anUser

I think I didn't anything special to get the snap shot perk working with rockets, maybe that was when I had the rocket launcher in the Assault class in the small item slot... or removing the backpack or secondary property in the ini. Definitively I did it editting the ini file, no hex edit. If the scatter formula or function could be called from GetDamageRadius iirc you could get this "boiling water" effect, with the blue bubble showing the actual radius but moving constantly from one place to another to show where it might be placed. If combined with random radius it's totally boiling water, but if not it's only the real blast area moving slightly but swiftly around the cursor.

... this made me think that I've never noticed any issue replacing a 2C 00 or a 24 00 for a 25... can we confirm it's safe to operate with those alike? ie a la (24 00 == 25) && (25 == 2C 00)...

I like it, it seems it'll be easier and a lot more clearer this way for the final user to edit the ini file. May I suggest a little tweak? Could it be possible that instead of automatically upgrading the aliens instead it picked a random upgrade from those available due to date? And could that be done on a per-alien basis? I think that'd help making things a bit easier and also it'd bring a bit of variety. It even could be used right from the begining, there could be 3HP sectoids that regenerate and 5HP sectoids that don't. Is there any problem in making the upgrades non-accumulative so only 1 applies per alien?

I love it! Thinking about visualizing the effect in-game... ¿could it be possible to apply the same scatter formula to display that blue bubble randomly poping up at different places around the mouse cursor, according to *possible* scatter values? I've come fond of the trembling bubble that shows with explosives random radius, it's kind of it feels less certain than a number, even if you know the numbers. Not sure how it could feel that in game though, it may end looking like a mass of boiling water with all this bubbles poping around the target. Another idea I've had is to alter the rocket radius *before* shooting so it displays the area where the explosion can be centered, depending on distance and soldier's skill, so the further it aims the bigger it's. This way there's no telling of the possible area of the explosion, so you have to guess that. Then on using the ability and once the center of the explosion has been established, the radius could revert back to it's value in order to calculate the actual blast radius. Testings with explosives random radius have confirmed that radius gets re-calculated upon using the ability, so the last displayed radius isn't necessarily the one applying in game, ergo we can display a radius (and hopefuly a position) and actualy use another one. So this way you'd have a steady blue circle that would grow larger as you aim it further, but that would only tell you where the rocket may fall, so you'd got to picture the blast area in your mind (and this combined with big randomness factor like up to radius x2 can be pretty interesting) so no certainty at all about the possible outcome And last, since you're meddling with this matters, and as I know you have plans regarding weapon damage customization... could shotguns be tweaked so their radius increases with distance and the damage gets reduced? Maybe the AoE increase can be small, just covering 3 tiles wide at max range wich can deal 1 dmg or 2, but having shotguns do greater damage when closer would be very nice. In fact maybe every ballistic weapon could do extra damage at close range, perhaps a constant +1... Any possibility to apply this same principles to hand grenades? Maybe using a lower scatter value, or the same one because they're thrown closer so they'll get more accurate. A perk or an equipment a la "Laser-guided rockets" that grants 100% accuracy? Only on enemies that have been holo-targeted? (so you'd need both, the laser or thermic rocket-guide device and holo-targetting an alien)... Some sort of magnetic device that increases accuracy agains robotic units? What about the blaster launcher? The animation suggest it's pretty accurate... maybe it could have some other sort of drawback, ... maybe instead of having greater range and lower accuracy it could require squadsight (if it were a targeted ability) so it requires visual contact for at least one xcom unit; or make it cannot be used after moving while regular rocket launcher do; or since it's so slow it could trigger the "flush" animation so the aliens around rush for cover, so big explosion but only those really close to the center get damaged... that'd be hilarious Anyway you're doing a great job, I'm sure I'll love any final form this mod takes

What about adding a 1 turn cooldown to fire rocket? The space is tight in buildAbilities but maybe youmay find a way to free a couple of bytes. btw, has anyone found where this "link" between ability and weapon is stablished? Is it just the ini property like eWP_FireRocket?

I seem to recall there are several possible hex values for == and some mathematical operators. Can it be that each one is meant to be used with a specific data type? And is some of them more flexible than others? I can tell you I once had to change the + hex, I don't remember the exact value, maybe it was 78 and then I changed it to a 90 or 92, don't recall right now, and after the change it worked, when before I was getting ctd's. So maybe the same is true for comparison tokens, and instead of converting the values you can just use the right operator, if there is a "right" operator for each data type.

