Please help me out with modding!

[Gregpapa]

Hi there!

Okay, I've got a serious problem with modding.
First of all I've already created a new skill tree, new rewards, new hero skins, portraits, classes etc. so now I know a thing or two about how to mod AP.
Secondly I fusioned the Legend with the AP.
Now I can use both legend and ap maps, radars, quests - if I wold like to - to make the area for my work session bigger.
In fact I'm creating an undead specific "campaign". For that I would like to use the Reaper from the Legend. And this is my problem.
I have realized that the lua, the models and most of the other stuff for the Reaper spirit are already inside the AP (cuz I use mainly AP and I add the legend things to it).
Then I figured out that in the editor I can add the Spirit rage box to work for the hero. Only the UI needed for the arenas and hero screen. So I added the box to the hero screen and to the arenas as well. Then I run into serious problems.

First of all where are the png files for the spirit popup menus and skills? I have searched through the whole game (both) to find any glue but no luck, just the portraits of the spirits. They are certainly hidden somewhere...

Secondly, which is lot more important I have checked the references for the Reaper and it's skills and behaviour already written in the AP as well. From it's 4 abilities the only one which is actually working is the Reaping skill. The other three shows up as they don't need any rage or rest and ofc they do nothing. Reaper doesn't appear and it doesnt do what it is supposed to do with it's skills.

And for the last one (very important too) I found that the spirit experience gaining and level_up systematics ARE in the game, same as in the Legend (which in the reaper IS working with these options). But ofc even if it is written the reaper doesn't get any xp after rage use and because of that doesn't gaining any level.

Please if any1 has glue about this mistery share with me! I'm looking forward to hear any ideas about that as well!
Or if some dev could reveal the truth about that I would highly appreciate!

Greg

[Gregpapa]

Ookay. Now I have managed to rewrite the Hero.ui's parameters so its looking good now even without the orginal textures. I have inserted the abilities' pictures as well. The spirit menu after all will need more cosmetics but that's just a question of time.
SOLVED.

Furthermore I have figured out the spirit abilities' problem. In the associated spirit .atom files level value for the non-beginning skills wasn't 1 but 0 which made them a mistery for the game systematics.
SOLVED.

Unfortunately the last big question is still alive. I'm searching for the thing which making the spirit level up impossible but no luck.
The most annoying and sad thing is that I have tried to add XP and LvL for the spirits via the editor but it isn't working. I've just added an already written script for a quest dialog to give XP to spirits. And I did the same with lvl-up.
So I suppose that the problem is not the spirit ability use/add xp system... which makes it even more complicated.
The problem must be something about the main spirit xp system and options. But I really dunno how to solve this...
Maybe altering the dragonpet xp system and referring it to the spirits - more detailed to the reaper - ?

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Gregpapa

Furthermore I have figured out the spirit abilities' problem. In the associated spirit .atom files level value for the non-beginning skills wasn't 1 but 0 which made them a mistery for the game systematics.
SOLVED.

Right - you're only supposed to start with 1 spirit ability (hence why Reaping was working due to it being the starting ability for him).

Sounds like you're making good progress with figuring all this stuff out!

/C\/C\

[Gregpapa]

For the spirit textures I've managed to create a whole new casket menu witch is just for the reaper. It's not perfect so far but does the job.
I haven't checked the dds files but thanks for the revelation, I surely will!

Yes, the Legend - AP fusion works very well at the moment, but unfortunately the legend's maps minimaps (not radars) are not working yet. But I've got already a few ideas about that issue, I just haven't got the time to test them yet.

For the Reaper I've checked the legend lua files just like Ap's but they are almost the same. I've tried to make the reaper as pet but it's graphics became buggy. Mainly because even if I modify the pet.atom file its first two used models/tx packs are the pet's. If I try to change the reaper files to be first in line the game crashes. It is possible as well that it was because the pet is a pawn and the reaper is a spirit. I've tried lot of solutions out there but they've been no luck...
So... I changed back to the Rage Box solution. The experience system is still a mistery for me. I've tried to use pet_after_hit function and to alter the spirit one. But because even in the editor it's xp+ function doesn't work I think it might be hardcoded. So what I did so far...
I've replaced zerock, lina and sleem so they became all reaper. With that solution I have created 3 upgrades for each reaper skill. So I can upgrade the reaper skills via the editor with it's "hack_rageuser" command. It's not quite the same but I think it does the job. And not mentioning that the Reaper can't get any xp or lvl but it's skills and upgrades working 100% fine.

Even modding the .ui files are not as easy as it sound coz coordinating texts, pictures and buttons needs a lot of testing. It would be just fine but lot of hints, btn's etc. use rus_xyz.lng files which aren't located inside the game folders or accessable files... And if I try to add other files for them the use the .ui file just can't locate it.

Do you think that this solution for the reaper is disappointing?

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Gregpapa

For the Reaper I've checked the legend lua files just like Ap's but they are almost the same. I've tried to make the reaper as pet but it's graphics became buggy. Mainly because even if I modify the pet.atom file its first two used models/tx packs are the pet's. If I try to change the reaper files to be first in line the game crashes. It is possible as well that it was because the pet is a pawn and the reaper is a spirit. I've tried lot of solutions out there but they've been no luck...

Have you tried to have the pet spawn Reaper? I think that's how you'd probably have to do it - treat Reaper like the pet's ability spawn and then have the pet spawn Reaper and then Reaper can spawn his abilities.

