Can ALPine do any of this?

[Lurker]

On the other site BillyWilly wrote this on December 16, 2003:

 

What about a shield generator??

Like in X-com: APOCA..!! Would be a nice choice!!(and will heldp u staing alive)

What about personal teleport units?

What about partial invisibility units?

What about flying suits or packs?

What about fire that spreads?

What about dropping things, which takes zero time, as well as placing things on the ground, which takes game time.

What about being able to pick up something on the ground in an adjacent square.

What about aliens that scavenge dropped weapons.

What about proximity grenades and mines.

What about adjustable fuses on grenades and explosives

What about area denial weapons such as fire, chemicals and radiation.

Edit:

What about having several choppers so that you can deliver all of your troops to a site, and then manage them in an arbitary number of squads.

 

 

1.3 UFO:AM didn't address much of BillyWilly list. I was wondering if ALPINE or the new modding tools could do any of this? What is realistic? And what is not?

 

I also miss androids, invisibility, and teleporters from Apoc. I imagine flying suits are out, though miss them from XCom. Maybe plasma hover tanks in UFO:AM instead?

 

What's realistic with ALPINE and modding tools?

[Fulby]

ALPine doesn't do anything you can't do with normal modding, what it does is allow multiple mods to be active at the same time. It also simplifies the installation of new mods if the author chooses to take advantage of that ability.

 

Fulby

[Lurker]

Okay. I think I understand now. ALPine's purpose is to make modding easier. If that is the case, then I have a suggestion.

 

As I see it, ALPine should evolve to include a Saved Game Editor (created by sigget or Fnurg) that automatically applies the ALPine mods to a saved game of the user's choosing. Then a user doesn't have to start a new game 'each' time that ALPine is used.

 

The built in ALPine Saved Game Editor would add research and development lines into the R & D screen and Glossary if necessary and then give the user three or four of the selected mod item, if there are none of them in the inventory. The user can then do research in order to use the newly added inventory.

 

If a point in the game has already been reached where an item should have been researched, then the built in Saved Game Editor would do the research automatically for free and save the research and new inventory into the newly created updated saved game.

 

With a Saved Game Editor built into ALPine, if a user decides he needs power armor before the moon mission, then he or she can add the armor using ALPine, and three pair will show up in a saved game of the user's choosing. Then player can go to the moon with power armor without having to play a new game for a month in order to get power armor. Then ALPine can be applied anywhere during the game cycle without having to start a new game.

 

Maybe it will be ALPine 5.0 or 6.0 before it has a built in Saved Game Editor? But if ALPine's job is to make modding easier then, as I see it, saved game editing is the direction that ALPine needs to evolve in order to make modding truly easy and painless.

 

Am I right? Or is there still something that I don't understand well?

[sigget]

You have an interesting point there. Sounds good, and like a lot of work :-)

[Lurker]

Lot of work:

 

Don't envy those of you who know what you are doing!

[Fulby]

Thanks for the detailed post and the new idea.

 

The built in ALPine Saved Game Editor would add research and development lines into the R & D screen and Glossary if necessary

ALPine will do this at the moment due to the way the game works.

 

and then give the user three or four of the selected mod item, if there are none of them in the inventory.

This isn't a case of making a save game match the ALPine active plugins, this is basically magically creating items instead of playing the game. Just edit the save game if that's what you want to change. Also, who's to say 3 or 4 is a good number? If it's a WTD then just one is very powerful, or it may be something that needs dozens to be of use like a magazine for a weapon. This information would have to be included in the plugin somehow or just guessed at.

 

With the auto-completed research, how is the editor suppose to know whether the game is far enough along that the research should be completed? Besides that you're giving the player free tech advances. If the research was to take place early on, then it'll have a small time to complete, but the player will now have a lot of research bases so it won't take much time anyway.

 

I'd be a bit annoyed if, having gone to the effort of making a plugin with several research and development topics, the player just skips straight past that and starts blowing stuff up

 

But if ALPine's job is to make modding easier then, as I see it, saved game editing is the direction that ALPine needs to evolve in order to make modding truly easy and painless.

I can see a usefulness in adding "TECH _LEVEL 1" items (those are infinite ones like the Stun Rod and TNT) to existing save games because the player will never otherwise get them in that game. I created a poll about it a few days ago in case it was possible, to which Alchemist's solution is probably the only one. A save game editor which automatically does what Alchemist did to add infinite supply weapons to existing games would be useful, and would remove most of the cases where the player needs to start a new game to get the items.

