Need help with getting the ACU Death Nuke Mod to work.

LordMang · **Joined:** 12 Mar, 2011 **Posts:** 263

Hi. I need help getting the ACU Death Nuke Mod to work, specifically making it as lethal as it used to be in SupCom and currently is in Total Annihilation (I don't play multiplayer so I don't have to worry about something like this being unbalanced).

I downloaded and installed Sorian's ACU Death Nuke mod. However, it doesn't seem to work, as an exploding ACU still only mildly damages buildings and other ACUs.

I looked at the mod's mod_units.bp file and the code seems to be ok. My SC:FA game is currently patched to v3603 and I'm runnin the Community Bugfix v4.0 mod.

The ACU Death Nuke mod still does not work when I disable the Community Bugfix mod.

Here is the ACU Death Nuke Mod code below for your reference.

Code:

UnitBlueprint {
    Merge = true,
    BlueprintId="ual0001",

    Weapon = {
        {
        },
      {
      },
      {
      },
      {
          NukeInnerRingDamage = 70000,
            NukeInnerRingRadius = 30,
            NukeInnerRingTicks = 24,
            NukeInnerRingTotalTime = 24,
            NukeOuterRingDamage = 500,
            NukeOuterRingRadius = 40,
            NukeOuterRingTicks = 20,
            NukeOuterRingTotalTime = 10,
      },
    },
}
UnitBlueprint {
    Merge = true,
    BlueprintId="uel0001",

    Weapon = {
        {
        },
      {
      },
      {
      },
      {
      },      
      {
          NukeInnerRingDamage = 70000,
            NukeInnerRingRadius = 30,
            NukeInnerRingTicks = 24,
            NukeInnerRingTotalTime = 24,
            NukeOuterRingDamage = 500,
            NukeOuterRingRadius = 40,
            NukeOuterRingTicks = 20,
            NukeOuterRingTotalTime = 10,
      },
    },
}
UnitBlueprint {
    Merge = true,
    BlueprintId="url0001",

    Weapon = {
        {
        },
      {
      },
      {
          NukeInnerRingDamage = 70000,
            NukeInnerRingRadius = 30,
            NukeInnerRingTicks = 24,
            NukeInnerRingTotalTime = 24,
            NukeOuterRingDamage = 500,
            NukeOuterRingRadius = 40,
            NukeOuterRingTicks = 20,
            NukeOuterRingTotalTime = 10,
      },
      {
      },
      {
      },      
    },
}

LordMang · **Joined:** 12 Mar, 2011 **Posts:** 263

Is it possible that it is not enough to simply merge the revised ACU Death Nuke values (like you can easily do with other attributes like Health or Metal/Energy Requirements)? One may have to actually "swap out" weapons tables, instead of simply revising what is already there.

I did some searching and this post here seems to indicate (but I'm not 100% sure) that more work is required than a simple Merge text in a .bp file.

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=57411

Can someone confirm or refute this guess of mine? Thanks.

DeadMG

You're merging the wrong blueprints. They need to be "UAL0001". I think. It's been a while since I last did this. Anyway, my advice would be to merge over something like the health or write a LOG in your blueprint file to show that it's being merged correctly.

Domino · **Joined:** 26 Feb, 2009 **Posts:** 2996

Hi,

Merge blueprintid's should be lowercase..

i personally dont like merging weapon blueprints like that,
that is why i use the other method.

Legion Darrath

I made a mod that does the same thing and it's working fine, I could email it to you if you want. Not sure if it'd play nice with other mods that affect the ACU though.

BulletMagnet

Buildings and ACUs have death-nuke armour - I think you might find that is the problem.

LordMang · **Joined:** 12 Mar, 2011 **Posts:** 263

DeadMG wrote:

You're merging the wrong blueprints. They need to be "UAL0001". I think. It's been a while since I last did this. Anyway, my advice would be to merge over something like the health or write a LOG in your blueprint file to show that it's being merged correctly.

Domino wrote:

Hi,

Merge blueprintid's should be lowercase..

i personally dont like merging weapon blueprints like that,
that is why i use the other method.

Thanks for the responses.

I thought the blueprintid's should be in lowercase as well.

What is the other method that you're referring to?

Thanks.

LordMang · **Joined:** 12 Mar, 2011 **Posts:** 263

Legion Darrath wrote:

I made a mod that does the same thing and it's working fine, I could email it to you if you want. Not sure if it'd play nice with other mods that affect the ACU though.

That would be great. Just sent you a PM with my email address.

Thanks.

LordMang · **Joined:** 12 Mar, 2011 **Posts:** 263

BulletMagnet wrote:

Buildings and ACUs have death-nuke armour - I think you might find that is the problem.

Thanks for the response. I love your SC:FA mods (e.g. No overkill, paratroopers, etc.) by the way.

Do you remember what the code parameters are for the other death-nuke armor of ACUs and buildings are?

Thanks.

BulletMagnet

From memory ('tis been over a year since looking at that code) there's an optional damage type property in the weapon blueprint.

I think structures and ACUs have some code in their script files that do checks for that damage type when they take damage. However, where this code is - I do not know. It might be in the specific ACU's scripts, or it might be inherited from a generic class file (which makes a bloody lot of sense for structures, as there's about 100 unique structures).

LordMang · **Joined:** 12 Mar, 2011 **Posts:** 263

BulletMagnet wrote:

From memory ('tis been over a year since looking at that code) there's an optional damage type property in the weapon blueprint.

I think structures and ACUs have some code in their script files that do checks for that damage type when they take damage. However, where this code is - I do not know. It might be in the specific ACU's scripts, or it might be inherited from a generic class file (which makes a bloody lot of sense for structures, as there's about 100 unique structures).

