Messages

1

Mod Development / Released Mods /

« on: April 09, 2010, 21:05:37 »

LockIndexBuffer most likely refers to a Direct3D call and has nothing do with weapon hardpoints. An IndexBuffer is a list of indices pointing into a VertexBuffer holding the 3d mesh information. It is used to tell the the graphics card how to connect all the vertices, that make up the 3d model. Usually three consecutive indices make up a triangle, so IndexBuffer entries of {2, 3, 0} inform the graphics hardware, that vertices 2, 3 and 0 in the VertexBuffer together form a triangle.

Concluding that, locking the index buffer is a purely graphics related call to Direct3D and should have nothing to do with weapon hardpoints or gameplay at all.

True of course, and I'm in agreement for the most part, but as i said, this parenthesized information is one of several variants i see following that script, they may all affect D3D, but i'm just trying to be certain that's true for all of them before i write them all off as that.

Also, there's several different areas that mention similar terms, i'm fairly sure that this or one of the similar scripts i see may affect the maximum ship slots, exactly which I've yet to be certain. Has anyone else been able to read some of the stuff I've been looking at? Notepad++ or any other program for that matter, since this is mostly done on free time for me, and i have difficulty with some parts still.

heh, forgot to quote, srry Arparso (I need to quad proofread or something) fixed now.

2

Mod Development / Released Mods /

« on: April 09, 2010, 04:20:52 »

any luck reading it guys?

I'm trying to record all the text that appears to be related to any modding script, but i only have so much free time, exactly what they all do will probably need trial and error to find out.

I'm starting to believe that at least some of the 'nul' (or binary, depending on how you view them) values adjacent to the specific scripts may actually correspond to different memory addresses inside the game that script may influence, if this is true, i suspect it could be easier to create certain script types that already use in game mechanics and values - and harder for those that aren't already there. (such as by copy/pasting the binary code do influence/read those addresses, once we ID their purpose, if we can) but that's strictly speculation on my part, especially since i still can't see any actual commands that would add scripts in that way, again needing experimentation to find them.

I've also been looking into adding more hard-points to the stock game mechanics - i think i found something somehow related:

DS->LockIndexBuffer

followed by various parenthesis data, such as:

(Indices, 0, 0, (void**)&I, 0)

DS i assume meaning a command to DarkSun (the game engine Nexus uses, for those just learning) and LockIndexBuffer - i'm just shy of certain this means a cap on the size of a certain data table - there's several uses of this command with different sets of parenthesized values following.

If we can find a way to switch the correct buffer off (or better, set the size to accommodate more values) we could probably be able to add more hard-points to ships. I think the buffer allows/limits more memory addresses to the default amounts in this case. I tried to explain how that would roughly affect memory addresses in the game earlier, but in my haste, i botched it sounding like a know-it-all, I'll try to explain it again sometime soon.

in the meantime, i'm looking at some scripts i've found that could be useful for certain mod requests i've seen, one in particular:

%sChargeTime %G

I'm assuming this is used to set a specific amount of time before a device can be used rather than energy buildup, possibly how long it takes for a ship's hangar doors to open and similar effects?

Other things: I also was poking around the mod forums and found a request for a weapon charging effects, and how to implement weapon charge effects by interrupting weapon firing. naturally i can't find that thread now that i have an idea, so I'm just gonna put it here so i don't forget, I'll move it once i find that thread again:

I don't think you actually want to halt the charging process of weapons for an animation (charge glow, etc) a more elementary solution i should think would be to trigger the effect whenever the device exceeds a pre determined level of Energy is charged instead.

I think the value you'd want is simply called 'reserve' an object value i've only seen mentioned while searching the exe. EnergyIn seems just a preset level of the reserve value that triggers said weapon (or even other effects probably)

try setting a script (i'm guessing in subroutines, but wherever it works) that when your weapon reaches reserve value (that would have to be under the EnergyIn value to work properly) it will begin to display , like a glow at the beam point of origin, until reserve goes below reserve.