 

This type of program should be possible. It could add tech level 1 items to a save game of the users choice, and remove entries in the save game that weren't in gamedata.vfs or any of the mod*.vfs files. That would lessen the chance that removing a mod/plugin invalidates a save game. It doesn't even need to be part of ALPine, which would mean it could work on any mod, not just ALPine plugins.

 

Fulby

[sigget]

Isnt so that the savegames contain a list of all the items in the game with a count of zero for the ones you dont have yet? and the problem with modding is that in order to get the added weapon into this list you have to create a new game to get a list with the new wepaon in it. at least thats how ive understood it, to get rid of the need to create new games after a new mod is installed you could just add the entry of count zero to the save games and you're set. i think.

 

i dont see a reason why the research tree should need to be synced, if you have what is required you'll be able to research it, otherwise you'll have to wait. a simple note in the readme.txt could explain what is required.

[Fulby]

Isnt so that the savegames contain a list of all the items in the game with a count of zero for the ones you dont have yet? and the problem with modding is that in order to get the added weapon into this list you have to create a new game to get a list with the new wepaon in it. at least thats how ive understood it, to get rid of the need to create new games after a new mod is installed you could just add the entry of count zero to the save games and you're set. i think.

No, the problem is only with tech level 1 items, and it's because there's no way of acquiring the item in-game. When developing the WTD plugin, I would apply the plugin and load an existing game which was almost complete and was started without the plugin installed. The WTD only shows up near the end so it'd be almost impossible to create such a plugin if the game worked in the way I think you are assuming, because you'd have to start a new game and play through the whole thing for every change you made while developing the plugin :o.

 

I don't know what the count 0 is for, I haven't looked in the save games for a while so I'm not sure of their structure. Could be related the the AVAILABLE/UNAVAILABLE setting to stop certain items from showing up in inventory, but that's just a guess.

 

So plugins can add new items to existing games (as with WTD and Uzi extended clips plugins) and the item will be acquired during the course of the game through development or base capture (or found on enemies is possible too). The problem with tech level 1 items is caused because they are added when you start a new game, and only then. For those items, you need to add an entry with count 999 to the existing save game, which will add the item and make it available in infinite quantity.

 

Fulby

[sigget]

okay, thanks for the details, i have virtually no experience with these things myself.

[Lurker]

Fascinating!

 

So what we need is someone with past experience in making Saved Game Editors.

 

Where's that guy who made the XCOMUTIL?

 

Somebody needs to contact him if they know how.

[sigget]

I started working on a save game editor, didnt finish though, i found some fascinating low-level gui things to fiddle with and lost focus

[Lurker]

Okay, I'm going to open up and speak my reservations concerning ALPine. Lurkers are supposed to be quiet, but I get the feeling that ALPine is the direction that all UFO:AM modding is going, so maybe a set of potential user concerns might be useful at this point in time.

 

First some background:

I was one of those who tried modding with 1.2. I used the Aralez mods, the MegaMod, the MusickMod, and Gurkiz Sound. I ended up with a bunch of saved games that gave errors, or gave frozen aliens, or that hung the system.

 

So, when version 1.3 of UFO:AM came out, I uninstalled 1.2, and I took the UfoAftermath subdirectory and put it into the little recycle garbage can on the desktop and released it into the abyss. Then I did a fresh new install and update to 1.3, and all the problems were gone, of course.

 

Now to the heart of the matter:

In the absence of a Saved Game Editor, this is what I think I need ALPine to do for me in order to make modding easier and painless.

 

I need ALPine to create separate wrappers, or in the case of UFO:AM, separate game profiles.

 

For example, ALPine could create Alpine Profile One, Alpine Profile Two, Alpine Profile Three, etc. Then for further example, in Alpine Profile One, I could activate all of the native ALPine plugins. In Alpine Profile Two, I could put in the Naked Rebalance along with selected ALPine plugins. And, in Alpine Profile Three I could turn on updated Gurkiz Sounds and the MusicMod. There could be other Alpine Profiles as well that have other mods turned on, maybe future mods.

 

Then with ALPine, or possibly a newly created ALPine Wrapper, I would select which profile I want, and ALPine would just remember or know what changes have been done to that particular profile and do whatever it needs to adjust the UFO:AM game to that specification. And then all the saved games in that profile would automatically work flawlessly. Then using the ALPine Wrapper, we could switch from one profile to the next, and ALPine would remember and adjust the UFO:AM game accordingly, and then switch to that profile and the saved games under that profile would appear to work seamlessly.

