Scripting with UDK

[Drakous79]

Very exciting :) It'd be great to have source scripts.

[Krazyguy75]

He's not responded and it's fairly obvious he checked twitter. Someone else could try, but I doubt he'll listen to us, at least on twitter.

[dubiousintent]

If you don't get an immediate "no", then assume it has to be run by the legal team and then company management. I'd be surprised if you hear back within a week. And don't forget we are floating this question over the weekend. It's too soon to get discouraged.

 

-Dubious-

Edited September 14, 2014 by dubiousintent

[wghost81]

I was able to subclass and mutate AI behavior classes. This gives an ability to make AI mutators with UDK to modify existing alien behavior.

 

It's getting increasingly difficult to make dummy source files. Having actual sources would be of immense help.

 

He's not responded and it's fairly obvious he checked twitter. Someone else could try, but I doubt he'll listen to us, at least on twitter.

Do we have other means to reach him?

[dubiousintent]

Submit a "support request"? That and the twitter account seem to be the only way to contact them, unless you want to talk to the Human Resources Department about a job. A support request would go into their tracking system at least.

 

-Dubious-

Edited September 18, 2014 by dubiousintent

[wghost81]

I've created a github project to develop XCOM Mutators: https://github.com/wghost/XCOM-Mutators

 

I've tried to communicate with Firaxis about dummy source files distribution, but I haven't received any answer yet. For now I'll refrain from distributing those, as anyone with access to the game packages and UEExplorer can make those by himself. Doing the work which has already been done by someone else is no fun, but I don't want any troubles from Firaxis.

[dubiousintent]

I've created a github project to develop XCOM Mutators: https://github.com/wghost/XCOM-Mutators

Updated the "Modding Tools" and "Modding with the UDK" wiki articles to include this link. Much appreciated.

 

-Dubious-

[wghost81]

Thanks, dubiousintent!

 

I've also created XCOM-Mutators wiki: https://github.com/wghost/XCOM-Mutators/wiki I'll try to summarize my experience with UDK scripting for XCOM there.

 

Since it's a github and it's open-source, anyone can contribute. By code, wiki articles, issues or question here or on github.

[dubiousintent]

Updated both articles with that link also.

 

-Dubious-

[Amineri]

Sorry I've been away for a bit, but I'm happy to see such advances being made with regard to using UDK to be able to mod XCOM. I'd need to play around a bit (fortunately I already have the correct UDK version installed) to replicate this, but before testing I have one possible suggestion.

 

There was some discussion a page or two back about naming conventions of new mutator .upk or .u files to help find them in the crush of other files in the CookedPCConsole folder. However, I think that Unreal Engine offers better support than that for adding mods -- here's my thoughts :

 

- If you look in the original Enemy Unknown folder (not Enemy Within) and have either of the two DLC installed, you can see that both the Slingshot and Day1-Armor/Helmet DLCs are in their own folder.

- The "main" unreal package files are in Path-to-XCOM/CookedPCConsole

- The "main" unreal config files are in Path-to-XCOM/Config

- As an example, the Slingshot DLC has these in :

-- Slingshot package files are in Path-to-XCOM/DLC/PCConsole/DLC_Day060/CookedPCConsole

-- Slingshot config file extensions are in Path-to-XCOM/DLC/PCConsole/DLC_Day060/Config

 

The Slingshot DLC config files are "extensions" to the main config files in that they don't replace the originals, but instead are designed to add extra lines to result in a final merged config file which ends up in the My Documents/My Games/XCOM - Enemy Unknown/XcomGame/Config folder.

 

As an example, I'll look at the "Content.ini" config file. The main config file is Path-to-XCOM/Config/DefaultContent.ini. This is the one that we generally mod. The Slingshot DLC adds Path-to-XCOM/DLC/PCConsole/DLC_Day060/Config/XComContent.ini. However, when the game launches it creates a new My Documents/My Games/XCOM - Enemy Unknown/XcomGame/Config/XComContent.ini file that is a merged version of these two.

 

It seems that in some cases (and I think that mutators may be such a case), it may be possible to place the additional config lines and package files in such a subfolder, which would help with organizing mods better than attempting to enforce some form of naming convention and adding all new files to the main CookedPCConsole folder.

 

It's going to take me a while to get up-to-speed with the new advances with Mutators so that I can directly test this, but I thought that in the interim I'd post up the idea in case it's easy for others to implement/refute.

 

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

 

Fairly clearly Firaxis didn't build a UI to allow for customizing DLC/mods. In Enemy Unknown it wasn't possible to play without the Slingshot DLC once it was installed. For Enemy Within both Slingshot and Portent were more "built-in". There is an option to not utilize either DLC, but this works via in-game logic, not by not enabling the loading of the DLC-related packages.

 

However, separating different mods by folder would probably by the first step toward adding some sort of GUI to enable/disable various mods. The simplest expedient for disabling a mod-in-a-folder would be to simply move the folder out of the XCOM path, preventing it from being loaded.