In-game modding

[Relinquished]

Okay, first things first. No one yell at me about the MTR, I read the page, and found nothing about this on it, neither did I find any other posts about this topic.

Now, what I'm wondering is if it would be possible to somehow make it so we can change units' stats in-game. This could be done in the same way as the .cheat command. Something like ".modify" could be created that would allow modders to do most of the balancing ingame. Ex:

let's say a unit (armex for example) has 1520 for the energy cost, and you want to change it to 1500.
Old way:
1) quit the game
2) extract the mod file
3) find the text document + the apropriate tag
4) recompile the mod
5) restart the game.

My sugestion:
1) ingame type .modify
2) type .armex buildcostenergy=1500;

plain and simple. Of course, this will bring up the problem of sync errors in a multiplayer game. Easy solution: make it so right when the command is entered, it changes it in everyone's mod file and to all the created units.

I know there may be some problems with it only loading the mod at the start, so changes ingame won't do anything till the game's reloaded. But couldn't there be someway that would make it reload the changed file after you hit enter?

I dunno, anyways, if there's any possible way of this happening I'd really like to see it, along with everyone else in my clan, and I'm almost sure modders would love a feature like this :).

So please do comment on any possibilities/imposibilities of this idea :).

Thanks

[FoeOfTheBee]

This would be really convenient at times.

[Fanger]

or... what you could do, is check the changelog/thread on the new.sdd archive type.. to find out that it essentially allows you to do this.. meaning the discussion is mute.. the .sdd archive functions by putting a folder in your mod folder with the name of your mod and inside that folder are your mod directory folders as you would pack them in a archive, instead you dont you simply add .sdd to the end of the folder.. then you can change any files in there save them and reopen the game to check said modifications.. no more recompiling..

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=7132

check the above thread for information..

[FoeOfTheBee]

or... what you could do, is check the changelog/thread on the new.sdd archive type.. to find out that it essentially allows you to do this.. meaning the discussion is mute.. the .sdd archive functions by putting a folder in your mod folder with the name of your mod and inside that folder are your mod directory folders as you would pack them in a archive, instead you dont you simply add .sdd to the end of the folder.. then you can change any files in there save them and reopen the game to check said modifications.. no more recompiling..

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=7132

check the above thread for information..

I think he means without even reopening the game.

[rattle]

I've been using a filemanager (Total Commander) before which detects archives by header instead of extension. Wasn't much different from using a directory called .\modname.sdd\, the latter is only a tad faster and keeps me from having at least one backup :). But on the fly changes are neat, especially when changing that single value and testing the changes ingame.

[FireCrack]

YEahy, you could do this in Unreal TOurnament, it would be realy nice to have here...

[Dragon45]

I dont think it would be hard be hard to add real-time property changing; it would just be really tedious and boring and possibly slow the game down unless it were enabled/disabled via commandline switch.

Maybe some good coding practices woudl be violated along the way, but who cares about that, right

[Caydr]

I think this would be far too imbalanced in terms of manhours to benefit... modding is modding. It's already far easier than it is in most (all?) other RTSs, TA included and probably SupCom too.

[Relinquished]

or... what you could do, is check the changelog/thread on the new.sdd archive type.. to find out that it essentially allows you to do this.. meaning the discussion is mute.. the .sdd archive functions by putting a folder in your mod folder with the name of your mod and inside that folder are your mod directory folders as you would pack them in a archive, instead you dont you simply add .sdd to the end of the folder.. then you can change any files in there save them and reopen the game to check said modifications.. no more recompiling..

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=7132

check the above thread for information..

I think he means without even reopening the game.

Yah, FoeOfTheBee knows what I mean :)

[Relinquished]

I dont think it would be hard be hard to add real-time property changing; it would just be really tedious and boring and possibly slow the game down unless it were enabled/disabled via commandline switch.

Maybe some good coding practices woudl be violated along the way, but who cares about that, right

it is enabled/disabled via commandline switch, ".modify" would enable or disable it a lot like the ".cheat" one

[Relinquished]

I think this would be far too imbalanced in terms of manhours to benefit... modding is modding. It's already far easier than it is in most (all?) other RTSs, TA included and probably SupCom too.

so why not make it even easier?

[Relinquished]

This would be really convenient at times.

Thanks :), I just find it tedious and annoying to have to recompile everything and restart all together to change a plane's altitude by like, 5 units.

[Caydr]

so why not make it even easier?

this would be far too imbalanced in terms of manhours to benefit

[Fanger]

The whole .SDD system makes it easy enough, besides to edit stuff in game youd need to alt tab out to check related values and other stuff anywho before altering something..

[Hellspawn]

Changing units settings in middle of the game would be only usefull for faster mod change testing but still doubt it would be worth.

[Relinquished]

The whole .SDD system makes it easy enough, besides to edit stuff in game youd need to alt tab out to check related values and other stuff anywho before altering something..

After you've been modding for a bit you tend to have everything (or like, 80% of it) memorised

[Relinquished]

Changing units settings in middle of the game would be only usefull for faster mod change testing but still doubt it would be worth.

still, it would be a heck of a lot easier than going "quit, extract, edit, compress, reload, test, notice it's wrong, do it again."

[Relinquished]

so why not make it even easier?

this would be far too imbalanced in terms of manhours to benefit

In the short run, fine it won't benifit, but it will shave hours off of a mod's development time. So in the long run it would be usefull :)

[jcnossen]

It's not smart to code it. When you make a game you assume some datastructures don't change so you can optimize for it, whereas for an editor you want to make everything more dynamic and that usually means more memory usage.

[Relinquished]

It's not smart to code it. When you make a game you assume some datastructures don't change so you can optimize for it, whereas for an editor you want to make everything more dynamic and that usually means more memory usage.

I do program myself, in C++, Java, ActionScript and C#, so I do know about this . I just think it would be helpful :)