Excellent progress. If I may suggest, ive gota couple of ideas regarding ammoitems 1. Soldiers have like 6 inventory items and they can equip as many ammo items they want, on reloadingan ammoitem is removed, if no ammo item is present, firing the weapon depletes its ammo, causing it to have to reload. It is an extreme option but I think it can be cool as it disencourage taking low percent shots and planning offensive actions more carefuly and not just returning fire 2. Only 1 ammo item is allowed. Depending on its price and tech needed to develop it, it grants certain bonus. Explosive ammo could have heat ammo bonus, tracer bullets, etc. Bigger magazines of regular bullets could be at the same level, forcing the player to choose between powerful ammo or the foundry bonus in the form of a bigger ammo item. There are 2 possible implementations i foresee with this option, 1 making ammo items consumible so its a financial choice, or with infinite items make them available through research. In the later case theres still the choice of equipping another item or ammo items that grant bonus

Good! Does it affect at all the file size limit or is that still constrained?

I think stealth is one of those "state" perks. What I've done is making the invisibility module grants ghost charges but then I had to add the ghost property to armors in the ini. It isn't optimal because the ability is still displayed in the tactical game even if no charges are present, but it works. I was planning on investigating if editting the visual properties of the ghost ability (in BuildAbilities) it could be done so it only displays under certain circumpstances (when the item is present, like grenades), but that's near the bottom of my long to-do list.

ok so that's why I couldn't get smoke grenades, battle scanners or extra rockets... only those 6 items are allowed with ini stats? I like this idea of items granting perks that grant extra charges. What sort of mechanism have you thought about for this? On(Un)Equip grants/removes perk, and UpdateItemCharges sets charges according to number of times each perk is present? I'm just thinking of making this compatible with vanilla perk trees, given that item-related perks don't appear at all as selectable perks. I guess ApplyActionCost would need a rework as well to remove perks as they're used. Speaking of which, I tried the code I posted in the previous page but it didn't remove the item from inventory. Unless something's wrong there and I'm attempting to remove an item that it isn't the right one or I've mistaken somewhere else, or just setting an inventory item to 0 doesn't work as I expected. I'd appreciate if someone could take a look at that code, or if someone found a way to call that TInventorySmallItemsRemoveItem function from there, that seemed to work.

I'm sry I wasn't clear. I think the code I was looking for is kTarget.kChar.kCharacter.aStats[0] += 1;to make so HP isn't reverted when the effect ends. I like the idea of temporary boosts to DR and regen. Regeneration would act as a delayed extra HP, I think it could be very interesting as it forces the player to push a bit more and kill the aliens on that same turn or the next they'll have regained big health. And damage reduction clearly makes for an offensive move. I wonder if both regular and greater mind merge could be given to both regular and psi sectoids alike, and make them 2 different abilities, not just a better and a worse version of the same. If doable I vote for the one with bigger crit chance go with DR + small instant healing, and the other with huge regen at the end of turn. edit: I just assumed the regen mod would "regen" HP at the beginning of the turn, but I've got to admit I'm not aware of the latest version of that mod...

Nice finding. I did once some testing with this but that was inconclusive, thanks for the clarifications. A bit off topic, but I just want to point out that ammo re-balancing can be approached in a different manner, editting the dgc.ini and re-assigning classes. Giving the eWP_Heavy to rifles and pistols makes them have to reload more often that MG, snipers and shotguns. I *think* the code that sets which class uses which weapon property is in SetClass, m_kSoldier.kClass.eWeaponType = X;but I haven't tested that, I'm fine moving the mg to another class other than Heavy, and let the heavy keeps the rocket launcher + assault rifle. That could be used to make each ability of the Arc Thrower consistently takes an appropiate amount of ammo, thus enabling it for different abilities. It could also make the iArcThrowerCharges variable obsolete because that could depend on ammo, thus freeing it for any other purpouse

Good! I've just got a crazy idea that may isn't that crazy in the end ... could it be done so that the extra given HP become permanent? I quite don't get what's that m_aInventoryStats[0], I assume it's some sort of temporal stuff, so if we increase the HP in this function we don't need to change the HP removed elsewhere, right? Could we attack unit stats instead? I'm wondering what'd be the gameplay effect, specially by the beginning and at impossible difficulty... take 'em fast or see 'em growing...

