davidlallen

That looks like it is great for skyrim objects, but I'm not sure the concept translates for xcom2. The types of conflict that are detected by the alternate xcom2 mod launcher are where the same uc script class is extended twice. In that case, a non-programmer *cannot fix* the problem. This can really only be fixed by a programmer who understands the class and can resolve when the same lines of source code are changed in two different ways. Can you think of a useful way to help the player to resolve these? Or is the tool you are thinking of, aimed to help the programmer? There is another type of conflict which, AFAIK is not detected by the alternate launcher, is when two mods change the same line of an *ini* file. In this case I am not entirely positive what happens, but it probably isn't good. For example, suppose DefaultXYZ.ini contains a line abc; mod1 contains XComXYZ.ini with the lines "-abc ; +def" and mod2 contains XComXYZ.ini with the lines "-abc ; +ghi". After both mods are loaded, I am pretty sure the XComXYZ.ini file will have "+def ; +ghi". This probably means that def is ignored and ghi wins. I don't think this type of error is usually noticeable by the player, but it will not result in the intended behavior.

I guess the steam system assumes that your gaming computer can connect to the internet. They may not answer, but your best bet to contact the authors of that mod is to use your potato to go to the steam website (no need to download anything) and enter a comment in the thread for the mod.

Several mods at steam workshop do this. Search "zombie".

I am curious, is there a reason you cannot subscribe to the mod on steam, download it, and then keep your own copy?

lol "lucubration"

This is good feedback. It seems a unique reward is one key component. I have some ideas for peeling out the popular playable advent aliens into separate quest mods, like the viper and mec. Over time I will release one or two quest mods and see what the reception is like. @ dragonpunk, I did not quite follow your comment, maybe a word is missing? Are you saying that in xcom2, you played to get to the next cutscene? I didn't really think there was much storytelling, at least no story *progression*, in the base missions of EU. Maybe you were referring to the two side quest mission sets progeny and slingshot?

You add the option -debug to the launcher. Most people get this by clicking the debug button in the sdk.

Would a bunch of short side quest mods help that? For example, each one on the scale of progeny and slingshot in EW?

Cool idea. What sorts of textures does this apply to, eg can it work on enemies in tactical? Is there a way for more than one mod to use this?

I highly recommend downloading the sdk and creating the example weapon mod it contains. Most of the changes you are interested in will require understanding how that works. With no programming experience, it is certainly possible, but that will be a good first step. Have you searched on the steam workshop to find if there are already mods that do what you want? For example, there are several mods with "infantry" in the title.

There are a ton of mods that add enemies or items, or rebalance things. I haven't seen any mods (yet) that tell a story. If you think of the "golden path" missions as the main quest of an RPG, then there are no mods which provide side quests. I have developed side quest mods for RPGs before, and they seem to have a limited audience. I can sort of understand this; a side quest might take a couple of hours to do maybe, and then you never do it again. OTOH, a mod which adds variety to enemies, or maps can just sit there in your mod list and always add "something" to the game. Is there a way that side quest mods would be interesting for XCOM? What features in a side quest would get your attention? Custom enemies? Custom mission types? A twist ending? Adding something to the lore even if it isn't canon, such as the appearance of an existing lore character? (xpost https://www.reddit.com/r/xcom2mods/comments/4hixuf/mods_which_tell_a_story_interesting_or_not/)

(I know its a necro) Did you ever get the bomb disposal mission working? I am starting to look for new mission types which I can put into story based mods.

Thanks for the information, but I doubt any modder would go back and delete the source code from their distribution. Anyway now we have one copy of the full source, which should be sufficient.

I feel this issue is important enough to put onto the LWS toolbox thread which Amineri has created. To me, there are pluses and minuses of github. IMHO the minus is a big one and the plus is a tiny one. The plus is that other users can easily access the *modbuddy* file. By definition, all the source code is already present in the workshop distribution. In case LWS goes unresponsive due to their paid work, somebody can pickup the files from the distribution and one time, create a modbuddy file which would take a few minutes. I suppose there is a disaster scenario (more than 15 icons cough spiderman cough cough choke) where LWS *removes* the mod from workshop, but that seems unlikely. The minus is that presence on github encourages random people to make random submits and/or branches. So this may lead to a proliferation of dialects of the mod, none of which would be compatible with each other.