3

General Discussion /

« on: April 09, 2010, 02:23:14 »

Okay, anyone else have a funny mod idea(s)?

let's see who creates find a community favorite!

4

General Discussion / (Belated) April fool's mod

« on: April 08, 2010, 01:49:52 »

Figured I'd mention one, declaring it a joke since it's so late to post for April Fools, but anyways:
(there's a photo to finish the whole thing at the end of the post, please look at it last)
star wars modders -might- like this one, (might) want to lynch me too, here goes,

DEVICETYPE -40.666
   Name "weap_MaxiBigBoomMekinBombadBomb"
   Mesh "NabooWMD1"
   Category (it's own)
   Civilization (Banished)
   Sets (it's own, completely disinherited) ;
   Purpose (Mayhem) ;
   HitChanceCat NA
   DeviceHitChance NA
   ...
   ...
   Info_Category "info_weap_atrocity"
   Info_Damage (infinite, see: domino theory)
   Info_RateOfFire (varies, but you only need one)
   Info_Precision (see text)
DEVICETYPE

Text: During the Clone wars, certain clones assigned to VIP escort noticed one certain VIP who really didn't need escort - sane opponents simply ran for cover, so did INsane opponents. first jokingly, they recommended cloning said VIP. A particularly brainless bureaucrat actually sent the recommendation through, at first the Kaminoan scientists thought the idea ludicrous, such danger couldn't be cloned, but they cloned nonetheless (they WERE being paid handsomely after all). To the horror of the Fett clones, Tipoca City nearly sank soon after the first units were hatched.

Salvaging the situation in an act of inspiration, the VIP clones were transferred to the ordinance department as payload. Neural disrupted, and stuffed into armor/shield piercing missiles. These missile were programed to open up and release their payload after lodging into a targeted ship, setting the (no longer neural disrupted) clones loose onto enemy ships, with impressive results.

Warning to captains: NEVER board a ship with one of these guys on-board, you DON'T want them loose on your ship. Make sure the entire storage rack can be ejected in a moment's notice in the event the missile containment systems fail, you have been warned...

//End April Fools Joke, anyone else have one?

5

Mod Development / Released Mods /

« on: April 05, 2010, 01:27:57 »

hmm, not entirely certain why you guys can't see it...

what version of notepad++? i'm using v5.6.8 unicode

on XP 64 default settings for just about everything, just set the view colors for less white
I do have the hex editor plugin, but it's off, i'm not using it to read this, since that plugin is still a little buggy

wait, is your computer reading as ANSI? that's what i'm using, don't know if that would affect it
there's also a setting to read as an MS INI document, but i'm just reading it as text

Language drop menu > M > MS INI, if your using defaults

DurText is the first phrase on line 13925 that's legible, followed by gfx info below it

Description: %s is where i began to find text on line 14082, followed by everything else

other than that, i'm not sure what the difference is between our systems, sorry :S

6

Mod Development / Released Mods /

« on: April 04, 2010, 04:03:15 »

Wait a sec,

Okay it looks like i got far ahead of myself on certain things and have been confusing a lot of other people, sorry guys, my fault.
I'm looking back now and i see i messed up big time, I've been mixing up the story as a result.

First off, in this thread, I've been pulling info off info out of text information from the text inside the .exe, I think i made that clear.
at first i was just looking for commands and such and figured to share, i now realize i blundered, i didn't find the magic %'create value' in and of itself, and i certainly didn't mean to say that's the correct language to use to use it. I now see why it looks like a claim to that.

God what i said became gibberish, %script? your right Arparso, i didn't do anything like that. Let me clean what i said up on that area of the thread. So it remotely makes sense.

Apologies for confusion

Fixed, more or less.

7

Mod Development / Released Mods /

« on: April 04, 2010, 00:18:09 »

It looks like weapon types (normal and heavy) are separated by a triple space that might affect the AI routine:

Code: [Select]

SHIPCLASS 20
Name "cls_Bomber"
Mesh "earthmainbomber_01"
...
HPmax 21
Slots 31 31   39 ;   ///<-see?
Slots 51 ;
Slots 71 ;
...
SHIPCLASS
Perhaps if you were to remove them, or move them to the end? that would re-mark the hard-points i think. On a hunch here, try adding additional spaces at the end too.

