Daemonjax

If this was any other game, I wouldn't even bother trying to mod this. It's just not worth it. But, hey, it's XCOM. ;)

Awesome stuff! I hope one day we'll be able to add an entirely new flamethrower weapon to the game. :D

Ahh well, sorry guys... Beta isn't going to happen this weekend. It's just not quite usable enough. It's a solid Alpha, however, and another day or two it'll be good enough to call Beta. See you then.

You want to find where that function is called. The parameter iCost doesn't have to appear by that name anywhere else... it could be called iApples when the function is called.... e.g. ApplyAmmoCost(iApples); I'm not saying it is, but the function's int argument could just be a return from another function, and so you'd never find iCost... e.g. ApplyAmmoCost(SomeOtherFunction());

The rest of the modding is done via hexeditor. Or just wait till we finish the Mod Manager program.

Cool. I'm glad this resolved in way that's satisfactory for you, while also requiring no additional work from myself. ;)

I'll have to check this out. Since dreadylein's been MIA, dose may include GUI support for it in the Mod Manager program we're working on. I'll leave it up to him, though, since he's doing the GUI. ;)

I'll look into it. XSHAPE doesn't modify upk files, only the exe... So, it shouldn't care what type of upk file it is. If you're getting error code 16, then it's not finding that upk filename in the exe. Can you give me the name of the upk file giving you problems? Then I'll be able to get to the bottom of it. EDIT: Ok, so it's Soldier_MaleKevlar_SF.upk... checking... UPDATE: None of the upk files that end in *SF.upk can be found in the exe. That could mean one of several things: 1) The game doesn't even use that upk at all 2) The game doesn't do any hash checks for the file, and so XSHAPE isn't needed at all for it. 3) The game handles those files very differently than other upk files, and XSHAPE would need to be modified to handle them. So... Help me out a bit since I'm not currently set up to test mesh changes... is 1 or 2 the answer?

Project Update: Still on track for first beta release today. We won't get everything we wanted in, but it will create and install xcom mod files, and have a functional GUI.

@ tsanford01 We've been focusing on bytecode changes. You've raised a good point regarding textures, and that's something we'll have to think about :D @ bokauk That's a great suggestion, and it's something we'll get around to doing, but won't make it into the first beta.

It may or not be 2 bytes. It could be 1. But that's not what I was asking. ;) I want to know HOW it works. I want to be able to look at 07 D4, and know EXACTLY where D4 is in the code. I know what it isn't: 1) It's not the number of bytes to jump 2) It's not the offset of bytes from the beginning of that script. How exactly does it determine where to go based on that byte value? It's driving me mad. What you said regarding using 06 to eat some bytes in multiples of 3 was interesting. Can you be so kind to show us a short example? :D

I tried replacing the one in the ems directory with the modpatcher version, and set it to read only... didn't help. ;) Offline seems to be the way to go. Not a big deal to me, personally.

Sure, why not? PM me your google account name, and I'll add you to the project.

Yeah, offline mode it is. Fair enough, I suppose.

I'll look into it. I'm curious now. :D UPDATE: Online mode seems to work fine for me with the change to my hosts file + reboot. I had no problems changing my soldiers starting hitpoints and seeing it take effect for a new game.

Heh... yeah. ;) Server: chat.freenode.net Channel: #xcom-mod-manager That's all the info you need, honestly. Other than that, I'd google how to use irc.

I know, right? WTF. Well, this is how you block that nasty call home IP Address: 1) open file: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts 2) add the line: 127.0.0.1 65.118.245.165 save and reboot

The ini file that modpatcher uses is a line by line representation of what's currently cooked into the exe. If I understand you correctly, you want to change it. Sounds like more work for little gain to me, but that's up to dreadylein... but he's said on occasion that he hates parsing strings. ;) Anyways... progress on our Modmanager is coming along nicely, and I see no reason why we won't have a beta available for download sometime this weekend.

Well, at least they haven't said they're against us modding it.

Does anyone know or care to try and figure out how the byte directly after the 0x07 bytecode actually works? Changing it does affect where the code jumps to if the conditional is false, however I can't seem to work out precisely how it works. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be a way to simply "null out" bytecode. i.e. removing code without the use of jumps, while maintaining the function length. Anyone solve this? I tried and tried... Let's leave changing the script length for another day. The above are important to know how to do in some fashion. I'll try and find the time today to locate simple scripts to use as examples.

All the starter equipment has a cost of -1, so that is not a problem. The last return statement returns false for all items with a iCash of -1. That's solved. It'll skip the code I commented out. The problem is with items like interceptors and SHIVs -- things that have positive iCash values, but require no materials (alloys, elerium, corpses, etc) to make.

You're fortunate enough to have weeks worth of info in: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/802574-finding-the-first-step/ and http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/811009-the-next-step/

see if you can find that stuff in the exe using resource hacker.

I think just prompting the user for folder locations is fair enough. :D

It's actually pretty neat if we can sell live aliens for more than dead ones :D Anyways, getting this mod to "work" isn't the problem. That's been done on page 1 of this thread. The problem is to balance it in a way that isn't game breaking. I dunno... maybe if we just exclude these 4 items: ItemBalance=(eItem=eItem_SHIV, iCash=50, iElerium=0, iAlloys=0, iTime=7, iEng=5) ItemBalance=(eItem=eItem_Interceptor, iCash=40, iElerium=0, iAlloys=0, iTime=-1, iEng=-1) ItemBalance=(eItem=eItem_Satellite, iCash=100,iElerium=0, iAlloys=0, iTime=20, iEng=5) ItemBalance=(eItem=eItem_IntWeap_I, iCash=35, iElerium=0, iAlloys=0, iTime=7, iEng=5) ... in the second conditional, then we can tweak the other problem items in other ways (make them also cost alloys/elerium, or set their iCash to -1). Just a simple matter of finding out their item number. I tried every way I could think of to get the bytecode to work with 8 or more exclusions, but never succeeded. Many hours of trying. I have to give up on that for now, at least.