Energy Weapons

[665becd3d2897Yankee Clipper]

I would like to make the Energy weapons a little more attractive earlier in the game. To do this, I want to implement the following two mods:
1. Add a Laser Pistol in MedSci. I figure that guy that is wasted in the room with the charger and the 2 turrets is a good place - like he got taken out by the turrets in a desperate run to charge his pistol at the charger.
2. Dial down the Energy requirement for the Rapier. Instead of level 4, make it available at Energy level 2.

I haven't done any modding before. I am using most of the mods on the Recommended for Newbies page. From reading around, it looks like ShockEd is the answer to my #1. But, it looks like there are a few different tools: ShockEd Basic Toolkit 1.10 and  ShockEd Toolkit 1.3.1 are two examples. So, my first question is exactly what should I be using to make the mods? Secondly, it looks like ShockEd is a level editor. So, would that be what I would use to change something in the game mechanics - like the Energy level requirement for all rapiers in the game?

[665becd3d2aeavoodoo47]

1 will have to be done by editing the level directly (by creating obj from the -22 archetype near the mentioned corpse. also, did you know that marine will start with a laser pistol if you choose energy weapons?), use ShockEd Basic Toolkit 1.10, it's more up to date.
2 can be done by either editing the gamesys directly with Shocked, or by making a dml patch (editing archetype -24 and modifying the requirements).

[665becd3d2c64Kolya]

This is the editing wiki. Your thread will be moved to Engineering soon.

[665becd3d2d79Yankee Clipper]

Sorry about that. I just didn't look carefully enough at the categories. I plead "Newbie".

[665becd3d2edfYankee Clipper]

I'm getting an error when I start up ShockEd:

WARNING: failed to load model "psishiel" for obj -3414
WARNING: failed to load model "psishiel" for obj 2
Set light_bright to 1
persistent_player_pos=0

The above is displayed in a window titled "MONO". I also have a separate window titled "DromEd/ShockEd [...] playtest" with what looks like the stuff I see in the tutorials in it.

Anyone know what I did wrong to get the MONO window, and how do I correct it?

[665becd3d2fecvoodoo47]

this is absolutely ok. the mono window will display all sort of information while you are editing, warnings, errors etc. the two above warnings are of no concern.

[665becd3d3124xdiesp]

There, one laser pistol on that corpse and laser rapier with Energy 2 \ Agility 2 requirements. Unless we are using different version of the game, this should work. Keep thinking of more ideas!

[665becd3d3369Yankee Clipper]

Thanks xdiesp! This is a great help.

Would you know how I could go about editing the career paths options? My idea is to change the Navy path so that all Standard weapons stuff becomes Energy weapons. So, all Navy recruits would start with +1 Energy, a Laser Pistol (The marines get one in poor condition with a charge of 20, so that sounds about right for here). Also, the Year 2 option of +2 Standard would instead become +2 Energy.

I know there is an audio issue with the +1 Standard changing to +1 Energy, since the recruiter has a dialogue about how the recruit just earned the +1 Standard. During the pregame Advanced Training the guy mentions energy weapons, so maybe I can edit the audio to match up, but first I want to just get the other stuff going.

I looked around in earth.mis, but I'm not seeing where I would be able to do anything with the career paths. Is that the right file or should I be looking somewhere else?

I'm also making a slight tweak to the EMP rifle (maintenance of 4 instead of 6). That one I was able to figure out. It is just too expensive for someone on impossible to get both energy and maintenance up to 6. Since the AR uses 6 and 4, it makes it just barely doable on impossible. So I figure to make the EMP rifle as obtainable.

[665becd3d3512xdiesp]

I'm away fron my modding pc for about a week, so I can only give vague hints. In short, you can't be too creative with the careerpaths, unless you learn scripting. What you can do, is to rearrange the default choices that are already coded: as in, you can't edit the Navy 3rd option to be +2 cybernetic affinity, but you can give it the 2nd OSA option which happens to be like that. If you are looking at specific ways of restricting what players can do, try making a customized starting map that's for Navy only.

Open Earth in shocked and check the 3 exits, where you choose your career. There will be a tripwire, linking to a changelevel, with an option it about the career you've chosen. The game receives that setting and rewards you with the skills and equipmentthe script tells it to: there is no "give skill X" command. Same for the "Year" option in map station.

Try browsing Nameless' NVScripts list, which add all sorts of new commands. What I told you is about the vanilla game, and Nameless might have already programmed a Give Skill trap!

[665becd3d36cfYankee Clipper]

I don't think what I have in mind is too creative, but I don't know what the hell I'm doing, so maybe it is. What I have in mind seem like they should be simple tweaks: changing +1 standard to +1 energy and then changing +2 standard to +2 energy. Also, giving a laser pistol, but that is something that already happens on the Marine path, so I figured I could just copy whatever is going on there.

The trouble I'm running into is just finding the right place to start looking so I can copy. I have been exploring the Earth level with ShockEd, but the closest I get is to the juncture that the career paths are chosen. But, going beyond the door for Navy does not take me the next place in the game. Looking at the door, it has a teleport property, so I'm guessing that sends the player to another place on that level based on the value, but I can't find where. I also don't see where these values are saved. Is it in the Campaign file in the Save folder?

I tried searching the site for the NVScripts that you mentioned, but the only thing that comes up is an old thread from 2011 that someone was talking about modding some cameras. Where do I find out about NVScripts?

I really thought this was a not too ambitious project since I'm not making anything new - just trying to tweak what is already there.

[665becd3d37b7Yankee Clipper]

My bad. I was looking for NVScripts - plural. NvScript comes up with some more stuff.

[665becd3d3a6dxdiesp]

http://www.thiefmissions.com/scripts/NVScript.html

You can check the nvscripts there. If you can't find anything about adding skills, you might have to do with just the switch-around method. On the Earth map you will only find the choice for the 3 main careers: the year by year choices are on map Station.

If I remember correctly, just by choosing the career and year you are forcefed skills and a movie. The game expects you to get a career, then looks for Year and corridor number. If you are in Year 1 and corridor 1, as a marine the script gives you X and as an Osa it gives you Y.

If you put your mind to it, you can ìachieve something. But without the nvscript, all you can try to "change" those skills is to give the player the result of a different career choice. See if you can just prepare a button which allows a marine to get an osa skill, for starters (and later tell me what happened and what you did, if you are interested)


I looked into this months ago, when I was starting a minimod: my solution was to make players default marines (standard weapons 1) and hand them 50 modules to do what they want with them.