Infrequent Tips of the Every Once in a While.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

I was wondering about them after what I've learned about Raiders and remembering that the Reaver General in Newton couldn't requip his armor once he'd taken it off.

I'll have to check into this more thoroughly since I want to have my version of the Reaver 'cruits have their race set properly.

All of the Reaver Elders except for the Scientist are set to Reaver Huge, normal Reavers can equip Reaver Armours.

Tip of the Day, Don't use the Reaver Huge setting!

[OnTheBounce]

All of the Reaver Elders except for the Scientist are set to Reaver Huge, normal Reavers can equip Reaver Armours.

Ah, good. I thought I dimly remembered experimenting w/this ages ago and finding that the normal Reavers were okay.

Tip of the Day, Don't use the Reaver Huge setting!

That blasted Reaver, Huge that's given us no end of headaches...

OTB

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

I think half the problem is the sprite file might be corrupted, like the extendable bridge sprite. The bridge's animation sequences were a little screwed up but correcting them didn't help. Only by exporting all the frames and palettes into a copy of a sprite that I knew worked was I able to get the bridge to open and close. I'd be willing to do the same for the Reaver Male (though it'd be a lot more time consuming) if only spray supported the character sprites. Otherwise I think the reason the Reaver Huge can't use the Reaver armour is because it hasn't been set to that Race and doesn't have any armour permissions.

[Max-Violence]

You've been playing with the Reaver Huge again ain't ya?

&*(%^! :oops:

Regarding the whole book issue: In every "it has a book and a movie" scenario I've come across so far, I've always liked the book more than the movie. Jurassic Park would be a big example.

Anyway, my tip of the day: Don't map in a hurry.

[Red]

Um, where could you find the reaverhuge sprite? As far as I know there is none (unless I accidently deleted it which I doubt but you never know...)

There are only male and female sprites in the files I have...

The way the game seems to be designed, there are no armour for any of the huge chracters, since armours effectivly end up changing the sprite altogether. I never checked about this in the entity information, last I remember this was race spcific harcoded crap..

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

There's no Reaver Huge sprite, which is probably the other half of the problem, sorry I was referring to the Reaver Male sprite's inability to fire the rocket launcher standing up.

[Red]

I checked with redviewer and both the animation and sequence for all stances of the reavermale are there (and work fine in the viewer though there might be obscure issues with the sequence).

As for Spray, one COULD download the last demo of FOT and SHOULD be able to open those character sprites in it as they aren't compressed. I;ve never tested this of course so I make no guarantees, but it might be an interesting thing to try. If I remember correctly the player sprites pretty much included all weapons available as in the game?

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Yeah he works fine in your viewer, just like the Pipboy and extendable bridge do, but where with the Pipboy you can fix his ability to crouch and go prone by changing his race from Pipboy to Unique Humanoid, renaming the reaver male sprite to another race doesn't work and he still can't fire the rocket launcher standing up.

I presume that's the multiplayer demo? As the reaver sprites weren't included with the single player, I'll leave that for someone else to try as a 125mb download is a bit much when you're on a dial up connection like me.

[Red]

There are no reavers, just humans (and a crippled BOS elder). The thing is the sprites themselves only need to support a standard string format in the sequence for them to work...

I checked and indeed there is a problem. If you check the sequence of any rocket launcher attack in my viewer, you'll notice three special sequence values:
- Sound (Of projectile start at this frame)
- Overlay (of current sequence starts rendering at this frame)
- Fire (with 2 values, I'm guessing it's a X/Y offset from the center of the sprite, specifying where the projectile should appear from).

If you look at the standing reavermale rocket animation, none of those 3 sequence values come up.

Which reminds me that you need to be able to edit the sequence if you wish to edit character sprites.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

When working in the path mode (or not) and creating a characters text file from scratch don't forget to add the line
sentinel = {!} either at the beginning or end. Otherwise the game will crash on start up.

Heh we haven't updated this in a while, perhaps we should change the name to tip of the month.

On tagnames;

When working with tagnames always add the tagname in the level editor and not the entity editor, unless your tagged item or recruit is going to be placed in an inventory, or be available via the Recruit or Quarter Master. Because when you place items or actors etc in the map the field 'tagname', above the entities window, overwrites the tagnames given in the entity editor.

When adding tagged items to an actor's inventory (either an actor, vehicle or container) do so via the level editor as inventories added via the entity editor are not part of the map and tagnames will not be imported.

Selling items tagged in the level editor to the Quarter Master will strip the item of it's tagname once you've closed the barter screen. Items tagged in the entity editor can be issued via the QM, sold and re-purchased without losing the tagname.

