C&C95 v1.06c revision 4?

[Nyerguds]

So, I've been thinking of releasing a new patch... apparently I've been sitting on a bunch of changes that never actually made it into a release because they weren't quite enough for a new version, and back then I was kind of holding out for going straight to 1.06d. That never happened, so, yea.

 

I dug through my latest IDA database and identified all the changes I made in the exe file since the last released version. I'll probably have to communicate with the cncnet team on this to keep their version synced and to avoid conflicts, but anyway, here's an overview of the stuff it would contain:

 

• Commando bomb voice fix: removes the duplicate response of the commando when giving a bomb command. He'll actually respond with "I got a present for you" now, and the map-wide sound of him yelling that is suppressed for the player giving the command.
  
• Fixed tank death sequence for engineers, so they no longer get ragdolled around after death.
  
• Added sound to MP messages. A beep is played when receiving a message in multiplay. (I can't believe this never made it into a release)
  
• Mouse wheel sidebar scrolling. This is probably already in cncnet, but never made it to a 1.06 release.
  
• Mod and language system expansion, allowing the replacement of C&C strings files by ini files.
  
• Advanced Comm Center nearby stealth detection (like guard towers). The normal Comm Center building has always had that, so I'm fairly sure it's a bug that the Advanced Comm Center is less advanced in that aspect.
  
• Some improved checks on tooltips. WW had the tendency to ignore multiplayer when checking tooltips they only deemed necessary in early game (like "unrevealed terrain") meaning those things also show in multiplay depending on the internally set mission number at that moment. I cleaned that up.
  
• Disabling of the funpark command line parameter. Since the missions are migrated to the New Missions, the only thing this messy mode can still do is cause bugs.
  
• Fix for "join" side of LAN games, to properly show the 4 game modes. (Bases On, Bases Off, Capture The Flag, Mobile HQ)
  
• Disable house Special in LAN games. It is currently possible to edit that into the conquer.ini directly and set the player house to Special to get full GDI+Nod tech in LAN games. I'm fairly sure such things are now tightly checked on cncnet, but in the original MP modes in the game it's still possible.
  
• Extra checks showing the side as "???" when the aforementioned House Special cheat is detected in LAN.
  
• AI taunt fix - some taunts in the German version were larger than the available text buffer (and, in fact, the screen). I'm not sure if this was ever fixed.

 

I'll need to do a few side fixes (like the messing up of the multiplayer stats ini), but that's it. Expanded sidebar is probably high on the list of requests, but that code needs some serious fixing before I want to add it; the animation you get when the available power level changes looks really wrong at the moment.

[Chimas]

Hi Nyerguds,

 

Good to see you warming up for a next patch.

 

We have discussed many things before, but I just want to put my wishlist here, because I don't remember which of them you can or can not do, so here it goes:

 

- Mouse scrolling for the New Missions Menu - as the mission's list gets bigger this menu gets painful;

- Another waypoint for a flare (actual is 25, maybe a "24"?);

- Support for the last community made theaters like Jungle, Barren and a third one I don't remember. I know the sets are done, but there are things preventing them to work fine.

 

I know there might be the possibility that some things will demand a lot of efforts and maybe will never be used, besides being viable. I just put it here, because I don't know the complexity, just want to remember.

[Nyerguds]

Well, this is just supposed to be a dump of things I should've released long ago. I could look into the mouse scrolling thing for the New Missions menu, but beyond that, not sure.

 

Other things I'm probably going to do in this patch:

• Migrate all dinosaur resources to the core mix files, to prevent problems like this.
  
• Maybe migrate the actual Covert Ops / dino missions to general.mix? Not sure it's a good idea to make those overridable; the language system can force specific filenames and briefings on those mission numbers. Then again, even if I leave them, for mods people can always just use the mod control equivalent of the ss*.mix system to remove the files, so they just disappear from the menu.
  
• Font fixes. I just noticed there are still some errors in those.

 

Suggestions for more peripheral fixes (file stuff) are welcome, but I doubt I'll dig right into the actual coding again.

[AchromicWhite]

Isn't the "ragdoll" effect when infantry is killed by AP? I think maybe it works a little differently in C&C95 (death sequence attached to the weapon or something), but that is the correct animation, isn't it? Launched through the air.

