Subset Games Forum

All the guides iv looked up for this are many years old. I did not try any of them as i figured they were outdated

Basically im trying to make a simple custom event where the player may encounter The Scourge, my automated ship with a built in, life-hating AI. Scourge can only be found in Uncharted Nebulas and only on Nebula nodes. And there would be an option to attempt to hide if the player has cloaking (50% success rate)

So basically what i need to know is:
How to make my event show up only in Uncharted Nebulas and only on Nebula nodes
Have the event be rare
Have the event feature my custom enemy ship
Have the event feature custom dialogue that includes more options if the player has cloaking
Have the event conclude in the player being rewarded a very good weapon, possibly from a pool (ill make a custom weapon if this isnt possible)
Have the event NOT show up more than once per playthrough. This part is really important

Heads up, PM mr_easy_money for help.

You can also ask him for his discord. (If you have discord)

Ill pm him! I do have discord but i have a.. uh, well a sort of habit of having all information i gain of this kind in a place i can always find it. IE on a forum or in PM's. Discord is less reliable for me, as i dont always remember login, had several at one point, and sometimes get weird chat issues no one else seems to have

Nevertheless thank you. Hopefully he will help me, i can also use this info for making an event for a powerful custom weapon of mine

How do i contact him though? Seems to be no option. The "contact" button doesnt do anything, its not even a button

Saobie wrote:How do i contact him though? Seems to be no option. The "contact" button doesnt do anything, its not even a button

Ah, right -- 10 posts is the magic number in order to gain access to those options. (IIRC)

Well, id rather not make 8 more posts unless i actually need help. Is there a chance you could have him comment here?

Ah, posts. Not threads. Got it lol

Saobie wrote:Well, id rather not make 8 more posts unless i actually need help. Is there a chance you could have him comment here?

...and I'd rather comment here. why? 'cause my private message folder is full...

I'll preface by saying while those event tutorials are old, event structure has stayed the same. most of the info on CaptainShooby's tutorial still works, except disregard Step 1 where it talks about step 1. http://ftlwiki.com/wiki/Events_file_structure is a good resource though slightly outdated by a few things AE added on what all the possible XML tags are and what they mean.

in general, looking at vanilla FTL's files and tracing through them are always good to look at, but without any explanations it may be confusing...

oh, and I'll also say another thing about discord. it may be 30x easier if I explained this via Discord's voice chat, I've got a mic. if this is at all something you'd be interested in give me a discord invite link or something. I've known forum chat to be slow and unreliable when it comes to talking to someone which is exactly where Discord excels.

uh... so I can either try and explain how you'd go about doing this, or I can come up with some event template provided you send the custom enemy ship stuff here (or by pm), then I'll see if I can come up with anything. for now, I'll just write down some of my initial answers to your questions... are what you asked possible, and if so how would one go about doing them? (again, how much sense they'll make will vary on how much info you know about event structure, if any)

Saobie wrote:How to make my event show up only in Uncharted Nebulas?

add it as a possible event in the Uncharted Nebula sector in sector_data.xml

Saobie wrote:[How to make my event show up] only on Nebula nodes?

prefix the name of the event with "NEBULA_". The game files indicate you need this in order to get a nebula. pretty sure you need to specify <environment type="nebula" /> as well in the event.

Saobie wrote:Have the event be rare?

just add just 1 event to the sector in sector_data.xml, should be rare enough, and have the start event have the attribute, unique="true"

Saobie wrote:Have the event feature my custom enemy ship?

uh... so you'll need the <event> to load something like <ship load="MY_SHIP" hostile="true" /> tag, which specifies the name of a <ship> tag. this <ship> tag has an attribute "auto_blueprint" which specifies some ship data in autoBlueprints.xml.append, which details the ship's systems, what the name of its layout data files and image is. sounds confusing, but that carries for all of this modding, when in reality it isn't, it just needs to be explained. once you see how it works, trust me, you'll get the swing of things...

Saobie wrote:Have the event feature custom dialogue that includes more options if the player has cloaking?

yep, you can check for level 1, 2, 3 in cloaking just like vanilla events do

Saobie wrote:And there would be an option to attempt to hide if the player has cloaking (50% success rate)

yep, make the choice load an eventList with two possible event outcomes

Saobie wrote:Have the event conclude in the player being rewarded a very good weapon, possibly from a pool (ill make a custom weapon if this isnt possible)?

yep, this is definitely possible. arfy may know something about this too.

Saobie wrote:Have the event NOT show up more than once per playthrough. This part is really important

impossible unless the sector it's in is unique (only appears once per game, e.g. Rebel Stronghold), but you'd need to make a special uncharted nebula sector, but you could miss the sector altogether...

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so.. these were just my initial "reactions" to the post, I can definitely go into more detail, but like I said, trying to explain something to someone in a forum is difficult, a chat is way more appropriate, else the conversation will just drag out and neither one of us will be satisfied...

and so I'll just reiterate, this event modding probably sounds difficult or something, but it isn't, it just needs examples and a tutorial, otherwise known as a good explanation. once you figure out how everything fits together, it's not bad at all.

Thanks for the response! I suppose its not a big deal for my event to be in the slug homeworld instead, since thats a unique sector. The event has to be unique, this part is important to the small bit of lore i have for this ship and the event. The point is that this is one of 3 ships run by an AI, each having its base hull design from a different race (Scourge is rock based, iv also made Revenant which is zoltan based, and the 3rd one is not made yet). Theyre life-hating AI that tend to feature weaponry specified for killing life. Scourge has a bio beam and 2 fire beams, as well as a chain ion weapon and a custom artillery weapon designed to take out shields. Revanent features a very dangerous artillery weapon that fires a spread of shots that cant pierce or damage shields, but deals personel damage and sets fires. It also sports breach missiles and an ion weapon. The AI was initially designed to explore uncharted space and became self aware at some point. How it came to hate life is unknown, but nevertheless each ship has become infamous for its huntings. Scourge hunts in nebulas, as its purple hull allows it to hide well

Anywhoo, lore out of the way, as for the actual event. It would be easier for me to understand if you made a template. None of the weapon designing is complex to me since i know how it works. I can likely pick up event coding quick and easy so long as i have a template to work with. Ill start with this event and then probably fiddle with parameters to figure out how event coding works for myself

I can send the data pertaining to the ship itself but please not that the ship is a recolored version of another persons ship. I have no intention of publishing my mod, and as im very bad at design, this is how i make my things. I dont intend to rip this person off, im using the sprite purely for myself

Also im going to bed soon so if i dont reply soon thats why xD