29. Nov 13, 12:02

As I read it, and have experienced, the original GNS is integrated in this LIFE-GNS, just another version and much more regarding live-events happening in the x-universe.
As this LIFE-GNS uses the same t-file(s) and (news-)scripts as the old GNS, they cannot exist together and work at the same time.
You may correct me if I am wrong here and replied in advance.
Awareness in life is rewarded by many

Shush
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Post by Shush » Fri, 29. Nov 13, 12:53

PDouma39 wrote:As I read it, and have experienced, the original GNS is integrated in this LIFE-GNS, just another version and much more regarding live-events happening in the x-universe.
As this LIFE-GNS uses the same t-file(s) and (news-)scripts as the old GNS, they cannot exist together and work at the same time.
You may correct me if I am wrong here and replied in advance.
That's basically it in a nutshell, I took the original GNS scripts and modified them to work with my dynamically generated news and events within LIFE. But because I haven't renamed the actual script files, (I think I added a couple of extra ones, I don't remember though as I did develop this code over 3.5 years ago and am now slowly re-acquainting myself with it :)), or the t file there will always be a conflict with other mods that use the GNS.

The simple solution to this is for me to rename all the scripts and reserve a numbered entry for my own t file, which is a combination of GNS's static news text and LIFE's dynamic template text.

I'll add this to the TODO list.

PDouma39
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Post by PDouma39 » Sat, 30. Nov 13, 02:05

Thanx will try it out today, like the old GNS being able to just hit that key for the news, and you don't have to worry for that old files being crossed over by your mod, your mod rocks, so I'll never have to use the old GNS besides, unless you decide to make it so, but what I've seen that won't be necessary!

edit:

I updated your mod and indeed I could configure a hotkey for this wonderfull mod, but there still is a IPN represantative in that sector but when I com'med them I could only get where you would go, not the usuall stuff, I gues you could make the mod so that one could either chose but then again it is your decision. The more decisions you could make through com's the more it looks like some new game we are all too familiar with nowadays. But then again I love the straight in game activities this represents!
Awareness in life is rewarded by many

PDouma39
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Post by PDouma39 » Sat, 30. Nov 13, 02:41

Edit 2: I tried to com a ts ship being attacked in some sector while being attacked ty a Xenon ship, but they just where answering like I woulld lke to know directions, nothing to do with they are being attacked at that moment by a Xenon M6, but it maybe a thing to do with this mod, but then again I am at notoriety level 10 by all races, just something I noticed. Will test more as my game progresses. They at least where responding through audio being attacked!

Edit3: I just got a bounty by destroying a pirate engaging a sector or station or ship but by destroying it I was announced that I got more notoriety, but I am allready at level 10 with all races so is that something to do with this mod or that particulair ship/race. I can live with that, just something I noticed.

Edit 4: Sorry for making this a long post, but this mod is great, I just watched the LIFE-GNS-news regarding me by destroying those pirate-ships(and getting that bounty) and looking at the news I was made an admiral(thus explaining the notierity thing, but then again who cares in my case being at level 10 with the Argon) This thing works like a charm, it made the headlines through several channels, great work, this is what I would call making life-events making it worth while doing and playing through a long sand-box-game.
Awareness in life is rewarded by many

Shush
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Post by Shush » Sat, 30. Nov 13, 05:20

PDouma39 wrote:Thanx will try it out today, like the old GNS being able to just hit that key for the news, and you don't have to worry for that old files being crossed over by your mod, your mod rocks, so I'll never have to use the old GNS besides, unless you decide to make it so, but what I've seen that won't be necessary!
I'll do it anyway as it isn't difficult and someone may have a need to have the GNS + LIFE co-existing.

PDouma39 wrote:edit:

I updated your mod and indeed I could configure a hotkey for this wonderfull mod, but there still is a IPN represantative in that sector but when I com'med them I could only get where you would go, not the usuall stuff, I gues you could make the mod so that one could either chose but then again it is your decision. The more decisions you could make through com's the more it looks like some new game we are all too familiar with nowadays. But then again I love the straight in game activities this represents!
Yeah I think I'll leave the news representatives in even for people who use the hotkey, it just adds a little more life and interaction to the stations.

PDouma39 wrote:Edit 2: I tried to com a ts ship being attacked in some sector while being attacked ty a Xenon ship, but they just where answering like I woulld lke to know directions, nothing to do with they are being attacked at that moment by a Xenon M6, but it maybe a thing to do with this mod, but then again I am at notoriety level 10 by all races, just something I noticed. Will test more as my game progresses. They at least where responding through audio being attacked!
I've seen this once or twice, always in a previous save game, I'll go looking for it as it is most likely as you guessed a notoriety issue.