8

Mod Development / Released Mods /

« on: April 03, 2010, 23:49:42 »

yeah, notepad++ the right click command is called 'edit', that is the right command

sorry, i said 'open' so people wouldn't think i actually meant changing something, don't change, just open and read

inside it's gonna look like gibberish at first, but on the left side of the screen should be numbering marking the page line, with word wrap off, scroll down to the numbers i told you about, those are the markers for different command types, it'll make sense after a few seconds of reading

9

Mod Development / Released Mods /

« on: April 03, 2010, 18:15:57 »

By the way, has anyone tried to read the Nexus_DX9.exe in notepad/notepad++ yet? you'd probably see what i mean more clearly if you read the parts i pointed out.

10

Mod Development / Released Mods /

« on: April 03, 2010, 18:11:31 »

We can't, but there might be a workaround,

Now correcting myself from my previous horribly bungled post:

When Nexus loads data, it opens up all the relevant .ini files in order, this order begins within the Nexus_DX (8 or 9).exe, since everything in there is the backbone of the whole program has to be in there to function. when i looked at it, i found what appears to be the execlist (or at least the commands of that list) in the exe

Like the consts.ini file, there's also a mod_consts.ini file. there's a possibility that we can find a similar way to add data to the exec list, possibly using the language i found inside the exe and i could use help with testing that theory.

There, a much better post.

11

Scripting /

« on: April 03, 2010, 17:18:27 »

hmm, looking through all the problems and fixes here, really good ideas btw, i notice most are mostly scripting. has anyone tried alternate devices? quick mod from energy cell pobably buggy, but just for concept:

Code: [Select]

DEVICETYPE
Name "Shield_Capacitor0"
Category 4 //changed to 'shield' category, now governed by the ENERGYSYSTEM_SHIELD subsystem
Sets 24 60 62 66 100 126 ; //same device sets, still fits in energy cell hardpoint
Automatic //Automatic, stays on, so it's reserve count remains
MaxReserve 20000 //ADDs to Max reserve, stores until device deactivates (automatic device here, so until disabled)
Scanned 140
Hpmax 1100
RepairHP 10
Available
InstallRP 6
Info_Category ""
Info_Size ""
Info_Efficiency 6
Info_Emission 0
DEVICETYPE

In fact, one could probably re make the shield system as different parts with the right work: shield_cat1: Generators shield_cat2: Capacitors, shield_cat3: Projectors

Just a concept, but the current problem with that is shields are set as a universal value (the actual percent set in tacticsbase.ini, but the actual rule is in execlist.ini) It seems set to activate once a ships collective shield once energy reaches a set percentage so an actual shield capacitor currently wouldn't work too well for when shields have to drop.

you could check my thread (Modifications >>The ExecList?) i'm looking for help finding commands in that file.

12

Mod Development / Released Mods / Modders *READ THIS PLEASE* Exec list commands need help testing

« on: April 03, 2010, 07:49:07 »

Okay, remaking the post so it's more what i was trying to say,
I've been looking over what I've found so far:

%s = State Strings. yeah, Arparso's definitely right here

%u = Universal (at least i think so)

%d = Dialog (Images, I see a lot of these attached to buttons so i'm thinking GUI)

%G = Integer (Whole number)

%1G = T/F Integer (1/0, On/Off)

%.0f (thats a zero) = Float value (Decimal number)

0x%08X = Create Point (As in a new nav point, hardpoint, etc.) on an XYZ grid wait, definitely not, i think it's actually a set memory address value for certain things, hmm, this one will be hard to mod if you want to change it.

And to explain what i was talking about previously: this list seems to hold the definitions of various script effects:
EXAMPLE USAGE: *not actual script* just potential application once we learn more about it, i forgot to go back and add that, this is where i started to confuse people previously.