As always it's bad to have another limitation but it's good to know how it works, good point guys. While this limits the number of items that need ini stats in the tactical game, that's not all the new items there could be. Rockets for example, they only need to have price, time and min engis (strategic game) and be present in the inventory so it can be checked if the unit's got them equipped and so they can be removed. And many other items that may grant a perk or just increase the charges of abilities won't need ini settings on tactical game... maybe on that regard if we are short on ini-sensitive items we could re-use standard items such battlescanners that actually don't need to read ini settings during the tactical game, and place them onto other items.

Yeah, it didn't make much sense to me at first that you couldn't regain a country you'd lost, I think though it's a probelm of presentation, the "withdrawn" stuff is missleading, imo it should say instead something like "{Your Country} has been invaded by aliens, every major city has been completely devastated, most of the population has been exterminated or has been enslaved. Comunications are completely lost within the borders, and no single institution stands to hold the resistance against the invading forces. {Your Country} does no longer exist". It makes much more sense to me :P

I'd love hearing them yelling and screaming in their languages at least when panicked. Has anyone tried to add back those mission briefing to the game? and completely off the topic... This has given me an idea, dynamically increasing the number of abduction spots. I set this to be a random value between 1-3, it can be manipulated, and there's already a way to keep track of time passed, so it could be adjusted in a way that at first you only get 1 abduction location so you can deal with panick, and then it gets increasing so you can't avoid panick in some countries and hence the terror missions and the need for satellites, a bit later in the game and not so right at the beginning.

Very nice, I like how this looks. btw, which is the file to change the display names? Regarding that alloy weapon set, have you tested if they have working models or have you found a way to set the mesh and display of an item? I'd like to confirm those alien grenades don't have a mesh before using them as mere tokens in the inventory, although there are many many technical difficulties to implement them as consumable items. But the same is true for all this suggestive names. Specially thinking of alien plasma weapons. Maybe the aliens don't use them (it seems to me it's been proved the weapons the aliens use have the same stats we set for xcom plasma wepaons in the ini, so all the other stats are ignored), but if they had a working model just like the any plasma weapon then I thought of making several lower class versions of plasma weapon to use for xcom soldiers, and make it so they can be upgraded through investigation or other means I've got a request for more items: - arc thrower "battery", grants 1 more use - Plasma rocket, to be used with the Blaster Launcher - Grapple, I'm trying to implement it in the pistol slot, it could be an item - Ammo items for ballistic weapons, I want to give it a try, but I don't have a clear plan for implementing it any soon And also I'd love if some of the SHIV modules were equippable by soldiers as well, like the grenade launcher module, I think it could take the pistol slot (to compensate for the extra capability) and display no model. That's all configurable in the ini

ohh that's a pity, I had so many plans for those items... upgraded weapons, explosives and gadgets... so 22 new lines replacnig those XXX_None for 0's is ok? Just for curiosity, what kind of compilation mechanism is this that the enumerated value takes more space than the literal? Aren't this things parsed at this stage?

that's a lot of different questions, and most of this has already been done, you could use a visit to the Mod Talk forum. Anyway, shiv stats are defined in the DGC.ini file, they appear among the armor entries, that's how the game treats it. Also Amineri has made some interesting mods to improve shivs, you may want to take a look at them here and here and maybe somewhere else. ...extra condition perk, no idea... altering perks in trees... totally possible.. it's still to test if the psi lance ability is playable and it doesn't require any special item to use it, you may want to take a look at this thread with some improvements editting perk trees here It's actually possible to make abductions happen in countries with satellites, here's a list of hex edits to play with ufos and interceptor combat. Notice some code may be out of date as it was published before last patch. You can even randomize the number of locations each abduction takes place in, and increase the number of abductions to whatever you'd want There's a mod that make aliens update their stats with time here. There it's explained how to make weaker aliens appear more often late in the game. Playing with more than 6 soldiers... I know there's ppl toying with the possibility, and it's been done but there were some problems placing units in the map, I'm not sure if it's been solved. Good luck

@ Amineri, that's great man, I'll give it a try. In theory that should be all that was left to have consumible items, but I've said that so many times already that I have too see it by myself :)