Originally Posted by Gregpapa

So... I changed back to the Rage Box solution. The experience system is still a mistery for me. I've tried to use pet_after_hit function and to alter the spirit one. But because even in the editor it's xp+ function doesn't work I think it might be hardcoded. So what I did so far...
I've replaced zerock, lina and sleem so they became all reaper. With that solution I have created 3 upgrades for each reaper skill. So I can upgrade the reaper skills via the editor with it's "hack_rageuser" command. It's not quite the same but I think it does the job. And not mentioning that the Reaper can't get any xp or lvl but it's skills and upgrades working 100% fine.

You might just have to create your own experience system. Red Sands may be a good start or do you know how to create your own counters?

You could use a hero_lu_item (i.e. sp_reaper_exp added to SPECIAL_PARAMS.TXT) to keep track of Reaper's experience (computing it the same as the spirit / pet after hit functions and instead of using Attack.add_exp you'd just set your counter to the current value plus the experience gain using the Logic.hero_lu_item facility). I'm not sure if the counter has a limit, but you should be able to go as high as you need.

Originally Posted by Gregpapa

Even modding the .ui files are not as easy as it sound coz coordinating texts, pictures and buttons needs a lot of testing. It would be just fine but lot of hints, btn's etc. use rus_xyz.lng files which aren't located inside the game folders or accessable files... And if I try to add other files for them the use the .ui file just can't locate it.

Do you think that this solution for the reaper is disappointing?

I'm not sure if you know this, but Jukeey wrote a utility as indicated here: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=36235

He hasn't released it, but you might be able to PM him to see if you can use it as it seems like it'd be quite a timer saver (I've done my own manual editing of the UI and feel your pain).

As far as the Reaper solution being disappointing, I'm not sure if it can be assessed right now since it is a work in progress. There are a lot of things that you learn are a certain way in the engine and I've found ways to work around some of them and so maybe you will too...

I'm actually trying to get an atom to sell stuff in TL (the Blue Dragon, Drahha). The wrinkle is that atom's can only sell units of a fixed amount, they cannot sell items, spells, etc. using the range system (that works great). So the solution would be to convert it to an embryo (which have full shop capabilities), but I have not been able to figure out how to do it in TL by using KB_DB_EDIT to decode the LOC files and then move Drahha from being an atom to an embryo. When I try it, then he disappears. I'm still working on trying to find a solution - the issue seems to be with the unique ID that is given the embryo (the super-long hexadecimal one) and I'm not sure if that ID is tied to the map (the STREAM) some how. I have not tried to use the editor since I'm worried that the editor is different than the one used in TL.

When you brought the TL maps into the editor, did everything come in nicely or did you have to do a lot of recreating the data?

Well, anyway good luck with your modding - it seems like you've done a lot of good work!

/C\/C\

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Gregpapa

Hi there!

Okay, I've got a serious problem with modding.
First of all I've already created a new skill tree, new rewards, new hero skins, portraits, classes etc. so now I know a thing or two about how to mod AP.

Sounds pretty impressive!

Originally Posted by Gregpapa

Secondly I fusioned the Legend with the AP.
Now I can use both legend and ap maps, radars, quests - if I wold like to - to make the area for my work session bigger.

That sounds pretty neat - I've always had this on the back burner with my modding as I thought it would be neat to combine TL with AP, but it sounds like you've made great strides!

Originally Posted by Gregpapa

In fact I'm creating an undead specific "campaign". For that I would like to use the Reaper from the Legend. And this is my problem.
I have realized that the lua, the models and most of the other stuff for the Reaper spirit are already inside the AP (cuz I use mainly AP and I add the legend things to it).
Then I figured out that in the editor I can add the Spirit rage box to work for the hero. Only the UI needed for the arenas and hero screen. So I added the box to the hero screen and to the arenas as well. Then I run into serious problems.

First of all where are the png files for the spirit popup menus and skills? I have searched through the whole game (both) to find any glue but no luck, just the portraits of the spirits. They are certainly hidden somewhere...

Have you looked in the DDS files? I think the 4-quadrant Spirit picture is in TEX2.DDS, quite a few of their portraits are in TEX6.DDS, the small pictures for their abilities are in TEX7.DDS, the big picture abilities are in TEX8.DDS, and there's even more ability pictures are in TEX9.DDS.

The DDS files are image files that contain multiple PNG's in there. The ITEXTURES.DAT file describes their locations and which DDS file they are in...

Originally Posted by Gregpapa

Secondly, which is lot more important I have checked the references for the Reaper and it's skills and behaviour already written in the AP as well. From it's 4 abilities the only one which is actually working is the Reaping skill. The other three shows up as they don't need any rage or rest and ofc they do nothing. Reaper doesn't appear and it doesnt do what it is supposed to do with it's skills.

And for the last one (very important too) I found that the spirit experience gaining and level_up systematics ARE in the game, same as in the Legend (which in the reaper IS working with these options). But ofc even if it is written the reaper doesn't get any xp after rage use and because of that doesn't gaining any level.

Please if any1 has glue about this mistery share with me! I'm looking forward to hear any ideas about that as well!
Or if some dev could reveal the truth about that I would highly appreciate!

Greg

I'm not sure about this one here, but have you looked in the TL LUA files to see how the experience mechanics work for the Spirits?

SPIRITS_COMMON.LUA has the spirit_after_hit function and there you can see that the spirit experience is accumulated via the add_exp library function for the KB Attack LUA library. Unfortunately, there is not any information for how this function works (I'm guessing that it adds experience to the current spirit), but maybe it's a start.

You're doing some pretty advanced stuff here, and so I'm not sure how much help these ideas are, but I may be able to help you out further if we put our heads together...

Good luck!

/C\/C\