The Recruit Master does not strip the tagnames from recruits, whether added in the level or entity editor.

If an entity has a tagname you can use the 'move unit' command on it, that includes containers, vehicles, spawn points, weapons, lights radiation etc.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Tip of the day, MAKE SURE YOU PUT ASIDE ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY YOUR PHONE BILL! So you don't have to come down the library to get online.

Also pack your stuff up in a BOS file before releasing it. Just zip it up keeping the file structure and then change the extension from zip to BOS and you're set. You can name it what you like and as long as the path in the zip starts within the core folder i.e. entities or locale then it will override but not overwrite the existing files. A lot easier for people who don't like using paths. You can use a program called Pakscape to edit the file structure and just delete or move the BOS file to uninstall.

For stand alone maps or custom campaigns, the mis or cam files still needs to be extracted to the missions/campaign folders, but anything else can go in the your custom BOS files.

Makes for a neater release as well.

[PaladinHeart]

I was always under the impression that items and containers could not be moved using the "move unit" command? Perhaps that is the case when the entity belongs to the "scenery" player?

The tips are appreciated. In particular those telling how to get item tagnames to work. That will make some of my triggers easier to pull off now. Not to mention possible.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

I was always under the impression that items and containers could not be moved using the "move unit" command? Perhaps that is the case when the entity belongs to the "scenery" player?

Hmm I know that you can move containers, but I'll have to go home and check to see if they need to be on a seperate player index, damn libraries won't allow you to load games on their computers.

But if you are having problems moving your containers, you can always make an actor with a container sprite using the race 'object' then you will be able to deactivate the container.

The tips are appreciated. In particular those telling how to get item tagnames to work. That will make some of my triggers easier to pull off now. Not to mention possible.

No problem .

On a seperate note can someone try making a bos file and adding it to the core folder? When I made my above post I had it working but I've just reformatted my drive and reinstalled FOT and now the only way I can get the game to read my bos files is by using a path, and no I didn't have the contents unpacked in the core folder before. It's most annoying.

[PaladinHeart]

My tip of the day/week/month/year/decade?

When making an enemy unit, always make sure you set their experience (for killing them) and set their level experience to 0 after you finish making them. This will avoid confusion and those stupid little problems where enemies give more exp as they have more levels. Very distasteful in my opinion seeing as how a level one unarmored guy with a fork can be just as deadly as a level 20 unarmored guy with a fork.

That is why, when FOT first came out (in reference to multiplayer), I would make several 250 pt characters with the neostead instead of one really powerful character. They could easily kill the more powerful characters in one hit. Worked especially well on defense against rushers.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

I double checked and you don't need to put the container on a seperate player index for the move command to work, on scenery will do fine.

Also I've found out why the BOS files weren't working, if you want to override an existing BOS file but still use some of it's contents you just need to rename it slightly. So for my GUI mod I changed gui_0.bos to gui.bos and the new interface I had placed in the folder now worked.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Laying down the LAW.

Someone asked once about making a LAW, it is possible, if you don't mind it not using the rocket projectile animation.

Copy the rocket launcher entity, change the name (description) and image, then under weapon change the magazine capacity to 0 and base damage to explode. Then under mode 0 change the ammo usage to 0 and at the bottom uncheck has projectile and check destroy on use.

Unfortunately if you have it using the rocket projectile when it hits it hits for no damage all the time. Otherwise you have a single use rocket launcher that doesn't need external ammo.

[Max-Violence]

Hey, that's Pretty Nifty.

What's the delay from the actor shooting the weapon to the target getting hit? I'm assuming nil. I wonder if using the Projectile Invis animation makes it more like a "real" LAW?

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

It's maybe a little quicker than with the rocket animation, but perhaps that's because you don't have to watch the animation. I haven't tried the projectile invisible, I would of thought that it'll have a similar problem (with no damage) to the rocket animation, though my energy weapons that don't use ammo still do damage even though they use the electrical projectiles.

I'll try it out when I get home. I do know from making the mortar weapon that the projectile invisible won't trigger the explosion impact effect, which is annoying.

[Max-Violence]

the explosion impact effect

You mean splash damage? Yikes...

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

No I meant the actual explosion graphic animation, not the damage, but ignore that because it's working now with projectile invisi. maybe I just got a run of misses where the projectile disappears? Ah well my mortar will go back to being projectileless.

As for the projectile invisi. working with the LAW, then no it doesn't, as far as I can tell you can have an ammoless non disposable weapon with a projectile that does damage, but a disposable ammoless weapon can't have a projectile unless it's a thrown weapon.