PDouma39 wrote:Edit3: I just got a bounty by destroying a pirate engaging a sector or station or ship but by destroying it I was announced that I got more notoriety, but I am allready at level 10 with all races so is that something to do with this mod or that particulair ship/race. I can live with that, just something I noticed.
I don't check to see if you have maximum notoriety before I try to increase it, this will be another simple fix. You're doing a great job finding issues for me :)

PDouma39 wrote:Edit 4: Sorry for making this a long post, but this mod is great, I just watched the LIFE-GNS-news regarding me by destroying those pirate-ships(and getting that bounty) and looking at the news I was made an admiral(thus explaining the notierity thing, but then again who cares in my case being at level 10 with the Argon) This thing works like a charm, it made the headlines through several channels, great work, this is what I would call making life-events making it worth while doing and playing through a long sand-box-game.
No worries about the length of your post, any feedback at all is great. I assumed given the timing of this mod's release that it would just sit and gather dust, I'm pretty dirty on myself for not releasing this 3 years ago, it only needed a weekends work to get it where it is now.

Hehe yeah I like the fact that the news system includes you in all of it's events, it always calls you admiral though so I'll fix that to display your real rank in the dynamic news.

One thing that has kind of always had me stumped with the X series is why the devs didn't produce a more dynamic event driven universe, hell they have all the infrastructure and tool set to do it. But instead they concentrated on scripted and static missions.

For me this great series would have surpassed Elite/Frontier and become legendary if they had have made the mission system, news generation and police/military responses completely dynamic and real time.

This is what I am trying to do in my own small way with this mod, once I finish the station event generation and squash the last few remaining bugs I'm going to try and port it over to Rebirth and see if I can liven up that game as well.

PDouma39
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Post by PDouma39 » Mon, 2. Dec 13, 11:15

Well being further in my game I at some point I watched the GNS War headline news and it stated that in spires of Elusion 4 pirate ships were engaging the Boron and that the boron where able to engage them with a Boron M6.
When I looked in that sector it turned out the 4 enemy pirate ships where attacking a satellite factory and the M6 was a Navy Hydra(which is called by the MBBR-mod) so this way your mod is comptabile with the MBBR-mod and shows also station-attacks in the GNS-news.
At the same time another news-item showed up, that some pirate ships where attacking the Paranids in Friar Retreat, when I looked in that sector they were attacking a lasertower belonging to the Paranid Trade Station, so that is also covered by your GNS.
Great, the only issue I have with this mod is the com-system, it won't show when I com some newsagent at the trade-stations or whatever station they are in, the only options there are: show me the shipyard or equipmentdock or surrender.
But I think that is due to the mod: TC plots for AP I use, this mod calls upon its own conversations t-file, therefore other conversations t-files are not called upon I guess.
I maybe mistaken by this last one but I think that is the little issue here, as I see it this mod is working great.

Edit: another thing I noticed throughout my X-universe some ships have extra name extensions, like the Argon One:K1 L0, most ships have Betty pronounce them correctly by their name, but not the Argon One anymore, at least with this strange extension(:K1 L0), must be something to do with this mod, never had that before
Awareness in life is rewarded by many

Larxyz
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Post by Larxyz » Mon, 2. Dec 13, 21:21

FIrst thing first, this mod is awsome!
Along with a few other mods such as pirate guild and such, this works wonders about bringing the world to life!

This is acctually the first mod i've seen that modifies the comm menu... is that more difficult that modifying the command menus for ships?

Anyway, Can You make a toggle for displaying the k3L1 thing..., i relise that is the kills and the level of the ship... but i would like to have it as a toggle... if you dont mind? :)

For those with trouble with comm menu only having default stuff:
I had this in the beginning too... then i noticed i didnt follow the installations correctly... forgot to rename the conversations_AP to Conversations... :oops:
Then you need to shutdown and restart Life, that will fix it :)

best
/Larxyz

Kadatherion
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Post by Kadatherion » Mon, 2. Dec 13, 22:53

Just now began giving it a try, and it sure looks VERY interesting. From this first quick look I second the request of making the K/L tag toggleable, and I'd also suggest to tweak the news to highlight (by color coding relevant string variables) the sector and races involved.
With the war going on in AP you get flooded with news regarding those engagements, but you often just want to ignore the (kinda poorly implemented) war mechanics and are more interested in knowing where the Xenon or Pirates are being active. Color coding those strings would make identifying which news are of interest to you possible at first glance.

There also seems to be a rather "serious" issue of the config settings reverting to their defaults every time a game is loaded (possibly related to the popup appearing each time?). This happens both in 0.57a and the still not mentioned here but downloadable 0.60a, in a freshly started new game.

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