I've been conducting some more research and experimentation in my attempt to get consumible items. So far I've coded the ApplyActionCost function to actually remove the item from inventory during the tactical game, and that is reflected back in the base, but there's still something wrong in the lockers (where you equip your units). I'm not devoting too much time currently to modding, can't afford to, so if anyone is willing to take it on from here I'm happy with it. Besides removing the item from the inventory once it's used, I've taken the approach of deprecating the claimed items array, and making that whenever a unit equipped an item that were removed from storage, and vice versa, so in XGStorage.EquipSmallItem I've replaced STORAGE().ClaimItem(iItem, kSoldier); for STORAGE().RemoveItem(iItem); kSoldier; in XGStorage.UnequipSmallItem I made the same, replacing STORAGE().ReleaseItem(kSoldier.m_kChar.kInventory.arrSmallItems[iSlot], kSoldier); for STORAGE().AddItem(kSoldier.m_kChar.kInventory.arrSmallItems[iSlot]); kSoldier; and the same in ReleaseLoadout, replacing ReleaseItem(iItem, kSoldier); for AddItem(iItem); BUT, when I equip any item it doesn't decrease the amount displayed, so I always have the starting amount of that item plus as many as I've build in engineering, and both values in engineering (storage) and lockers match, it just ignores what my units have equipped. Next attempt I planned to restore the claiming system and add as well this calls to add/remove items from storage on un/equipping, and see if both combined work well... I'm too lazy and busy to investigate why it does what it does, I'm ok if I just make it work :P XGAbility_Tree.ApplyActionCost Two notes, I made several testings with the switch case and it seems it needs a default block, at least it didn't decompile correctly without one. It could actually run well, but it crashed when the switch didn't found any case, I guess it couldn't tell if it were still in the switch block, since it doesn't tell where it ends. Another thing, to make it display correctly I had to wrap it in an if block, otherwise the sentence following the default case appeared as if inside the switch block. Didn't test functionality on this one. Two comments on the AAC function, the double check for action 40 is because I reserved space for action 45 (reload) so this way I won't have to re-writte hex offsets. In theory now it should make that any action with the arc thrower should take 1 charge, so it could be fair to give standard shot or suppression or disabling shot or other abilities to the arc thrower and make they all consume 1 charge. Using it removes an item 92 (sectoid grenade) which I repurposed as arc thrower batteries, so you could have more chances to stun an alien but at the cost of an inventory item each. I didn't know how to call the TInventorySmallItemsSetItem function because the kInventory var there is a TInventory struct, not an object of XGStorage class... do structures have their own methods, or are they treated like objects and inherit from the class where they're defined? Anyway, I just set the item to 0, it seems that's what the function did, but maybe that one set as well the iNumSmallItems var, I didn't found (haven't really searched for it neither) where this is defined and modified, I've seen some functions making reference to that but most just don't. I've replaced a couple of them for a 16 (I think that's the number of small item slots) to make sure it loops through every item it has to, but I guess that has to be adressed as well. @JL: It would be soo great if it were possible to share inventory within units, and pass over some item. Then it could make sense making the machinegun uses ammo items (it would be pretty easy right now to make that upon realoading it consumes an ammo magazine of the type that weapon uses, what'd happen when out of ammo it's another matter), and also I'd make lot of sense for rockets. Maybe some unused ability can be repurposed for this using current range restrictions, there's one called "loot", not sure if it works though.

you need some program such that resource hacker amineri mentioned to embed the code into the exe, I use a very simple console command tool called xcom ini patcher, toolboks has been mentioned as well, you may try any of those

Tweaking the penalty is perfectly doable, there isn't much space in the function that handles it for long complex calculations, but there's room to make small improvements. Making alines run it too, or calling it again when the player is healed, I'm not sure about it. Technically it's possible, the issue is in finding the place to sneak the code in. What would you suggest for aim penalty, make it starts once the player has exhausted the extra HP from armor and from armor vest as well? And then, a % proportional to non-buffed health, -5% per each HP below, etc ??

The thing about distributing mods, as I understand it, is that legally you cannot share pieces of the game, so all you can freely distribute is some way for other users to modify themselves their own game, so you couldnt share your upk files, but you could share its entire code for someone else to paste it onto their own upk files. And all the mods alter either dgc.ini or some upk file So if for any reason running those auto installer packages doesnt work for you, your best chance to get them is to hex edit them yourself. Most modders post the hex edits necessary, and if for some reason your game isnt running the last patch youll have to re code the hex edit because varible and functions values wouldve changed. You can re code any sentence from its decompiled code, ue explorer gives you a lot of info on hex code and theres good tutorials on the wiki, although the whole process its pretty time consuming

As far as I know the function that calculates the stunt chance is a native function, which means its embedded into the exe, its not even in the upk files, so we cannot even look at its code, less we can change it. Not with current knowledge and tools