More varied mission briefings?

[FlyingHigh10000000]

So, I looked in Dropshipwavedata.int a while back, and saw that in addition to "We've picked up a local broadcast indicating alien activity within a major metropolitan area. We should get down there and eliminate any hostiles." there are also mentions of the following Abduction mission briefings, which I've never heard. Maybe there's a way to reenable these, if they even exist?

 

"Alien activity continues to surge within several major cities. Our response is crucial to minimizing the spread of panic..."

"Local government forces have reported a coordinated alien attack in a densely populated neighborhood. They're counting on us to secure the area..."

"Current updates from the ground indicate the aliens are moving within the city limits. We should get down there and secure the area as quickly as we can."

"Panic is spreading throughout a major city as the aliens move through the streets. We have to get a handle on this situation..."

"We're still picking up transmission indicating alien movement in one of their major city centers. We should get down there and secure the area ASAP."

"We've gotten several reports indicating that the aliens have stepped up the number of attempted abductions. We'll have to move quickly if we want to slow the spread of panic."

"The aliens are continuing to target civilians for abduction in several major cities across the globe. We have to get down there and deploy as soon as possible."

"We're still seeing dozens of reported abduction attempts coming in from cities around the world. You will be deploying at the site of the latest report."

"The alien abductions are becoming more brazen every day; we've got reports coming in of attacks in broad daylight. We're the only ones who can respond to this threat, so we should get down there."

"We've just received another report of an abduction in progress in a densely populated urban center. If we allow the aliens to succeed, it's going to spread panic throughout the area."

 

It seems strange that so many briefings would be in the int files, yet only one is ever used in the entire game, despite the int file being structured so that, presumably, all of the briefings would be used.

[Anbar]

do the requisite sound files exist in any .upk?

[Sunstrike]

INT file is just used for localization. Basically you can flag string data inside a UE game to load its string out of the INT file, and its much easier to package localized text into a set of files that the engine knows to use instead of the standard english text files.

 

Unreal's pretty flexible in regards to how they work, and in theory you could change non-text data through the INT file in some cases. Also depends how a company sets up their UE game to use the data in some cases.

 

However, its commonly the case that you might add in text data to the INT file in preliminary development in order to proxy out some part of the game, but when it comes to the final recording of audio files the text ultimately changes. You don't want your preliminary test levels to break and the extra text doesn't do any damage or cause issues -- so no reason to remove it.

 

I doubt that there is corresponding audio for the mission briefings in question.

[Drakous79]

I doubt that there is corresponding audio for the mission briefings in question.

They are there, just heard all 11. Someone ripped all sounds to ogg, but the post cannot be accessed. Ask uncle Google if interested.

[FlyingHigh10000000]

Huh, so if they're in there, it shouldn't be too hard to get them working again, assuming the upk can somehow be modified to pick from the multiple briefings, presumably on a scale of some sort, so that Bradford seems to get progressively more urgent in his briefings, as panic for a nation goes up.

[Domo209]

I have a similar question

Is it possible to merge langauges in the game?

For example german soldier's dialouge would be in german, while english would speak english and so on and so forth

[anUser]

I have a similar question

 

Is it possible to merge langauges in the game?

 

For example german soldier's dialouge would be in german, while english would speak english and so on and so forth

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...

"We've gotten several reports indicating that the aliens have stepped up the number of attempted abductions. We'll have to move quickly if we want to slow the spread of panic."

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. Edited May 20, 2013 by anUser

[johnnylump]

Interesting idea.

 

Number of Abductions caps at three without changes to the actionscript (and it may not be possible even then). IIRC, the "pick your abduction site" sprites can't contain four or more select-a-city boxes as is.

 

XComStrategyGame >> XGStrategyAI >> GetNumAbductionSites() is the function that sets sites, but it won't have any bytes to spare.

 

You can accomplish what you're after by avoiding that function call and changing AddNewAbductions() in the same class.