[Nyerguds]

The "ragdoll" bug for the engineer is an animation sequence error (check the [sequence_E6] section; I indicated the fix). The animation's start point is accidentally set to the same frame as the previous animation, but its amount of frames is higher, so it plays that previous death animation completely, and then plays the start of the real one it's supposed to play. So it looks like the engineer is blown away, and then his corpse is violently thrown the other way, only to disappear in mid-air

 

Go ahead, kill an engineer with a tank in the game; you'll see.

[Lightning Hunter]

I know you might not fulfill requests at this time - but I just wanted to bring up the Orca bug again.  It is one of the biggest annoyances when half of your Orcas don't respond to a command to attack a building...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQv9fqBP5aA

It's especially annoying when Orcas can't even destroy an Advanced Power Plant.

 

 

[Nyerguds]

Um. And, how exactly am I supposed to fix it? I mean, most crashes are easy to trace down at least since the crash message gives the address at which it goes wrong, but something like that? How am I even supposed to start looking into that? :-\

[ore_truck]

I find it weird too that Advance Comm Center can't detect stealth units like the basic Comm Center but I thought it was intended because the Nod temple can't do that.

[Lightning Hunter]

Um. And, how exactly am I supposed to fix it? I mean, most crashes are easy to trace down at least since the crash message gives the address at which it goes wrong, but something like that? How am I even supposed to start looking into that? :-\

 

I don't know anything about coding, so I have no clue what is easy to track down and what isn't. I was just bringing up the bug.  If you can't fix it, then you can't fix it.  Case closed.

[Plokite_Wolf]

• Migrate all dinosaur resources to the core mix files, to prevent problems like this.
  
• Maybe migrate the actual Covert Ops / dino missions to general.mix? Not sure it's a good idea to make those overridable; the language system can force specific filenames and briefings on those mission numbers. Then again, even if I leave them, for mods people can always just use the mod control equivalent of the ss*.mix system to remove the files, so they just disappear from the menu.

Sounds like simplifying a system that should already be working well.

[Nyerguds]

I find it weird too that Advance Comm Center can't detect stealth units like the basic Comm Center but I thought it was intended because the Nod temple can't do that.

The ACC was also capturable originally in multiplayer, and as far as I could see that was a bug caused by the fact it needed to be capturable internally for Nod mission #12

[Nyerguds]

Sounds like simplifying a system that should already be working well.

sc-000.mix is pretty much at the very top priority of the mixfiles list; it causes problems that the stuff in there isn't overridable by (simple sc*.mix) mods 

 

[nariac]

As per the post I made in the Ukrainian translation thread, I was wondering if perhaps there might be a chance to slightly modify the Temperate tileset (and the Snow derivative which you made from RA's tileset for C&C)

Generally the Desert theatre is more versatile for map making because its coastal sections are far more varied than the Temperate tileset is. However, Red Alert's temperate tileset is the same artwork, but with added geometry missing in the original C&C tileset.

I've enclosed a couple of screenshots to show what I mean. The first is the sum total of shore pieces we have to play with in C&C95, the second is merely the beach tiles from RA (not including all the shore cliff tiles - while they're nice I don't think they're needed in C&C95 because we can't control LSTs)

As you can see there's some useful things in there. It wouldn't be necessary to add every single one of the shore tiles, since there's so many and only 40-odd slots available, I think you mentioned? But some tiles would be very useful to have. The missing shore corner tiles, for one thing. The east and west flowing river-to-sea connections, for another. And definitely the river/cliff connector pieces would be an ideal way to end a river without having to take it off the map or lead it into a tiny puddle. 

Edited April 22, 2017 by nariac

[Nyerguds]

Those two blocks of water aren't "missing corner pieces".. They're just two varieties of animating water

Though, I see your point, yes.

[nariac]

44 minutes ago, Nyerguds said:

Those two blocks of water aren't "missing corner pieces".. They're just two varieties of animating water

Though, I see your point, yes.

I didn't mean that they were literally the missing pieces, was just using them as a placeholder.  

[Nyerguds]

You'd still lack editors to actually place those new tiles, though... Not really planning on making a C&C map editor any time soon. And if you'd resort to hex edit trickery for that, you can probably puzzle together those tiles from the existing river endings anyway.

[nariac]

13 minutes ago, Nyerguds said:

You'd still lack editors to actually place those new tiles, though... Not really planning on making a C&C map editor any time soon. And if you'd resort to hex edit trickery for that, you can probably puzzle together those tiles from the existing river endings anyway.

