Enthusiastic modder needs some help.

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ForceUser
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Enthusiastic modder needs some help.

Postby ForceUser » Thu Feb 03, 2005 2:57 pm

OK... I think I found most of the stuff on my own. It sounds like it's difficult, but not impossible, to mod this game (Original EFS) and a bit eyeser to mod Hyperion/Nova. I've got some Ideas for a really nice mod, perhaps just a galaxy at first and later perhaps a whole new game. Possibly Based on either Nova or Hyperion's .dat files.

Now, What I'd like is some encouragement ;) and someone who would be willing to and who can answer a few mod questions. I first just need to know what is possible and what aint. I've done alot of basic unit and galaxy work already(Descriptions, Average stats like Low, medium or high, All the houses and other positions filled with groups, Alot of new units and a few graphics)

I just need help in coding the stuff and perhaps permission to use Hyperion's formula's for unit cost etc and pehaps balancing and stuff.

I'm really Hoping this thing will come of the ground but I'll need some help first.

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Grimly
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Re: Enthusiastic modder needs some help.

Postby Grimly » Thu Feb 03, 2005 3:25 pm

Most of that you can find by searching this forum. The rest you'll have to ask Matt about. :)
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Re: Enthusiastic modder needs some help.

Postby ForceUser » Thu Feb 03, 2005 5:10 pm

Nice. I'm still very new at all of this so I don't know what tables do what and where to find them. What I'm most interested in is someone who know what values(Unit Combat values) DO what. Also what formula was used to calculate Hyperion's units' rescourse costs.

Here is an example of what I've got, oh and btw, I'm planning a Dune Mod. This game really lends itself to the whole dune universe.

Artreides
Blue
HW – Caladan (Jungle, Water, Lots of open grasslands)
Leader – Duke Leto Artreides
Emblem – Hawk

Special Units

Artreides Sniper – Hawk eye
Combat Stats
- Rank: H, Not easy to hit Hidden
- Indirect: H Accuracy M Damage, Sniping from a far distance
- Air: None, Can’t shoot planes now can he?
- Direct: H Accuracy L Damage, Just normal Sniper Bullets
- Close: L Accuracy L Damage, Just a Small pistol
- Psychic: None, No psychic abilities for him
General Stats
- H Move: Snipers can move fast over large amounts of terrain
- M spot: Snipers are good spotters to Snipe Enemy Snipers
- M Camo: Snipers are good at hiding themselves
- H Agility: They can move fast
- L Armour: No armor to weigh them down
- M Psychic Def: Intense sniper conditioning gives them a decent Psychic Defense
- Y Cargo: Can be loaded into transports
- M Upkeep: Cost of keeping a sniper is relatively high
- 3 TTB: Lots of training

Artreides Stealth Sniper – Eagle eye
Combat Stats
- Rank: VH, Not easy to hit Hidden
- Indirect: H Accuracy H Damage, Sniping from a far distance with advanced gun
- Air: None, Can’t shoot planes now can he?
- Direct: H Accuracy M Damage, Has AP ammo
- Close: M Accuracy L Damage, A Small Silenced pistol
- Psychic: None, No psychic abilities for him
General Stats
- H Move: Snipers can move fast over large amounts of terrain
- H spot: Stealth Snipers Have extra gear to spot enemy snipers better.
- VH Camo: Stealth Snipers are good at hiding themselves, aided by Cloaking
- H Agility: They can move fast
- L Armour: No armor to weigh them down
- M Psychic Def: Intense sniper conditioning gives them a decent Psychic Defense
- Y Cargo: Can be loaded into transports
- H Upkeep: Cost of keeping a Stealth Sniper is Very high
- +1 TTB: Upgrade from Artreides Sniper


Artreides Trooper – Kinjal
Combat Stats
- Rank: L, Slow moving and fixed placement when firing
- Indirect: M Accuracy M Damage, Projectile cannon and explosive shells
- Air: L Accuracy M Damage, Flak shells
- Direct: M Accuracy H Damage, AT and AP shells
- Close: L Accuracy L Damage, Just a small pistol
- Psychic: None, No psychic abilities for him
General Stats
- L Move: Heavy gun & Ammo.
- L Spot: Not so good spot as armor restricts view
- L Camo: Big hulking armor
- M Agility: Servos in the armor help with movement
- H Armor: Heavy armor gives lots of protection
- M Psychic Def: All Artreides Troops go through intense conditioning
- Y Cargo: Can be loaded into transports
- M Upkeep: Cost of keeping a Kinjal Supplied with ammo/armor
- 2 TTB: Decent training

Artreides Heavy Trooper – Heavy Kinjal
Combat Stats
- Rank: L, Slow moving and fixed placement when firing
- Indirect: M Accuracy M Damage, Projectile cannon and explosive shells
- Air: M Accuracy M Damage, Limited guided flak shells
- Direct: H Accuracy VH Damage, Improve targeting and AT and AP shells
- Close: L Accuracy L Damage, Just a small pistol
- Psychic: None, No psychic abilities for him
General Stats
- L Move: Heavy gun & Ammo.
- M Spot: Not so good spot as armor restricts view but has built in radar to compensate
- L Camo: Big hulking armor
- M Agility: Servos in the armor help with movement
- VH Armor: Improved heavy armor gives lots of protection
- M Psychic Def: All Artediese Troops go through intense conditioning
- Y Cargo: Can be loaded into transports
- M Upkeep: Cost of keeping a Kinjal Supplied with ammo/armor
- +1 TTB: Added better armor/weapon

Now, as you can see, I've only got a low, medium or high as the value. I wan't someone who can tell me what value WOULD BE a high value 10? 20? and precisely what attacks do damage to what movement type.

