Why most mods (including mine) 'break' the Tutorial?

[Zybertryx]

Greetings esteemed ones,

 

I've used a cunning system to modify the base movement values of my XCOM soldiers (it's made up for in armor) to preserve the playability of the tactical tutorial game (as the tactical tutorial mission explicitly assumes a movement of '12') but where I'm having issues is that after successfully completing the tactical tutorial, the first tutorial driven exercise on the geoscape side is to go to the Barracks to promote your first solider (the sole survivor of the tactical tut).

 

Because I've altered the XP thresholds per level I thought that if I kept the threshold for the first rank "Squaddie" as Vanilla ('90') that I'd be able to get through this part of the early tutorial period. But surprisingly to me, doing this still didn't result in a qualified operative: No one has enough experience to 'level up' and so the scripted and hand-holdy 'promote your first squad member' sequence is unaccomplishable; the game ends here.

 

Though it might seem kinda trivial, and I admit, next to everything I've incorporated in my own mod package, it is, but as my wish-list is ever shrinking this is one of the things I'd like not to break. The tut, though often irritating provides some narrative depth that is lost on non-tut beginnings. Assuming this problem gets sorted out, the next question I'd have rendered would have been, "How can I make it so that when playing tutorial games the Build Facilities ant-farm is not 'locked' until the 'tutorial period' is over?" Essentially I want to make the tutorial the defintive game start option for all difficulties for all new campaigns (by 'unsucking' its sucky elements to retain its narrative pulse).

 

First things first though, does anyone have any thoughts as to why I'm unable to promote a soldier after successfully completing the tactical tutorial? It's not that the UI is unresponsive or anything like that btw, it's that no one (including the sole survivor who I can identify) is qualified to 'rank up'. The tutorial tool tip when browsing the solider pool reads "Select " "", if that helps.

 

My DGC rank profile looks like this:

 

; Soldier XP Levels (Rookie, Squaddie, Corporal, Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Colonel)
m_iSoldierXPLevels=0
m_iSoldierXPLevels=90;90
m_iSoldierXPLevels=300;300
m_iSoldierXPLevels=600;510
m_iSoldierXPLevels=1000;745
m_iSoldierXPLevels=1500;1100
m_iSoldierXPLevels=2100;1560
m_iSoldierXPLevels=2800;2150

 

There is something else that might influence this in case the code is not using the 'normal' XP-for-kills-system but rather - for this tut sequence - checking for the 'sole survivor' of the previous tactical battle. I suspect this because there are always two survivors in my tutorial tactical game now (is that normal?). Perhaps that's the reason? (and if it's not normal, I have no idea why she survives - as everyone has less health in my mod, plasma does more damage and nothing in the scripted turn sequence appears to be missing :blink: ).

Edited June 29, 2013 by Zybertryx

[Amineri]

The issue with the tactical tutorial is that I broke that code when I added the ability for SHIVs to loadout weapons.

 

Specifically, in XGFacility_Barracks.UnloadSoldier, the game unloads each soldier, leveling up, unloading gear, destroying gear etc as the situation requires.

 

The tutorial code looks like so:

    if(ISCONTROLLED())
    {
        if((kSkyranger.m_iNumMissions == 1) && kSoldier.GetCurrentStat(0) > 0)
        {
            kSoldier.LevelUp(2);
        }
    }

It basically makes the surviving soldier always get promoted to a Heavy.

 

I removed this code to make room for some code that destroys the weapon of a SHIV if (a) the SHIV is MIA (i.e. left behind on an aborted mission) or (b) destroyed when playing with the Second Wave option 'Total Loss'.

 

With the new item mod the way that storage and inventory are handled is different, so I was able to put the tutorial code back in (although I haven't tested it explicitly).

 

 

------------

 

EDIT : The tutorial should always have 1 survivor. If you have 2 survivors, the above (vanilla) code will automatically promote both of them to the Heavy class.

Edited June 29, 2013 by Amineri

[Zybertryx]

Ah, that explains it, as my base is a somewhat butchered LW 1.08 your delicious refactoring of the key tutorial code above explains my issue perfectly. :(

 

I wonder if I could attempt to reinclude the tutorial hex by removing the number of bytes required from something superfluous elsewhere. . .

 

Would be quite the exercise ;)