Duck and Cover

Hi... I had some questions about the campaign.txt file, and the campaign editor in general. First of all, I guess I should say that I've looked around for a general sort of tutorial on these topics, but without any success - so if anybody knows of one, I'd appreciate it.

Now, to get down to business... at the moment, I'm trying to figure out the random force entries in campaign.txt. At first glance, it looked pretty self explanatory, but when I started experimentings on a copy of the core campaign, I ran into problems. Basically, I tried changing the entities of one of the forces - specifically, the "TribalTrappers" force - and now nobody shows up when I do this encounter. (In order to make things easier, I modified the campaign map so that one square has a 100 rate for the TribalTrappers, and no other random encounters.) Anybody know how to do this?

Secondly... I tried changing the name of the force, and now when I encounter them, I am asked,
Do you wish to encounter
?
Does anyone know how to control the text of this , so I can get it to say, "Do you wish to encounter *mytext*?"

Thanks in advance...

elrond79 wrote:...if anybody knows of one, I'd appreciate it.

Sorry, I don't know of any tutorials that have been made on this subject.

elrond79 wrote:...I tried changing the entities of one of the forces - specifically, the "TribalTrappers" force - and now nobody shows up when I do this encounter.

Exactly what did you do?

The entry originally looked like this:

{ "TribalTrappers;good;4;5;true;A",
"entities/Actors/Tribal/tribal_03_melee.ent;3;10",
"entities/Actors/Tribal/tribal_04_range.ent;4;10",
"entities/Actors/Tribal/tribal_12_trapper.ent;2;10",
},

What this amounts to is:

Force Type: ("TribalTrappers") This is the name of the group and it has a corresponding entry in the "encounters.txt" file. (More on that in a bit.)

Alignment: (good) Whether or not the group will attack the PCs or other actors on the map. There are three alignments; good, bad, and critter.

Minimum #: ("4") The minimum number of actors in the group. In this case it is 4, so there will be -- you guessed it -- a minimum of four actors that you encounter.

Maximum #: ("5") The maximum number of actors in the group.

Enabled: ("true") Whether or not this encounter is enabled at the start of the campaign. "true" indicates that the PCs can encounter this type in the appropriate terrain. (More on that in a bit.) This can be toggled off or on (to "false" or "true") using triggers on maps and is handy to have appropriate enemies popping up when the campaign hits a certain point. It's also a way to keep inappropriate weapons out of the hand of the PCs before they need them.

cd_code: ("A") I am unsure what this does. I recommend simply leaving it alone. ("If it ain't broke...")

The next three lines are for the actor types that you wish to have appear in the encounter.

The first portion is the address of the entity file for that actor. You only need to have the portion of the address from the "entities" folder on to the file name.

The next entry on that line is the "Level" of that actor. This is expressed as a number to be added to the base level of actor. So if you want a 5th level Raider, you enter "4".

The final entry on that line is the %-age change that the entity occurs. For most this is 10%, excepting dead actors that are always supposed to appear. You can use this number to weight the encounter in favor of certain actor types, making them more common, by giving that type a higher frequency.

elrond79 wrote:(In order to make things easier, I modified the campaign map so that one square has a 100 rate for the TribalTrappers, and no other random encounters.) Anybody know how to do this?

Open your CAM file w/the Campaign Editor, and go to "Random". There you can change the frequency of the encounter. Simply click on the type of encounter you want to edit, then you will see what squares they appear in. You will have to check all encounters to see if they occur in a particular square or not. (Remember that if you want new encounter types to appear on the list you will have to go to the "Tools" menu and click on "Import Random" and then select the appropriate text file by double-clicking on it.)

elrond79 wrote:Secondly... I tried changing the name of the force, and now when I encounter them, I am asked,
Do you wish to encounter
?
Does anyone know how to control the text of this , so I can get it to say, "Do you wish to encounter *mytext*?"

