Subset Games Forum

Modding community!

I would love to see a mod that makes the game less random, so that a single save game file could be played by multiple players and they would experience the same universe. I briefly scanned for a mod like this and couldn't find one. I don't have cycles to try to make such a mod myself, but I thought I'd ask and see if any mod makers would take up the challenge!

I just completed some research as to what is fixed and what is randomly generated at play time. E.g., I saved the game before certain points, backed up my save file, and replayed 1 beacon from that point over and over again to see what would happen. Results are here:
http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=15579

In a nutshell, these things appear to be fixed as soon as you start the game:
* Sector 1 beacon layout
* Sector 1 events
* Sector map layout
* Sector map types

But these things are not fixed until you reach them in the game:
* Contents of stores
* Future sector beacon layouts
* Future sector events

If there's any way all of the stuff could be fixed up front, then multiple people could play the same map and compare experiences / strategies! One approach might be to generate everything up front and keep it in the save file until it's reached. Another approach might be to have a seed value that is uniformly derived from the map so that everything in the 2nd list becomes identical for every player. I have no idea if either of these ideas (or any other approach) is feasible.

Ideally, it would be fantastic if just the game creator needed the mod and everyone else could play a fixed map without the mod after that. But obviously, that's less important than just being able to play a randomly generated, fixed map.

None of this is possible, I'm afraid. FTL modding is limited to what is present in the data files, and sadly sector/beacon generation is handled internally by the game. The best you can do is make a mod that changes event lists in each sector, but I don't have much experience in that particular field.

Is no one hacking code at all? I'm not an expert, but it seems like it could be as "simple" as changing a few bytes of the executable to make it use a derived seed value rather than a random seed value when generating shop inventory and future sectors.

rhaining wrote:Is no one hacking code at all? I'm not an expert, but it seems like it could be as "simple" as changing a few bytes of the executable to make it use a derived seed value rather than a random seed value when generating shop inventory and future sectors.

Apparently u think changing the code of a program is easy, u should try it yourself. Its not about to change code, its about to write and change extra code lines that only advanced programmers will be able to. The problem is, to change that u will need to almost re-write all the base code of FTL, and u cant do that.

Nothing of wat u asked is possible. It is just how ftl works, and even if it worked, i dont see the point of non random stores, for example, it will make the game so hard that people will stop playing (it will make no sense). The good thing about FTL is that every game is different, and playing once u can reach the boss or just die in the first sector, luck is almost 50% of the game. If u dont want other game than FTL u cant change the mechanics from random to lineal.

Apparently u think changing the code of a program is easy, u should try it yourself. Its not about to change code, its about to write and change extra code lines that only advanced programmers will be able to. The problem is, to change that u will need to almost re-write all the base code of FTL, and u cant do that.

Nothing of wat u asked is possible. It is just how ftl works, and even if it worked, i dont see the point of non random stores, for example, it will make the game so hard that people will stop playing (it will make no sense). The good thing about FTL is that every game is different, and playing once u can reach the boss or just die in the first sector, luck is almost 50% of the game. If u dont want other game than FTL u cant change the mechanics from random to lineal.

If I've offended, I apologize. I certainly meant no offense, and I have the greatest respect for modders both in terms of skills and in terms of giving great stuff to the community.

I would like to clarify two things about my earlier statement. First, I know that this kind of change is possible, just not with the normal modding of config files. With source, it would be a relatively easy change to make. The trick is to be able to make this change without source. For that, it takes a far more leet hacker than myself. E.g. someone who can use debugging tools to track down exactly where the random generation is happening and change some byte values in the binary directly to use a different seed value for the RNG. In no way, shape, or form is this trivial. I just know it's possible, and I was hoping to find someone on this forum who both could do it and was excited by the possibilities.

I also want to clarify what this would do. It would *not* cause the shops to have fixed inventory. The game would still be completely random, every time. It's just that all randomly generated things would be generated from a specific seed value. This would allow everyone who played the game with the same seed value to experience the same randomly generated universe. This would be awesome! You could say, "hey, map 128732821 was awesome you should try it!", or, "let's have a competition where we all play map 43827291 and see whose strategy works the best", or, "oh man, map 238219832 is impossible to beat with the EngiA cruiser, I'll bet you can't beat it!" Lots of fun possibilities.

It was a long shot that someone would want to try this with FTL. So I've gone ahead and asked for this feature in FTL: Overdrive, and a kind soul in that forum has added it to the feature wish list.