thanks for the pointer, been wanting to get the COH expansions and Metro 2033 for a while

Three requests for the dark princes of the debugger

1. What is the hidden constant for “select object” keyboard/mouse binding? I want to swap my left and right mouse buttons… I can get halfway there by assigning USER_FIRE_WEAPONS to -1 (left mouse button), but the constant for “select object” that is mapped to -1 by default is not obviously defined anywhere, and Google searches make it seem that nobody has ever found it. It’s gotta be defined somewhere! What is it???

2. Weapon groups get overwritten while docking… sure would be nice to fix that. From what I can tell, the weapons group that is active when you dock is overwritten by the group 1 assignments the next time you undock. The active group stays active while docked (its still active when you undock), but it is overwrriten with a copy of the group 1 assignments. It looks like this is set with something globally–if you switch to another character after docking with group2 active, then the new ship has group2 overwritten. Some simple fix for this? Maybe just force group1 active when docking?

3. This is personal but very annoying to me personally. Sometimes I multitask in windowed mode when flying around, and if I leave the ship in mouse-flight then the ship goes whizzing out of control everytime I leave a jump gate or tradelane. Is there any way to get an option that forces the game into keyboard-flight mode whenever you dock?

These are the things that annoy me greatly. Thank you for reading.

good work

I would think the directplay protocol stuff is pretty well known by now. Just a question of motivation at this point. Seems to be lacking.

Is there a way to completely disable the HUD element in the top center of the screen? the one that has the icons for GOTO, DOCK, FREE FLIGHT

Right now I have it hidden, but it drops down everytime I move the cursor there. I want it gone completely. Gotta be a way

anybody know of a mod that was built around the Escape Velocity universe? I’ve been looking at some of the things needed for it to work and most of it seems pretty straightforward. But figure its better to see if anybody else has done the grunt work first

Sorry, my failure at not being clear. I am looking for a way to preview the particle effects in the ALE files, not a code display/editor

Is there something out there that will display the ALE effects? or an ALE converter or anything?

Combination of over-reach and under-funding is a recipe for wipe-out. I hope it comes to pass, in some form or another, but I’m not getting excited about it. I’m jaded on this stuff.

I need to pull infocard data out of the DLLs from inside PHP on Linux. Right now I’m just dumping all the data to a text file, but I would like to hear about any other suggestions that people might have.

edit–meant to point to this tool earlier but forgot. The author did not provide a link and is not responding to PMs. Not even sure it would do what I need but looks good. If anybody has a copy of it

‘gf_ge_s_thruster_01’ refers to the FX ‘gf_ge_s_thruster_01’ (crazy, huh) in effects.ini
So, in theory, you should be be able to change it’s vis_effect variable to something else, for example ‘gf_rh_largeengine02’ ( I do not recommend using that particular one).

That just changes the effect to another effect. I am trying to figure out if its possible to use the current engine animation. For example, a Wyrm has a single Kusari engine exhaust, while an Avenger has two Liberty engine exhausts, an Orca has 4 rogue exhausts, etc. What I want is for the current engines to light up instead of that stupid little thruster flare

I think it can probably be done with ship-specific thrusters, but maybe there is a way with memory tweak to call the engine animations when the thruster is activated. I am wondering if anybody has figured this out

Here’s an example, I used the rogue-gunboat-engine “trail” particle effect, and moved the HpThruster to the top engine mount. I would like it to simply trigger all of the engines though, instead of having to make ship-specific thrusters with multiple hardpoints.

youtu.be/KB3EF4BTEH4

That looks much more believable than the little bitty thruster flare

Yes its that question

Has anybody ever figured out how to make thruster exhaust use the engine exhaust? I dont mean mount the thruster on the hardpoint, I mean using the engine exhaust animation for the thruster animation.

Thrusters as discrete output would make sense if we had a bunch of them scattered around the ship (turning thrusters, reversing thrusters, etc) but since we only have the one thruster it might as well as use the engine output

One possibility is make thrusters for each ship and use explicit hardpoint mapping and engine animation but worth asking if anybody has figured out a generalized method

Bobthemanofsteel wrote:
Equip Mass adds both the mass of Equipment AND Cargo to the ship’s mass.

Thanks Rita ;D

I think I was editing the wrong file for commodity mass. I saw that they all have volume= but none of them (or very few of them) have mass= declarations. I tried editing it in but didnt get any noticeable results, now I think I might have been editing the wrong file.

Anyway I dont think its important. Mass is not significant for what I’m looking at. The ranges are too tight. Thanks though

I loaded it and played around with some variables and I have a feeling for how ship handling is affected (mostly the rate at which forward velocity changes).

I dont know where else or how else it is used though.

Commodities appear to be limited to volume only and not mass. Seems like a logical thing that some of them would weigh more on a cubic unit basis, and a freighter that is limited to ~500 units would also be limited to ~500 weight. But this doesnt seem to be supported at all.

Also, as I understand the discovery mod uses mass to determine if a ship is allowed to dock at some bases (ex the Rogue Destroyer base in Pittsburg debris field). Maybe that’s specific to the mod though.

So far it seems like mass is mostly unusable as a relative stat due the scale being too tight (not enough difference between fighter and gunboat and battleship and cargo ship). Still looking at it though.

I’m looking for a way to have some types of equipment draw constant power from the power plant. For example, a very-long-range scanner, or a special kind of weapon, etc. constant_power_draw provides this function for shields, but does not seem to work on the other types. Has anybody gotten this working, or is there another option I should be looking at?

I already checked adoxa’s plugins

Can I get a rundown on the things that mass is supposed to effect? As I understand it so far, ship mass affects turning speed slightly but the mass of some equipment is not incorporated in this. Also maybe determines cargo amount, similar to volume? Anything else?

I also see some plugins use mass for things like restricted docking (maybe?). Is that an FLhook thing or an in-game thing?

I am looking at mass as a possible data-point in relation to dimensions and am trying to determine its significance

Thanks

sumanuti wrote:
PlayerControl plugin does this!
There is a need to define thing you carry that will fix reputation on each dock/undock. Setting one to be 0.91 should automatically assign Faction affiliation.

I know how to do it by changing reputation. What I’m looking for is a way to change the primary affiliation directly, without touching the reputation.

Your IFF doesnt change everytime a reputation goes to .9 so something is making a decision to set IFF and then affecting the change, while choosing not to do so at other times. I assume there is a discrete call in the game for this, that’s what I’m looking for.

FLHook guess, if you are talking about capship shaking.

I’m talking about a VHF colliding with a battleship in open space, and it makes the battleship spin around

Shaking is a different problem and I already know the fix for that

Is there a hook for setting the faction affiliation / IFF? I know there’s a call for it, because the game manages it as a discrete task that is separate from/subordinate to the reputation management, but I dont know if it has been surfaced yet.

Just thinking about some stuff that kind of depends on being able to control IFF directly, so just seeing if its available.

I’ve looked through the doc file in flook folder but didn’t see anything relevant.

I know a couple / few different mods have fixed the problems with ramming and flipping, and am curious to know how it was done. With custom code? With the ship mass variable? Something else?

Thanks