Increased soldier population WIP mod

[mxmstr]

Over the past few weeks I have been trying to increase the number of soldiers at each CP, starting with the Africa region. Not only has the process of appending new soldier data on to the current data set been monotonous and tiring, but there are internal limits within the engine that I can't identify and alter. So I have decided to post my progress in case anyone's interested in playing around with what I completed, and maybe more knowledgeable than I am about these issues.

 

Specifically, MGSV's engine has both a limit on how many soldiers can be "active" at once, as well as how many total soldiers can exist in the world at once. The activation limit can be successfully changed by raising the MaxRealizedCount value in f30020_npc.fox2. However, the game becomes more unstable the higher this value is raised, and won't load at all around 32.

 

The max total soldier limit can also be changed in f30020_npc.fox2...but only up to a point. There's some other internal limit between 500-750 that keeps soldiers from spawning, which can be observed by changing the order of soldiers in the soldier list under DataSet in f30020_npc.fox2 - putting a certain base's soldiers to the bottom of the list will cause them to not spawn at all, while putting them at the top will spawn them.

 

Here's the download:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ikl3dv1fwrow0f4/f30020_fpkd.zip?dl=0

Unpack 00.dat with Gzstool, and inside 00_dat\Assets\tpp\pack\mission2\free\f30020 place the contents of this zip file.

Then open 00_dat.xml and add this line to the list:

<Entry FilePath="/Assets/tpp/pack/mission2/free/f30020/f30020.fpkd" Compressed="true" />

Then repack the 00.dat.

 

There are two Africa bases that are "complete" - the flowstation in the west end of the map (where Snake blows up the oil tank) and the swamp base in the middle of the map with all the bridges. See how easy it is trying to sneak though them...

[townnet]

Crash when go back to ACC, how i solve this problem?

Edited December 11, 2016 by townnet

[mxmstr]

These files are probably way outdated by now, resulting in crashes. I don't recall crashing in the ACC when I was first testing this though. Unfortunately I don't have access to my pc for a few weeks so I can't troubleshoot anything. The best thing to do would be to extract the updated vanilla f30020.fpkd and add my changes to each file (I think I only changed f30020_npc.fox2 and f30020_enemy.lua).

[townnet]

I already solved the problem about crashing when go back to ACC, the solution is change total count to 350.

 

I follow your instruction only changed f30020_npc.fox2 and f30020_enemy.lua, now no more crash in game, thanks.

Edited December 27, 2016 by townnet

[townnet]

Hi, just want to know how you place all soldier together? Do you use some specific tools to place the soldier at any position you want? I see you already add a lot soldiers for many area in npc.fox2 file , but seems like it just functioning in game for 2 area only. Can you please teach me how to do it? I really like your mod, if you give up to continue this work, i would like to continue it by my self. Thanks.

Edited December 27, 2016 by townnet

[mxmstr]

The npc.fox2 is what you use to add more soldiers in. There is a default position you can set in the "transform entity" section of each soldier unless you assign him to a path in f30020_enemy.lua.

 

Once you add the soldiers in, in f30020_enemy.lua there is the "soldierDefine" section where you can assign each soldier to a specific CP by adding their name to the CP's list. Once you do this they will be automatically assigned to a patrol route. If you scroll down you can see I found a way to manually assign enemies to different patrol routes using TppEnemy.SetSneakRoute. I found the names of all the paths around each area using Notepad++'s find across files feature, and then I searched with "rt_CPName_". You'll have to unpack every single mission fpkd (I used a batch script) in order to be able to find all the names.

 

I just chose the 2 areas in Africa because they were close to Snake's spawn points, but you should be able to add soldiers anywhere if you know the names of the routes of that area. Remember there's still the unresolved issue with the total soldier count being limited to some arbitrary value, so not all of the soldiers you add will actually spawn. I was bummed out about the soldier limits back when I started this, and I pretty much gave up on the project because of that - no spawning hundreds of npc's to fight each other :(

[townnet]

The npc.fox2 is what you use to add more soldiers in. There is a default position you can set in the "transform entity" section of each soldier unless you assign him to a path in f30020_enemy.lua.

 

Once you add the soldiers in, in f30020_enemy.lua there is the "soldierDefine" section where you can assign each soldier to a specific CP by adding their name to the CP's list. Once you do this they will be automatically assigned to a patrol route. If you scroll down you can see I found a way to manually assign enemies to different patrol routes using TppEnemy.SetSneakRoute. I found the names of all the paths around each area using Notepad++'s find across files feature, and then I searched with "rt_CPName_". You'll have to unpack every single mission fpkd (I used a batch script) in order to be able to find all the names.

 

I just chose the 2 areas in Africa because they were close to Snake's spawn points, but you should be able to add soldiers anywhere if you know the names of the routes of that area. Remember there's still the unresolved issue with the total soldier count being limited to some arbitrary value, so not all of the soldiers you add will actually spawn. I was bummed out about the soldier limits back when I started this, and I pretty much gave up on the project because of that - no spawning hundreds of npc's to fight each other :sad:

Very appreciate your big help. But now my main problem is the additional soldier even not showing up, lets use banana (Bampeve Plantation) for example , official setup is max 12 soldier in that area, i see your npc.fox2 file already increase up to 0047, but in game there are only 12 soldier are showing up, (swamp and flowstation area i can see up to 24 soldier). I use (banana) compare every line to another two area (Swamp and Flowstation), i found that each area got different value. So do i need to re-edit (banana) value to make additional soldier showing up? If so how i get the right value to make it working?

Edited December 28, 2016 by townnet

[mxmstr]

The reason the banana soldiers don't show up is because of the order in which they appear on the soldier definition list in the fox2 file (under "DataSet"). The game seems to spawn soldiers in the order that they are listed, and because the flowstation and swamp soldiers are further up the list they are therefore created before the mysterious npc limit is reached. The banana guys are further down that list so they don't spawn at all. This is how I found out that there is an internal npc limit.

 

You should be able to get the extra banana soldiers to spawn if you simply switch their order on the list with the flowstation ones. If that doesn't work, try assigning the flowstation soldiers to the banana cp and vice versa.

[townnet]

I follow your method and it works!... For me MGS is a sneaking game, so no need add too much soldier because this is not COD. Official setup 12 max soldier is too lack for some large base, 24~30 is already enough for my taste. I will setup 15 ~ 30 soldier for each CP (depends the base size). So i can save the soldier for every CP.

 

Now my only worried is how i make this for Afghanistan map. It would be nice if you have work this before and share it to me? Lol.

 

Thank you very much and wish you have a happy holiday. :laugh:

Edited December 28, 2016 by townnet

[mxmstr]

Thanks, I appreciate you showing interest in the mod after all this time. And I believe the Afghanistan settings are in chunk2, but you'll have to create those extra soldier definitions all over again. I ought to test the exact number of soldiers allowed in the world sometime.