%sNewDeviceType %G %G %G = would create new device param with 3 integer values

%sNewHardPointType 0x%08X = would create new hardpoint on xyz (relative to another object or on the map)

But as Arparso had said, these wouldn't make the string in and of themselves (at least not out of the execlist).
several commands are in this file, some look unused, some look like commands we knew about, but not the syntax of. Definitely worth checking.

That's better

13

Mod Development / Released Mods /

« on: April 03, 2010, 00:04:51 »

Okay, what i have found so far is mostly just names, but careful observation of their location and surrounding syntax gives away what most of them do.

First few thousand lines are gibberish, that's the DirectX and Engine data, but near the 14000's i found the .ini file(s), which has to be stored as text to work:
         
Everything on this list can be overridden, BUT NOT HERE! anything you want to change you have to overwrite in your consts.ini or mod_consts.ini and elsewhere

i read these in notepad++ so i can give you page lines (with word wrap OFF) past these lines are what's in the file (rules and such), until you hit the next line i marked

REMEMBER, READ but DON'T EDIT this file! DO NOT try to decompile this exe! read only!
         

Code: [Select]

some important parts: (, <%name %>, , )

13925 to 13997 I see all of the GFX rules in here

14136 %sSTATE %s This is the folder that sets how long a 'tick' is
14139 %sMACHINE "%s" Looks like where all the machine operators keywords are stored, along with the text for machine operation error messages
14157 %sTAIRACE %u The Racial AI base parameters, like in the Tactics Folder
14191 %sTAIUNIT 0x%08X AI behavior params for fighters, commandos etc.
14193 %sTGATE 0x%08X Looks like the Wormhole behavior
14219 %sTDEVICE 0x%08X looks like device behavior constants, the ones all commandable objects use
14229 %sTGROUP %u %u Group AI and commands
14269 %sTSHIP 0x%08X Ship AI and commands
14336 %sTIMER All the device params you find in tacticstypes.ini
14427 %sMISSION %u Scripts for making missions and relevant error messages
14442 Relations Lots of stuff, NPC stats, crew, various trigger events. I see the rules here
for all the different object interactions (damage, energy, etc.)
14804 .ini files end here i think

i'm not familiar with this specific syntax used in this file, but i can tell that this is what people have been looking for,
i'll see what i can find in here and give insight as i can. maybe even try at a program that can reference all the game commands with descriptions and help generate specific syntax.

14

Mod Development / Released Mods / The ExecList?

« on: April 01, 2010, 05:55:13 »

Hi guys, first post.

Okay, just got the go ahead from Arparso that this is ok. summary:

Alright, the execlist that we keep hearing about while modding is the core rules set by HD for the game, basic ai, objects behaviors, rules, etc. No one has ever been able to find it, but we've all logically guessed that it's in the .exe file, you'd of course be right, the exe contains all the base data to start an application, but it can contain more as evidenced by nexus: the actual game exe is about 4 MB, way too big to just be directx, the engine, and resource links, also in there is the .ini file that creates the root rules, the ones that load with the game.

Everyone thinks that an .exe is encrypted, actually it's more like an uncompressed zip file, marked .exe so that windows knows to read it to run it as an app, also true is that extracting that exe is illegal, but there's a solution thats perfectly legal for what we need: to read whats in the .ini. DirectX and the game engine can't be read in this state, they're unable to be read by a common read program being different formats, and those advanced programs would hate what they get.

But the .ini file is just a specially marked .txt file- any notepad like program (not rich text editors) will display gibberish DX and engine files, but the ini will come out (mostly) as plain text! Using freeware Notepad++ for .txt reading (word wrap off) i can open nexus_DX9.exe to read all the key rule names and parameter set names, and using logic, how they work.

there's nothing illegal with just reading the exe as a txt, it's legal as long as we don't decompile or alter the exe (so you can't edit anything here, wrong place to edit) with the mod tools HD gave us full sanction to use their ruleset, they just didn't tell us about the script syntax i found in there (because it could break your game if your not careful).

(cont next post: what i found and what to do with it)