Editing enemies, guns, damages, etc.

[66667570471a7General_Hoohah]

I used to edit a lot of stuff in the game to make it more challenging and customize it a little, but that was many years ago. I don't remember how I did it. With the new version of SS2 released, I'm thinking about getting either that or the Steam version when it comes out, and edit the game again before I play it. But I don't remember how. No level editing, I simply used some kind of editor that let me browse a list of weapons, enemies, and other things so I could edit their properties. That's all I remember. Was it ShockEd or some community tool that I used?

[66667570474e3Kolya]

It was Shocked. The gamsys properties you mention can be edited from this program only.
I would recommend to get your game from gog.com, as their version can be updated with the SS2Tool reliably. The upcoming Steam version will likely be the same thing, but if it's not it won't be better.

Shocked installation is somewhat cumbersome at the moment. You need to install the game, then SS2Tool, then ShockedToolkit, then the new version of Shocked (included in ss2_v242.zip).

[666675704761bGeneral_Hoohah]

I opened up the old editor just to refresh my memory. How do I save changes I make in the object hierarchy? Man I don't remember much about this.

[66667570477advoodoo47]

save gamesys, I believe.

[6666757047897General_Hoohah]

That worked, but I'm not sure what the difference is between hit points and max hit points. Do they randomly range... or something?

[6666757047cb8RocketMan]

Hit points is how many are allocated to the AI initially.  Max hit points is the maximum possible that the AI can have... 100% health if you will.  This way you can give an enemy 75% health to start out with by defining hit points 75 and max hit points 100 for example.

[6666757047e32General_Hoohah]

oh wait so thats a percentage? So if say an enemy's health is 200 and the max is 200, that means its 400?

[6666757047fb6RocketMan]

No, 200/200 is full health.  100/200 would be 50% health.  In both cases 200 would be "max hit points" but different "hit points".

[66667570480eeGeneral_Hoohah]

Ah, okay. I understand now. I noticed something. If you have higher max hit points than hit points, when you shoot that enemy the bar over them doesn't register damage until you get them down to within range of their "hit points". So if you give them a max hit points of 200, and 100 hit points, the bar doesn't start going down until you drain away the enemies hit points to 100 or below. I wonder if that could ever come in handy with a user made level or a mod.

[6666757048274RocketMan]

I think you mean to describe the opposite to what you said.  You're saying that if you give an AI 200/100, which is 200% health, they have to get down to 100/100 before the bar changes right?  If that's the case, hit points would be 200 and max hit points would be 100.  I didn't know this was even possible but I guess you found that it is.

Look at it this way.  If you think of health as a fraction, you have the numerator (the current health) and the denominator (the total capacity for health or what would be deemed 100% health).  The numerator is "hit points" and the denominator is "max hit points".  You can start an AI off with whatever you want.  If you want to use an existing archetype but make sure the enemy dies if a fly lands on him, you assign him 1 hit point (hit points) and the max hit points are whatever they are (say 69).

[6666757048396General_Hoohah]

Yeah... oops. Sorry I was tired when I wrote that. lol Anyways...

Oh no! He's got a force field! Set blasters to over!

[66667570484b4RocketMan]

Oh no!  There's a health bar floating over that guy.  Set sanity to under!   

[66667570485c4General_Hoohah]