Thanks. When I first saw Sorian's thread about his ACU death nuke mod, I had a feeling it was too good to be true. Later testing showed that I was right. I'm a little surprised that no one else, including Sorian, noticed that his mod did not work at all:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3178&start=0

Legion Darrath

Sent you that email but I didn't think about the death nuke armor that is in 3603 so you might run into the same issue. For some reason I never got the death nuke armor to work in my mod version of 3603 though so if you don't care about the supposed engine changes from 3603 you could try running 3599 with my 3603 mod and change the deathnuke values for the ACU in that mod.

BulletMagnet

There's a reason why it doesn't work: that mod is for vanilla SupCom, not FA.

LordMang · **Joined:** 12 Mar, 2011 **Posts:** 263

BulletMagnet wrote:

There's a reason why it doesn't work: that mod is for vanilla SupCom, not FA.

Ah. Thank you for pointing that out.

Legion Darrath wrote:

Sent you that email but I didn't think about the death nuke armor that is in 3603 so you might run into the same issue. For some reason I never got the death nuke armor to work in my mod version of 3603 though so if you don't care about the supposed engine changes from 3603 you could try running 3599 with my 3603 mod and change the deathnuke values for the ACU in that mod.

I tested your Death Nuke Mod. It still does not destroy structures
however. It looks like the damage is limited to only 10% of the
structures' health points.

Is there a way for the Death Nuke to inflict FULL damage on structures?

Any way to remove the Death Nuke Armor from v3603?

FYI - I'm using SC:FA v3603 beta patch.

LordMang · **Joined:** 12 Mar, 2011 **Posts:** 263

Just wanted to say "Thank you" to everyone for their help, especially BulletMagnet and Legion.

This community is fantastic and very helpful to new modders like myself who have little to no experience in modding. My only regret is that I wasn't around when the game and community were at its most active with respect to modding SC:FA.

The advice to focus on how armor types were being used to nerf the ACU's death nukes led me to search and find this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=8799

Upon reading that thread, I learned to look in the armordefinition.lua file, which can be found here in the lua.scd located in the /gamedata folder of SC:FA

In the armordefinition.lua file, it has this part of the code which nerf's the death nuke:

Code:

{   # Armor Type Name
        'Commander',

        # Armor Definition
        'Normal 1.0',
        'Overcharge 0.033333',
        'Deathnuke 0.05',
    },
    {   # Armor Type Name
        'Structure',

        # Armor Definition
        'Normal 1.0',
        'Overcharge 0.066666',
        'Deathnuke 0.01',
    },

NOW, I need to learn how to incorporate the desired changes into a mod (without changing the original lua file).

Is there a "Merge = true," type of command that has to be used in a Mod's lua file to tell the engine that I'm merging/overiding the game's default armordefinition.lua file with my modified lua file?

BulletMagnet

LordMang wrote:

Is there a "Merge = true," type of command that has to be used in a Mod's lua file to tell the engine that I'm merging/overiding the game's default armordefinition.lua file with my modified lua file?

Kind of.

When looking through the SupCom and FA files, you will LOTS of files in \lua\.

In mods that change existing behaviours, you will see lots of files with the same name in \hook\lua. It doesn't take much to correctly guess that the \hook\ folder is specifically for modifying existing code files.

You will have to put a modified copy of armordefinition.lua in the appropriate place inside a \hook\ folder in your mod.

Depending on how that file is coded, you might not have to copy the entire thing (it would be a good idea to test this a bit, and remove everything but what is absolutely needed so that other mods won't be accidentally affected). If you are lucky, then all you might have to do is copy the armordefinition = {} table, and everything inside it from the original to your new one, and then change the values.

Legion Darrath

The weird thing is that using the 3603 version of armordefinition.lua did not create the death nuke armor effect in my mod version of 3603. Several people looked it over and it should have worked so I hope turning it off on purpose will be more straightforward.

LordMang · **Joined:** 12 Mar, 2011 **Posts:** 263

BulletMagnet wrote:

LordMang wrote:

Is there a "Merge = true," type of command that has to be used in a Mod's lua file to tell the engine that I'm merging/overiding the game's default armordefinition.lua file with my modified lua file?

Kind of.

When looking through the SupCom and FA files, you will LOTS of files in \lua\.

In mods that change existing behaviours, you will see lots of files with the same name in \hook\lua. It doesn't take much to correctly guess that the \hook\ folder is specifically for modifying existing code files.

You will have to put a modified copy of armordefinition.lua in the appropriate place inside a \hook\ folder in your mod.

Depending on how that file is coded, you might not have to copy the entire thing (it would be a good idea to test this a bit, and remove everything but what is absolutely needed so that other mods won't be accidentally affected). If you are lucky, then all you might have to do is copy the armordefinition = {} table, and everything inside it from the original to your new one, and then change the values.

SUCCESS! Your advice worked.

I created a '/hook/lua folder in my mod. Then I placed a copy of the original armordefinition.lua file in the lua folder and modified the code as needed for the ACU and Structure armor definitions.

As you also mentioned, I got lucky and was able to copy the armordefinition tables and edit them as needed, WITHOUT any special syntax commands required (e.g. do, end, etc.).

Thanks again for your help.

kirahirasai

Good to see new modders approaching the game and the friendly helpers in here. I hope you get much fun out of your future modding actions :wink:

.

LordMang · **Joined:** 12 Mar, 2011 **Posts:** 263

kirahirasai wrote:

Good to see new modders approaching the game and the friendly helpers in here. I hope you get much fun out of your future modding actions :wink:

.

Thanks for the kind words! All the credit goes to the members on this site who've been very friendly and generous with their time, knowledge, and helpfulness!

Need help with getting the ACU Death Nuke Mod to work.

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