Adoxa's "Territory" and "Zone" plugins

Moonhead

It works

Thanxalot for the Nth time man :lol:

Moonhead

@ Adoxa: how ‘doable’ would it be for you to create a plugin that would display the name of a zone (if it has one) when you enter it?

Maybe that would have to make use of the same mechanism the game uses when you reach the end of a tradelane, rather than the one that is used when entering a system — if these are seperate mechanisms in the first place. Maybe it’s just the same mechanism in both cases anyway? In which case the doability of such a plugin would ‘simply’ (I have absolutely no idea about how difficult and/or labor-intensive those plugins you’ve made sofar, have been) depend on whether there is some identifiable ‘trigger’ when the player enters an asteroid field or a nebula.

adoxa

Zone.

It will display “Entered a zone.” when you enter and “Left a zone.” when you leave, at the same location as the system/tradelane message. You will need a resource editor to change them (or maybe just a hex editor will do). Entering a system within a zone will show the system message first, then the zone. If zones overlap, it will show either the more “interesting” one, or the closest (according to your distance from the center). The interesting order is (most to least): damage, interference, drag_modifier, spacedust. Entering a more interesting zone will show an entered message, but no left for the less interesting; exiting one will show both. For example, I just happened to test Hokkaido via the Chugoku jump hole (because I knew Okamura was a system-wide zone). So you’ll get the system message, then “Entered the Kayo Cloud.”. Go down aways and you’ll get “Entered the Kyofu.”. Now if you go back, you’ll get “Left the Kyofu.” followed by “Entered the Kayo Cloud.”.

Skotty

For the reason of beautiness, could there be an additional %s to display the system name in those two resource strings?

adoxa

Download again and now you can use %S (note upper case) to add the system.

Skotty

Thanks, adoxa the wizard

Moonhead

Wow man, this is great!!!

I’m at my job now, so no huge time to test it out already. I did change the thread title for easy reference.

Thaddeus

impressive. another excellent addition. works very well

Edit: one odd thing - any zone which has ids_name is being displayed, which is fine. But Zone_Br04_Tradelane_1 has ids_name = 60245, which is “trade lane ring” fair enough its a leftover bit of code which can be safely deleted, but, its not displaying “entered trade ring lane.” as expected, just “entered .” is the ids_name out of range or something?

Moonhead

Tested. Excellent, as Thaddeus says.

Skotty

Thaddeus wrote:
Edit: one odd thing - any zone which has ids_name is being displayed, which is fine. But Zone_Br04_Tradelane_1 has ids_name = 60245, which is “trade lane ring” fair enough its a leftover bit of code which can be safely deleted, but, its not displaying “entered trade ring lane.” as expected, just “entered .” is the ids_name out of range or something?

Quote from Zone.cpp:

The messages can be customised by editing the resources within the DLL; they use the same format as OfferBribeResources, i.e. “%Z” (or “%Zv0”) is name (e.g. “Badlands”); “%Zv1” is noun (e.g. “the Badlands”).

If there is no related resource (as you can add them with adoxas Names plugin) then it doesn’t has anything to display.

Moonhead

The issue Thaddeus describes more looks like the ids_name at 60245 is blocked from being displayed, like the faction names of The Order, the Nomads etc.

Thaddeus

Yeah, Skottys right, came to me as I was flying about. Zones have to have the extra entries in OfferBribeResources. Now, why doesnt the Islay Ice Cloud show up?

Would it be possible for hazard zones to flash up in red - with a strobe…

adoxa

Download again (still calling it v1.00).

Zones have to have the extra entries in OfferBribeResources.

That’s not quite true. %Zv_n_ uses OfferBribeResources, but %Z uses ids_name (same goes for other types).

Now, why doesnt the Islay Ice Cloud show up?

You have to leave a zone in order for a new zone to show up, but I didn’t consider entering a new system as leaving a zone.

Would it be possible for hazard zones to flash up in red - with a strobe…

No…but zones marked as dangerous (typically minefields and gas pockets) will display as red (high; e.g. Newgate), orange (medium; e.g. Tau-29 oxygen pockets) or yellow (low; e.g. LD-14).

Timmy51m

That’s well trick fair do Adoxa, finishes off territory nicely. I have to be honest though, just a personal opinion, but it feels a bit silly when it says “left zone”, I can’t help but say to myself “no Sh*t!” so that’s why all those rocks or clouds disappeared

Might be cleaner if it was just the same as territory, you enter jersey debris field and it just says “Jersey debris field” and no message to say you’ve left.

Feel like a right wanker knocking a piece of your magic!

Moonhead

Timmy51m wrote:
That’s well trick fair do Adoxa, finishes off territory nicely. I have to be honest though, just a personal opinion, but it feels a bit silly when it says “left zone”, I can’t help but say to myself “no Sh*t!” so that’s why all those rocks or clouds disappeared

Might be cleaner if it was just the same as territory, you enter jersey debris field and it just says “Jersey debris field” and no message to say you’ve left.

Feel like a right wanker knocking a piece of your magic!

With Resource Hacker (or Hex Workshop, but ResHack works much better in this case) you can customize both (entering and leaving) texts.

I sorta agree with you, and am contemplating whether it’d be a good idea to change the ‘left’ text into just “S%” (just the name of the System). You can also make it entirely empty I suppose.

adoxa

It can be done quite simply from the command line, using FRC (but you have to download again for this to work, otherwise an empty message stops new zones from showing up).

rem Assuming you're in the EXE directory (where Zone.dll is)
rem and FRC is on the PATH.
>copy con Zone.frc
S 0 %Z
S 1
^Z                                      (that's Ctrl+Z)
>frc Zone

Timmy51m

I have absolutely no idea what you just said, but it sounds good Adoxa! I feel like a monkey in a space capsule, there’s all these buttons but I’ve no idea which one to press, so I’ll just start bashing the keyboard until something happens

Timmy51m

I got it, did what Moonhead suggested and used Res hacker, changed first line to just %Z and removed second line completely, works a charm. Many thanks guys and awesome sauce Adoxa!

adoxa

Another update, to recognise missing %Zv_n_ ids, using the name instead.

Moonhead

adoxa wrote:
Another update, to recognise missing %Zv_n_ ids, using the name instead.

Could you elaborate a bit on that? (As in: I don’t understand what you mean. What’s the %Zvn for?)