I wanted to post my second mod, which is very simple; some people want to make mods that exceed the standard limits of the game's weapons, systems, and other things.
I've noticed a few things when doing things, such as exceeding the artillery's standard upgrade level. Namely, you will get messages such as "Cannot find artillery_5" under the tooltip when you hover your mouse over the button, and solid black boxes where art should be. I learned that, to the credit of the developers, they made it so that certain things are done in a numeric order. For example, you can make a theoretically infinite number of descriptions for a system's level, as the description variable name (such as artillery_1, artillery_2, artillery_3, artillery_4) actually go on into infinity. Thus, you can actually write new descriptions for higher levels of systems where there were none before.
The same also applies for graphics files. For example, for artillery, when you activate level 5 or 6 (or higher, though it's pointless to go further as higher is already instant), the charging bar goes solid black. I noticed the the file names of the images are button_artillery_1.png, button_artillery_2.png, button_artillery_3.png, and button_artillery_4.png. I theorized that they were going black because there was no such images as button_artillery_5.png and button_artillery_6.png, and thus they go black when you load them.
Turns out, my theory was correct.
As you can see, with a bit of inginuity, you can create graphics for things that normally don't work. Now, the only catch, is that sometimes the game will 'escalate' a variable by 1; it's hard to explain, but I'll give you an example. For example, when your shields go up to a maximum of four, when it charges, it will go dark blue, and when it's full, it'll go to a bright blue. But, if you give yourself five to eight shield bars, those will be filled in in the order of the charging pink as charging, and the dark blue as charged (and these overlap the other shield barriers).
Another example is having more than four weapons; when you click on weapons 5-8, it will show a yellow 1-4 icon, and when you click on a system with a non-beam weapon, it will treat it as autofire (and an important note, if you USE the autofire function/key on weapons 5-8 with a non-beam weapon, it will crash the game). To break down the graphics files, the original ones were mouse_crosshairs2_1.png to mouse_crosshairs2_4.png, while the yellow ones were mouse_crosshairs3_1.png to mouse_crosshairs3_4.png. I theorized that if I named the weapon 5-8 files to mouse_crosshairs3_5.png to mouse_crosshairs3_8.png, and mouse_crosshairs4_5.png to mouse_crosshairs4_8.png, that it would show up correctly. Turned out I was half-right; the files mouse_crosshairs4_5 - 4_8 worked, but the mouse_crosshairs3_5 to 3_8 did not, and instead showed 3_1 to 3_4. Thus, it's quite complicated, and I'm working on it.
Anyway, to the point; I'm going to make a series of add-on icons that will make the game easier to work with, when making mods that exceed the game's normal limits. I'll be adding to this post as I go along, but I'll start by releasing some minor tweaks for you. The list is below:
- [COMPLETE] [url-https://www.dropbox.com/s/wjutqpk9eiz3xmh/Artillery-Fix.ftl]Artillery Icon Fix[/url]
- [ALPHA] Tooltip Fix
- [IN DEVELOPMENT] Extra Weapon Fix
Note that these mods are designed to work seamlessly with existing mods without modification when using the Slipstream Mod Manager.
Artillery Icon Fix: This adds icons for power levels 5 and 6 for Artillery, which will provide additional flexibility for your creations. This does NOT include tooltips, as the tooltip fix covers everything and should be able to be added to any mod without any conflicts.
Tooltip Fix: This adds descriptions to all systems and subsystems that can be upgraded. I'm having trouble locating the thread which has already tested these things, so if someone can pull up that thread for me, I'd greatly appreciate it.
In the meantime, I'm releasing part of it, which includes tooltips for up to 32 shield bars, and up to artillery level 6. More will be added when time permits. Also, note that I think shields over 24 bars may crash the game in certain situations, but I'm not 100% sure.Extra Weapon Fix: This adds mouse and targeting icons for weapons 5-8, if your ship includes them. I'll need to do a bit more research before I can release this, however, as not everything is working as planned.
Again, feel free to use these in your mods, but please provide credit if you do so.
This will be in constant development, and feel free to throw suggestions to me on what you'd like to see done. These are incredibly quick and simple to make, so let me know if you have any ideas.
would be balanced by the fact it takes up 16 of the max 25 energy and will take over 30 seconds till it gets into a good speed 