Adding Units

[Foolsbry]

Hey there, I just recently got into Balanced Annihilation and the Spring Engine in general, and I'm wondering if it's possible to add units to BA. Right now I'm trying to create a super builder plane which is just a copy of the Arm tech 1 Air Constructor.

I copied the armca.lua file and made a duplicate called armcacheat.lua, and changed any references to armca to armcacheat in the file. I then added armcacheat to the build options of the Arm tech 1 Air Factory but it's not showing up in game. What else do I have to do to make a new unit appear in game?

Thanks in advance!

[MasterBel2]

So I'm assuming:
You have copied the source code for the latest balanced annihilation version
The code has been placed in the spring/games directory in the correct structure (aka as downloaded) and the folder enclosing everything is named <gamename>.sdd
You're sure that you're running your game and not BA proper

I haven't done too much dev'ment myself, but it's fun and rewarding. So keep on. I've given you all I've got, apart from one reccomendation:
Join the #badev and #moddev channels on the spring server. For Spring Lobby it should be as easy as typing /join <channame> to the official server. There will be devs there that can help you out.

Welcome to the Spring community! Have fun!

[Foolsbry]

Hey thanks for the welcome and the pointers! I appreciate it. I have been modifying the files within the SDZ file, rather than have the whole thing extracted in the game folder, will that affect how it works? The changes I made definitely had impact, as at times neither the original constructor or the modded one showed up in the build menu or the game.

Thanks again!

[MasterBel2]

Devs use the SDD format beccause it's a lot easier to browse the source, and to edit etc. All I can think of is that you might have not put a reference into the file for the airlab - as in the buildlist. Did you change the numbers etc? Probably have if it sometimes shows up. I'm not sure how else to help.

[Foolsbry]

I did add the cheat unit to the build menu as well, looks something like this;

buildoptions = {
[1] = "armca",
[2] = "armpeep",
[3] = "armfig",
[4] = "armthund",
[5] = "armatlas",
[6] = "armkam",
[7] = "armcacheat",

},

All other units still show up fine, just not this one. the lua file is definitely named "armcacheat" and all references inside the file are named the same.

[zwzsg]

Check infolog.txt for any related error.

[Silentwings]

What else do I have to do to make a new unit appear in game?

You'll also need to tell your lua unitdef file where to find a model and a script for the unit (it typically doesn't appear as a tag in the unitdef file because BA relies on common filenames within different dirs to associate them - this link breaks silently when you copy/paste/rename a unitdef file).

https://springrts.com/wiki/Gamedev:UnitDefs#General, objectName and script.

There may be other errors too - attaching an infolog is basically a must have if you want others to help you debug. https://springrts.com/wiki/Infolog.txt

If all you want to do is cheat and make it quick/easy to build stuff, just type '/cheat' and then '/nocost'.