I don't think it would look very good though.  And yeah, I had considered the lack of map editor thing, but it's a circular problem really. There's no incentive for anyone to tinker with the map editor if there's no new tiles people want to easily place, but what's the incentive to add new tiles if nobody is able to place them?

That said I would 100% be willing to learn how to hex edit to add these tiles, if they were ever added to the game. I'm sure other people - particularly those who already know how to hex edit would as well, especially MattAttack if he ever finds time to come back!

One other request which occurred to me just now: Would it be possible to add a trigger which causes a particular music track to play? I've often wished that when something exciting or tense happens in my missions, a particularly appropriate dramatic track could begin. This also wouldn't involve any map editor updating since it would entirely be code in the INI.

For example, a mission I'm making right now has a climactic event where you get reinforced a Chinook to evacuate a scientist, and as it's flying in a nuclear missile is launched at the science facility, and you just have enough time to get the scientist into his helicopter and watch it fly away as the base gets blown to pieces behind him, which was 100% awesome ... except "Untamed Land" was playing at the time, and it would have been 1000% awesome if I could have triggered "I Am" to begin playing for that event!

Edited April 25, 2017 by nariac

[Nyerguds]

14 minutes ago, nariac said:

That said I would 100% be willing to learn how to hex edit to add these tiles, if they were ever added to the game. I'm sure other people - particularly those who already know how to hex edit would as well, especially MattAttack if he ever finds time to come back!

It's really not hard. A map is 64x64, so 4096 tiles, and each of these is two consecutive bytes in the .bin file. So to find the cell to edit, take the cell number and just multiply it by 2, and you got its address inside the .bin file. The first of these two bytes is the tileset ID, which can just be looked up in the list I put online, and the second byte is which tile number inside the tileset file to use.

So if I say "BA 04", that's tileset 0xBA = 186 = SH34, fifth tile in the file (since they start from 0). That's really all there is to it.

Do note, I'm fairly sure XCC Mixer will simply crash when encountering unknown values, so even if the game supported them, the map would be impossible to still open in the editor.

[nariac]

21 minutes ago, Nyerguds said:

 

Do note, I'm fairly sure XCC Mixer will simply crash when encountering unknown values, so even if the game supported them, the map would be impossible to still open in the editor.

Oh yeah, it definitely would. As does CCW Map. But that's fine. With these sorts of things I build the map, trigger it up, test it until it's 100% finished and ready for release ... and only then do I, for example, switch TEMPERATE to SNOW, if it's going to be a snow map. If I was hex editing in river caves or whatever, I would also only do those at the very end.

I would also make a backup archive copy pre-hex editing so if anything did go horribly wrong I could recover it.

Also, what do you think about triggers for music tracks as I mentioned in the other post? Could it be possible? Awesome if so!

Edited April 25, 2017 by nariac

[Nyerguds]

Triggers for music tracks? I dunno. I've considered adding a voice briefings system somehow, and perhaps a system to play AUD files from a mission could be done to play like, guiding voice clips or something, but I don't think ingame music is really something that the mission designer should be able to manipulate.

And even with the ingame aud file voice clips thing I'd likely have to use some trickery like using teamtype names to substitute for the AUD files in the trigger system (meaning it'd require empty unused teamtypes to be there so they can get linked to the trigger).

[nariac]

9 minutes ago, Nyerguds said:

but I don't think ingame music is really something that the mission designer should be able to manipulate.

It's done quite a lot in more recent games, for the same reason it's done in movies and television I guess. Helps add to the mood the designer wants to create.

[Nyerguds]

Yes, because those are games with context sensitive music, like Dune II and C&C3. C&C1/RA1/TS/RA2 simply happen not to be such games, opting instead for a fully player-controllable playlist 

I'm not changing that.

[Plokite_Wolf]

34 minutes ago, Nyerguds said:

but I don't think ingame music is really something that the mission designer should be able to manipulate.

It's something that can be manipulated in TS and RA2, though. Did you notice how missions there have different track orders?

[Nyerguds]

Not really the same thing.

btw, your signature is huge. I assume the conversion of line breaks to paragraphs is to blame, but still, might want to edit that a bit

[Plokite_Wolf]

22 minutes ago, Nyerguds said:

btw, your signature is huge. I assume the conversion of line breaks to paragraphs is to blame, but still, might want to edit that a bit

Didn't notice that, as for some reason, the forums deactivated viewing signatures for me. Thanks, fixed now.