[Modding] R&D and current findings

[Alblaka]

It's not possible to automatically have events react to your equipment/crew. It's only possible via Blue Choices.

[buzzyrecky]

It's definitely possible to remove augments, and given the way the game is coded, I wouldn't be surprised if you can remove weapons as well.
Take the sectorEnergy.xml and search for the Crystal-Alien-Revive event, it removes the Damaged Statis Pod augment.

Shop appears to be hardcoded (like the randomReward engine, too), couldn't find anything yet and in-code it's merely called <store/> without any reference.

Thanks for reminding me of this event, I thought there would be something that removed things somewhere!

Now I can start fixing up all of the events in my mod (thats a whopping 20-something >_>).

[buzzyrecky]

I found the event, and there is literally nothing mentioned the removal of the damaged pod. Dang... oh well.

Unless you're talking about something other than the zoltan study

[Alblaka]

I found the event, and there is literally nothing mentioned the removal of the damaged pod. Dang... oh well.

Unless you're talking about something other than the zoltan study

Well... that's... *checks file*.
I think that would be a derp of the devs. If the stasis pod is not removed (and I admit after finally getting a crystal I did not check for the pod still being present) it means you can revive the Crystal guy multiple times ^^'
That's too bad... not being able to remove augments is meh...

You could try messing around with the present syntax's, maybe it reacts to something. Can't help ya otherwise.

[AtillaBosma]

I wish a lot of these parts of the game weren't hardcoded, it would expand the possibility of modding for this game entirely.
The modders could literally become the DLC-makers.

[Alblaka]

Code: Select all

<rarityList>
		<blueprint name="engi" rarity="0"/>
		<blueprint name="mantis" rarity="0"/>
		<blueprint name="energy" rarity="0"/>
		<blueprint name="slug" rarity="0"/>
		<blueprint name="rock" rarity="0"/>
		<blueprint name="human" rarity="0"/>
		<blueprint name="crystal" rarity="1"/>
		<blueprint name="LASER_BURST_1" rarity="0"/>
		<blueprint name="LASER_BURST_2" rarity="0"/>
                ...
		<blueprint name="CRYSTAL_HEAVY_2" rarity="5"/>
</rarityList>

Found this in one of the sectorDescription-structs of sector_data.xml.
Could be used to make specific weapons more common in specific areas. F.e. make ion weapons and high-quality drones more common in Engi sectors.

As well, figured out how to make a simple IF-workaround for events, forcing players to activate a blue choice if a condition BOOL is met: http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2795

[substandardgaussian]

The room layout (shipname.txt) file is like this

Code: Select all

X_OFFSET
<number> [<number>*35 offsets the entire ship in the X axis]
Y_OFFSET
<number> [<number>*35 offsets the entire ship in the Y axis]
VERTICLE
<number> [<number> offsets the entire ship in the Y axis by this many pixels]
ELLIPSES [The shield graphic uses these parameters]
<width>
<height>
<x-offset>
<y-offset>
ROOM
<id> [Unique ID]
<x> [How many tiles from 0 the room is on the X-axis]
<y> [How many tiles from 0 the room is on the Y-axis]
<w> [How wide is the room]
<h> [How tall is the room]
DOOR
<x> [How many tiles from 0 the door is on the X-axis]
<y> [How many tiles from 0 the door is on the Y-axis]
<room (left/up)> [The room ID to the left (verticle) or above (horizontal) this door]
<room (right/down)> [The room ID to the right (verticle) or below (horizontal) this door]
<verticle/horizontal> [0 = verticle, 1 = horizontal : Door snaps to the left or top wall of that tile always]

That was the conclusion I come to at first as well, and in general works quite well... but notice that, in the fed cruiser txt file, for the airlock doors on the far left, they have "0" (room ID) in the first slot, and -1 (space) in the second slot, same as the airlock doors on the right ("17", then "-1"), even though according to that logic it should be reversed. When you do flip them, opening that door no longer causes venting. I may be counting something wrong... I would check myself before posting this, but I'm in the middle of an engi run and don't want to mess around with the saves too much. It's certainly possible that this is a special case in the code, but I suspect either I'm wrong or there's a subtlety about the config file that we're missing.

The game seems to use the < room (left/up> and <room (right/down) > data in pathfinding as well as the flow of oxygen. If used cleverly, this could lead to some interesting "ship modifications", ie. intraship teleport, which could be a popular feature/buyable system, especially for Rockmen who can barely move anywhere. I'm guessing that the ship config files are read once at the beginning and can't be modified on the fly without a restart, though, so with some work you can maybe design a ship with built-in room teleporting, but maybe couldn't add the feature later, at least not this way.

(side note: is there anything known to cause a reload of the .dat files in the middle of the game?)

Interestingly enough, making two non-local rooms linked by a door causes a crewmember to walk right through the ship to get over there, so the graphical implementation of walking to a room differs from the logical implementation (i figured they should just appear in the other room). I'm not sure where exactly the crewmember is, logically, when they're walking from the far left of the ship to the far right directly through deep space (ie., where are they vulnerable to damage/suffocation/attack, etc: ). Clearly the idea of linking non-local rooms with doors wasn't built into the core of the game.

[substandardgaussian]

I was wondering if someone could write up a rough guide on how to make custom ships. It doesn't have to be perfect - just a basic overview would be nice. I'm particularly lost as to how the room layout file works.

And thanks in advance from all us n00b shipwrights who are dreaming of the stars.

I am working on this right now. Might be a week or so as I am on a ship in the South Pacific at the time and have a lot of my own work to do. So far, I have created a fresh shipname.txt file. Edited the blueprints.xml file to change the placement of the system. Decoded what half of the interior images are for, IE: 1x2 room, 2x1 room, or 2x2 room and which wall/corner the system is on. Working on the graphics and .gibs right now. Need to create the overview image, the floor plan image, and the .gibs so the ship will blow up properly. The coding for this is in the shipname.xml file.

So I have made a lot of progress but still a lot to go. Unfortunately, I only have Gimp to work with the graphics on and am not a big fan of it. I will be checking the forum daily so if there are any questions, just ask. I might start creating the tutorial and explanation page for you tonight though.

I'm actually dreaming of a ship builder tool. There are more than enough design tools out there for both serious (eg. AutoCAD) and gaming purposes (eg. The Sims house building tools being an advanced example). Adapting that paradigm for a really simple room/door maker app that translates into FTL-readable ship config files wouldn't be a gargantuan task, and would make ship design nearly trivial (except for supplying your own graphic for custom ships of course).

I'd like to set about doing this myself, but I've always been an algorithms/backend kind of guy, I'm fairly noobish at GUI design (the entirety of my experience is with Java Swing >_< ). Anyone feel like collaborating?

[Alblaka]

Interestingly enough, making two non-local rooms linked by a door causes a crewmember to walk right through the ship to get over there, so the graphical implementation of walking to a room differs from the logical implementation (i figured they should just appear in the other room). I'm not sure where exactly the crewmember is, logically, when they're walking from the far left of the ship to the far right directly through deep space (ie., where are they vulnerable to damage/suffocation/attack, etc: ). Clearly the idea of linking non-local rooms with doors wasn't built into the core of the game.

Haha, im totally going to use this as a design element for a new race's ships, which merely consist of a few 1x2 rooms without visible connection :3 with enemies walking constantly across space.

[buzzyrecky]

I tried everything I could for the past 2 hours or so, and nothing worked to remove the weapon. Not sure if only augments are removable and not weapons as well, but either way that sucks. I'll just work around it.