This mod, maybe? http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=631501691&searchtext=activate

How does this relate to the guerllia overhaul underway by MalucoMarinero? Given internet names, I cannot tell if any of you are the same people in RL.

Sadly /u/fxsjosh says on reddit that you cannot override SeqAct_* calls: https://www.reddit.com/r/xcom2mods/comments/4g8o9d/unable_to_intercept_seqact_calls_from_kismet/

Here are some advanced topics. I forgot to reserve post #2 for myself. Skyranger mission briefings If you have added custom missions, you can use a narrative moment to give a briefing while the player is stuck watching the skyranger loading scene. Add the moment in PreMissionNarratives in your localization file for the mission: [HT_RescueVIP X2MissionTemplate] PreMissionNarratives[0]="HT_NarrativeMoments.Premission_RescueVIP_NM" If you add several moments here with [1], [2] etc the game will randomly select one of them. If your mission will occur multiple times, you may wish to record several variants with the same basic information. Conversations One narrative moment may contain several SoundCues, which will be played as a conversation. Usually this makes sense if there are two speakers who alternate, but you could chain one really long speech this way. Set this up in the properties dialog of the XComNarrativeMoment as shown here: http://i.imgur.com/zgNXiTm.png Use the trick shown in step 4e above to insert the SoundCues. Make sure to check the box "Play all conversations" so that it will play the cues in sequence; otherwise it will randomly select one of the cues. No voice actor? Use silence If you can't get a voice actor, or don't feel like it, you can make a wave file which is just silence. This is better than nothing. Most sound editor tools can create this. Make sure the duration of the silence is long enough for the player to read your subtitle. Although there are fields for "text to speech" (tts) in the dialog boxes, I wasn't able to make this work. If anybody can get that, it will make testing quicker, and possibly some mods could be released with computer generated voices.

We don't know what is happening. I watched the status text flicking by in the lower left corner of the splash screen when it is loading, and the last thing it says before hanging is that it's opening my mod upk. It has no reason to be doing that during startup. I have to agree it *shouldn't* have any impact.

Thanks, it is clear now. I have had the same problem, it seems that it is trying to open my upk without even being asked, and then hanging while doing so. I don't know why it tries to open the upk. If I delete the mod directory like you did, then it opens, and I can open my upk fine. So idk what is really happening, but you and I get the same problem.

Thanks for setting up this thread. I am curious about this particular feature: ALLOW COMBAT AUTO-RESOLVE [...] Can I reach this easily from my mod, without having to install yours? This would indeed be very helpful in testing my upcoming storyline mod. If the mission has some victory conditions, do they automatically get satisfied? Can this be used from the main game, or is it only available in TQL?

When you say "sdk refuses to start", do you mean modbuddy, or the content editor which is invoked from within modbuddy? What specifically do you see?

What is the specific problem of highlander+workshop? Which this workshop highlander mod is not experiencing? http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=658305112&searchtext=highlander

The advantage of the alternate launcher is that it can do various cleanups, before the game is actually launched. It replaces the native launcher, which appears by default anyway, so it doesn't add any extra step. There are at least 3-4 mod conflicts with my mods reported on steam comments, where the debugging would have been much faster if the user had used that launcher and told me which class files were conflicting. I agree that there are cases where two mods extend the same class, but it happens that the changes are nonoverlapping (I modify functions a,b,c and you modify functions d,e,f). However, the launcher randomly picks one, and as far as we can tell unrealscript doesn't provide a way to automatically union them. I know at least two cases where a new mod conflicted with a widely installed old mod, so the new mod author took the step of including the old mod into the new mod. Of course, only after obtaining, or making a reasonable effort to obtain, permission from the old mod author, and giving credit in the mod description. The solution in those cases is for one, or both mod authors to use some other kind of hook to mod, instead of extending the class. I am sure a single platform highlander mod, with enough hooks, would solve this. But, the challenges are getting all the right hooks, and then convincing everybody with a mod to build on top of the platform.

@abeclancy, that is quite a list. For #9, I hope you are aware of the alternate mod launcher that does this analysis? It is class based, not any more granular, but it is working and lots of people use it. https://www.reddit.com/r/xcom2mods/comments/4ak5cv/alternative_mod_launcher/