 

Then should I select from the ALPine wrapper the menu item Alpine None or Alpine Zero, then ALPine would automatically undo all the mods and return me back to native UFO:AM 1.3. It would give me the choice of the Default Profile or the other Profiles that do not start with the words 'Alpine Profile', and then if everything is working right all of my unmodified saved games under version 1.3 would automatically function properly without crashing the system or giving errors.

 

The Alpine Wrapper Menu could have a selection feature that looks like this.

 

0) Alpine None

1) Alpine Profile One

2) Alpine Profile Two

3) Alpine Profile Three

4) Alpine Profile Four

9) Alpine Profile Nine

 

Then we just select the profile we want using the number keys, ALPine remembers what that profile has been set to, installs those mods automatically, makes that profile the chosen or default game in UFO:AM, and then drops us into UFO:AM ready to play a saved game in that profile that ALPine has prepared for automatically in the background.

 

If the profile hasn't been created yet, then the ALPine Wrapper will run ALPine and allow the user to mod or to create the new profile and the first new saved game under that profile.

 

Best of all, if a person wants to temporarily disable the mods and go back to pure 1.3, then all he has to do is select Alpine None in the ALPine Wrapper, and everything automatically goes back to the original. And then the different profiles that don't start with the words 'Alpine Profile' are listed in the wrapper including the Default Profile, and the user selects the unmodified profile that he wants, which has saved games in it that haven't been touched by modding tools. The wrapper would make that the default profile so that it is ready to go when UFO:AM is launched.

 

Then using the ALPine Wrapper we can experiment around with nine different mod combinations by giving each Alpine Profile different features when it is created. Then if one of the Alpine Profiles proves to made up of buggy mods, then we can just delete it and start fresh, without having to wipe out all the other Alpine Profiles that are still working.

 

Then the only thing the user will have to remember to do is to let the ALPine Wrapper switch game profiles instead of doing so inside of UFO:AM.

 

That's it:

Okay, so am I wrong again, or in the absence of a highly developed Saved Game Editor, is this the direction that ALPine should evolve in order to make modding easier and more friendly? I was thinking that, if I try modding again, I want some kind of tool or wrapper that protects me from saved games that suddenly don't work because a new modding experiment was tried and went wrong. And, if I try another mod combination, I want a wrapper that remembers a previous combination, so that I can go back to the previous saved games and the previous combination of mods and have them work in case the new set of mods stops working or fails.

 

Maybe the wrapper could have some kind of feature that copies one profile into another empty profile along with the saved games. Then the new profile can be updated with additional mods, and if it works great! But if it fails, then the new profile can be deleted, and the user can go back to using the original profile and original saved games that were working.

 

That's a lot of writing for a lurker, but now you know my concerns with modding and my reluctance to try ALPine or anything else until I have at least finished playing the unmodified Default Profile that I am currently working on. I trust that where my logic or thinking is in error that you will set me straight.

[Fulby]

I was one of those who tried modding with 1.2. I used the Aralez mods, the MegaMod, the MusickMod, and Gurkiz Sound. I ended up with a bunch of saved games that gave errors, or gave frozen aliens, or that hung the system.

The mod wrapper readme states:

"Multiple mods may conflict as later mods will overwrite the files from earlier mods. Plugins may also affect the behaviour of the mods."

ALPine is built to deal with ALPine plugins, the reason I wrote ALPine was because normal mods have some fairly big limitations, most importantly what happens when you try to apply multiple mods. I only wrote the Mod Wrapper as an aid to let people keep using the mods (and because Slaughter bugged me about it ) until hopefully they were converted to ALPine plugins.

 

I was thinking that, if I try modding again, I want some kind of tool or wrapper that protects me from saved games that suddenly don't work because a new modding experiment was tried and went wrong.

Your suggested system seems to assume that players are going to be adding and removing plugins almost every time they play the game, and needing to remove plugins from existing save games. If it's testing a new plugin that you want to do, simply apply the plugin, load a save game and try it out by quickly playing through that plugin's additions. If it works, reload the game and play properly. If it doesn't, then exit the game and remove the plugin. By never saving the game until you're sure you want to use the plugin, you avoid most of the problems with needing to remove plugin effects from save games.

 

Best of all, if a person wants to temporarily disable the mods and go back to pure 1.3, then all he has to do is select Alpine None in the ALPine Wrapper, and everything automatically goes back to the original.