I've got a group of people from dune for each space. each of the 5 house and the 3 other(Church, Traders, Vau)

What I'd also like to know is can I change the planet names? Can I Add new buidings? not buildable but a special building found only on the Home world where you can build each house's special units. (There will be numerous units)

Also, Can I rename the resources? I'd like to rename monopols to Spice discs for example.

Well there is still ALOT more questions but these are the most important atm.

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Matt Caspermeyer
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Re: Enthusiastic modder needs some help.

Postby Matt Caspermeyer » Thu Feb 03, 2005 5:56 pm

ForceUser:

If you are having trouble defining what the low, medium, and high values need to be, then just start breaking the categories down, define the ranges, and then go from there.

Here is an example:

Movement Points: 0 - 127
Spotting: 0 - 127
Camoflage: 0 - 127
Agility: 0 - 127
Armor: 0 - 65536?
Psy Def: 0 - 65536?
Accuracy: 0 - 127
Attack Strength: 0 - 65536?

These are the absolute ranges of these statistcs - I think 0 - 127 is a signed char (guessing) and 0 - 65536 is an int or something like that. From here you can see that you probably don't need to go this high on your statistics, but it is nice to know what the limits are.

When it comes to Spotting and Camouflage, you need to take into account the terrain modifiers, but you can pit these two statistics against each other to determine their limits. For example, let's say that you are going to limit Spotting to 0 - 10 and the same with Camouflage. Now you can see that low spotting is 0-3, medium spotting 4-7, and high spotting 8-10. The same could be true for camouflage. You can do similar things for Movement Rate (say you put a max movement rate of 100 in your mod), then low, medium, and high movement rates are 0-30, 31-70, and 71-100, respectively.

So you can see if you do something like this that you'll be on your way to creating a new mod. Note that these ranges are linear or evenly distributed. If you want to use a Guassian, Normal, or some other distribution profile just whip out a statistics book and then apply the distribution profile to your range. I did something like this with my DAMAGE.DAT file - take the numbers in that file and plot them and you'll see the distribution profile.

As far as my formulas, I have an old spreadsheet that is available on my website here (way down at the bottom of the downloads section):

http://www.twarriors.com/~hyperion/downloads/h1375xls.zip

This is for Hyperion V1.375, but shows you how I devised the formulas for that version of Hyperion. My latest design spreadsheet uses a different set of formulas and, frankly, the formulas are so good that I'm going to use them in a future game that I'm going to make one of these days when I find the time. Nonetheless, I will provide you guidance in how to go about creating formulas if you are interested, but if you go through my spreadsheets (I have another one for Hyperion V1.35 in the downloads section on my site as well) you'll see what the formulas were that I used in those previous versions of Hyperion.

Basically with my older spreadsheets I had to tweak resources to change unit statistics. This worked really well, but required manual tweaking of the resource values to increase a statistic. I bet you can imagine that this took a lot of time. Nonetheless, it was very effective and produced an incredibly balanced set of units for such a large number of units. What is so good about my new set of formulas is that all the statistics save Accuracy and Attack Strength are automatically generated based on the unit's technology requirements, unit class, unit type, movement type, and faction.

This produces a balanced set of units and what is so good about it is that it can be used for any type of game like this. It took me about 7 years to come up with this automatic statistic generation system (boy it has been that long - wow!) to create a 45[MB] unit design spreadsheet, and so I hope you can understand why I'm secretive about my current formula set.

But feel free to ask questions about the spreadsheets you download from my website as those represent about 3-4 years of work and show how you can link a lot of the information together (the spreadsheet is a little daunting to the unitiated, so don't be taken aback when you first open it as it was designed for my own use). Also, I had a day job (where I averaged about 50 hours of work a week) so that is why it took me so long, so don't be scared off by how long it took me.

I wish you the best of luck in designing a mod, or at the very least, I hope you'll get into galaxy design as that is an area that is seriously lacking for all the mods!

Matt

P.S. Sorry for taking so long to reply, but as Grim said I am very, very busy! I have a day job where I work about 50-60 hours a week right now and so I don't have much time to Hyperion (or even play games) these days!
Matt

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Re: Enthusiastic modder needs some help.

Postby ForceUser » Thu Feb 03, 2005 6:19 pm

Wow.. Thanx for all the help! I completely understand about not wanting to give out 7 years :D

is klaus the forum mod? Coz perhaps a modding subforum would also encourage galaxy modding? I'm actively helping to mod in another game and Iknow a modding subforum worked WONDERS on the amount of mods.

Thanx again Matt!

*now lets see... fremen worrior stats....*
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lordmoore
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Re: Enthusiastic modder needs some help.

Postby lordmoore » Mon Feb 07, 2005 11:11 pm

7 years Matt? So that puts me at about the 6 -6.5 year mark? Has it really been that long? Dang it I'm getting old...
Enemies strengthen you.
Allies weaken.
I tell you this in the hope that it will help you understand why I act as I do in full knowledge that great forces accumulate in my Empire but with one wish--the wish to destroy me.

Matt Caspermeyer
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Re: Enthusiastic modder needs some help.

Postby Matt Caspermeyer » Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:04 pm

Tell me about it!

;)
Matt


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