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Design / Re: Proposed storyline.
« on: May 26, 2010, 05:49:50 pm »Well, it really depends on *what* you want to change - I'd start by reading the "campaign.ufo" script file, but please understand it isn't centralized all into one specific file. If you want to change research topics and how they work, look at the research-related .ufo files, they let you change, add, or delete research topics and what triggers making them available when. If you want to change the models, those are in many different files, but yes, you can make the game load alternate MD2 files, and so on.
I'd read through all the .ufo files to get a good understanding of how the game mechanics work, and then you should be able to figure out what to change to make what you want to do work.
Ok, I've read them.
They appear to be of the form
Keyword name
{
name value
name value
name value
}
where "value" can be a number, a constant (like "true"), a string, or a list.
The keywords are probably tracked by something in the code; some name-value pairs correspond to other keyword-name pairs, but the keyword and name values do not need to be the same.
I can see how to replace the current campaign settings with a completely new set.
I cannot see how to add a new set of settings without overriding the old.
Case in point:
Lets say I wanted to actually add a "play the aliens" campaign.
For the alien tech tree, I'd need to make sure you don't research anything on the player side, and visa-versa.
First, there's this:
Code: [Select]
up_chapters main
{
news "_Background"
crafts "_Aircraft"
buildings "_Base Facilities"
tech "_Research Reports"
equipment "_Equipment"
artifacts "_Alien Artifacts"
aliens "_Autopsies & Observation"
threat "_The Alien Threat"
}It looks like you get one set of UfoPedia chapters. I can't create a set for "The earthling threat" or "Human Equipment".I would need to have some way to specify that some research topics are off limit. Ideally, each existing research topic would be marked as belonging to a given campaign group -- for example, playing human in the normal campaign would give you the "technology" of "standard_human"; if I wanted to make a new campaign, I might give the "technology" of "mgk_overlord_alien" and have that as the root of my research tree.
Lets say, just for the sake of sillyness, that I wanted to make a campaign named "tutorial". This would have a total of 3 things to research, and 3 things to build. The encounters would be very scripted, with the first few being one or two aliens and a small UFO (damaged if the game engine supports it), with the player having vastly overwhelming forces. Mails that arrive at the beginning would say something like, "What do I look like, the in-game tutorial? Knowing doctor Bluestone, you've probably got a really powerful weapon for research. Go to <X>, and click <y> to assign scientists". Etc. Walk the player through each step of the game.
Note that the current "tutorial" is little more than screen shots, and not sufficient. The battle tutorial only explains what the things on the display are, and doesn't even cover how to move a unit, or how to fire on an enemy. (Or how to move the map around, etc).
(Will anyone understand that "in-game tutorial" reference without me posting the link?)
http://www.dragon-tails.com/archive.php?date=2006-01-01