You will have to edit the "encounters.txt" found in:

C:\Program Files\14 Degrees East\Fallout Tactics\core\locale\game

There are entries like this:

TribalTrappers = {Tribals}

Simply change the entry in the braces to read whatever it is you want displayed and save the file. You will then be in business.

Hopefully this is clearer to you now.

Cheers,

OTB

Wow... thanks muchly - you're very helpful...

However, there's still a few things I don't quite understand. First of all, I did a bit more experimenting after I made the post, and found that it was only certain types of entities that don't seem to show up when I change the encounter... ie, I changed the entry to

{ "TribalTrappers;good;4;5;true;A",
"entities/Actors/Critter/radscorp_01.ent;4;100",
"entities/Actors/Tribal/tribal_04_range.ent;4;10",
"entities/Actors/Tribal/tribal_12_trapper.ent;2;10",
},

I set the radscorp to 100, so that he would definitely be in the group, and I could see if the change worked. However, there were never any radscorps... There would, however, be a tribal... though generally only one (maybe two), as though the remaining spots in the group had been filled by the radscorps. If, instead of the radscorp, I made it a citizen, or a beastlord, they would show up fine.

My initial thought was that perhaps it was impossible to have a radscorp of "good" alignment, so I switched it to bad, but nothing changed (except, of course, the tribal now attacked me). I know it should be possible to have a radscorp of bad alignment (as opposed to critter) since this is done in some of the other forces in campaign.txt... for instance, TribalUnlucky03. Any ideas on why the scorp refuses to show up?

Secondly... my thinking on the min/max attribute was the same as yours... except that, even beofre I made any changes to the campaign.txt, I noticed that I would often encounter 8 tribals when I was in a square that had no enconters but the trappers. My only thought was this: I know it is possible to have multiple random encounters at the same time... is it possible to have multiple of the SAME force?? If so, I could see why I would be getting so many tribals so often, since I have my encounter rate set to 100 for that square.

I don't have an answer for you, elrond79, I wish I did. However, you're dealing w/something that I've only dabbled with and apparently don't have a complete understanding of. While I can't help you today, I will sit down tomorrow and send an email to someone who will either be able to help us*, or will be able to forward the question to someone who can help us.

This may take a bit, but I will do everything I can to see that the situation gets cleared up.

Cheers,

OTB

* I say "us" since I will be staring down the barrel of this problem eventually when I get to this point in my campaign.

I cant even find the campaign.txt file where can I find it or the format in which to make my own?

Professor wrote:I cant even find the campaign.txt file where can I find it or the format in which to make my own?

Did you post the question over at the Interplay board?

I guess the first step is to use Winzip to extract all of the *.bos files. It is located in one of them. I can't remember which one off the top of my head.

Yeah I posted and I extracted all of them and found no campaign.txt

Professor wrote:Yeah I posted and I extracted all of them and found no campaign.txt

The campaign.txt file is in the entities_0.bos file and extracts to \core\tables.

ok cool I am at my womans house I am going home to check now!

I sure hope she won't check her history in the web browser and find you calling her "my woman"

Red wrote:I sure hope she won't check her history in the web browser and find you calling her "my woman"

Heh, heh, I don't know about you Red! Maybe she's a submissive

In case he was a foreigner, it might be just a case of mistranslation. also for some couples, it can be used affectionatelly, and both might want it.(You're my woman I'm your man and all).
Woman=Wife in some languages(including mine).

Flamescreen wrote:Woman=Wife in some languages(including mine).

Yes, in German as well. Frau means either "woman", or when used with "meine" (my) it means as much as "wife".

OTB

Heck that's even true in my native language (French) and I didn't think much about it... But as you mentioend with meine Frau, it's the same in French Ma femme. But in French if you ommit the "my" (ma) it's vulgar, a bit as if you said in Engligh "Come here woman" or something similar (you can't exactly say "Come here my woman" in English).

I was using it affectionately...but she knows who wears the pants!