 

Then using the ALPine Wrapper we can experiment around with nine different mod combinations by giving each Alpine Profile different features when it is created.

I really don't see the purpose of the profile system, why would a player play for a bit with the Stun Rod, then decide that it should be removed, then play a bit more, then decide it should be put back in. What happens if the player is in a tactical mission and one of his soldiers is armed with a Stun Rod when it's removed? Why would a player play one game with a certain combination of plugins, then try to play the same game with a completely different set of plugins? It's a massively complicated solution for a problem that I think is very limited. I'm sorry to be so negative since it's obviously something you feel is important, but it seems most of your problems were caused by using a few non-ALPine mods together, and not knowing how best to test new mods without causing save game corruption. Also I don't think you realise just how many possibilities there are for messing up a save game. The ones with removing an item/tech are mostly obvious, but there's stuff like removing the Hostile Humans plugin would crash the game if you enter a mission which was to have humans in it, so that would need attention. As far as I know there's no generic solution to these problems, so each and every plugin would have to add buckets of code to tell the profile system how to remove it cleanly in all the different possible cases.

 

If you're wanting to experiment with different mod combinations in a game over more than one session (i.e. requiring you to save the game), then all that's needed is to duplicate the game profile (no idea how easy/hard that is since I've never done it), experiment with it and delete it once you're done. Then you can apply your chosen plugins and start up the original game profile. Why do you need nine different experimental mod combinations at the same time? Test one new plugin at a time, and either add it to your list or forget about it, then move onto the next one.

 

Plugins generally fall into two categories: those that add a new item/tech to the game and those that alter properties of existing items/techs/enemies. With the first, although you can't remove them, you don't need to because you can just not use them in the game. With the second, because they modify existing values, removing them simply lets the original values be used. That could still cause problems in some cases, but there aren't many plugins like this, most are of the first type.

 

One of the advantages of the plugin system is that you have many plugins adding one addition/change at a time, instead of a single mod which is all or nothing. With one big mod, you can't remove it because of the items it adds, but then you can't reset the values it alters.

 

Fulby

[Lurker]

Okay, you kind of lost me. But let me ask. Do all the ALPine plugins require that you create a new profile and a new game in order to get them to work right? Or can some of them be applied to an unmodified previously saved game from 1.3 and actually work themselves into the mix?

 

The last time I tried modding, all of the previously saved games were useless, frozen aliens and such. You were forced to start a new game each time you modified anything.

 

Does ALPine work the same way? If not, what plugins can be applied to previously saved games without bringing down the system?

[Fulby]

Do all the ALPine plugins require that you create a new profile and a new game in order to get them to work right?

 

No, not many of them do. The Stun Rod, TNT and AHE being the obvious ones, also some mods (used via mod wrapper).

 

The mods I just mentioned don't require you to start a new game if they're installed. You can still play existing games, you just don't get the effect of the plugin. I don't know of any plugin that will crash games saved before it was installed (that's not to say there isn't one).

 

The last time I tried modding, all of the previously saved games were useless, frozen aliens and such. You were forced to start a new game each time you modified anything.

I've never suffered those problems with plugins and haven't been contacted by anyone who has, so I'm not sure what could be causing the problem. A plugin causing UFO: Aftermath to crash on loading the game I can understand, but effects like frozen aliens are bizarre. Were you using ALPine (and if so which plugins/mods) or were you using mods in VFS files?

 

If not, what plugins can be applied to previously saved games without bringing down the system?

As far as I know, all of them. It would only be a problem if a plugin removed something from the game, but AFAIK they all either add to or modify the game data.

 

If anyone else has had similar problems it would be very helpful for them to add a reply. I've not experienced these problems, but if they are wide spread then they need investigating and resolving.

 

Fulby

[Lurker]

Frozen Aliens was a combination of the MegaMod, Gukiz Sound, and the Music Mod. MusicMod went against gamedata.vfs, Gukis used cfg.vfs, and the MegaMod Aralez 3.3 did something different that I couldn't quite figure out.

 

I haven't tried ALPine, cuz when I was last modding, ALPine only added a stun gun or some such.

 

My current intention is to play version 1.3 of Aftermath all the way through on hard setting unmodded to get the feel of the new balance. Then, mod it up and risk frozen aliens and possible computer crashes. Of course, if ALPine doesn't do that as you say, then that's a good thing, which makes me all the more eager to try ALPine.