Campaigns and Rock Patch

[DCoder]

Here's a thought that just occured to me while messing with the campaigns:

When Blade was merging the RA2 and YR campaigns, he said he had to shift all the House parameters +1 in the old RA2 missions, because of the newly added YuriCountry.

Now with the Rock Patch giving us almost infinite new countries... We would have to shift the House parameters +x, in the YR missions, where x is the number of new countries we add. Which means, you would have to edit and include all the campaign maps in the mod if you add new countries and want the campaigns to still be playable.

Bleep. :mellow:

[Stardark]

Whoow, a big prob

[Blade]

You can replace the nod and GDI countries without messing the list order up, but anymore and you are right, you're pretty much stuck modifying all the campaign maps (which is in itself quite difficult to do manually).

[DCoder]

I created a Perl script which corrects all the RA2/YR campaign maps to fix the events and actions related to animation, movie, and house indices, while allocating space for a given amount of new PD countries. Twenty six lines of code, ten seconds runtime.
I can fix it to only patch the YR maps and house indices, should somebody come across this problem.

@Blade:
(I am trying to merge the two campaigns together, similar to your work, hence the RA2 campaign fix above.)

But I ran into a problem. I am pretty sure I setup the campaign (battlemd, missionmd, mapselmd) correctly and that my script patched them correctly as well. However, the game IEs when loading the second mission in both campaigns after successfully completing the first, almost halfway through the loading screen. I looked over both maps, but couldn't find anything wrong at first glance. Any ideas what could be the problem?

[Blade]

Watch out for maps that change stats on buildings. They may specify the old urban combat weapons on a building which don't exist in YR. Thats the only thing I can think of off the top of my head. I've attached a list of all the changes I think are required for converting maps that I basically used as a guide when I was doing it manually except the UC problem above which I never documented. Some of the stuff is never used in any of the missions as far as I know though (the spotlight obviously as an example).

P.S. Could you post all the RA2 maps converted for pure YR if you get a chance? I've got all the allied maps converted, but there are a few where I know i've not done the animation corrections properly and I haven't moved onto the soviet ones at all.

[DCoder]

P.S. Could you post all the RA2 maps converted for pure YR if you get a chance? I've got all the allied maps converted, but there are a few where I know i've not done the animation corrections properly and I haven't moved onto the soviet ones at all.

No problem, just tell me how you reordered the [Movies] , aka which index in the original list is what index in your list.

[Blade]

I didn't, the RA2 movies were listed in art.ini after all the old TS ones starting at 68. The YR movies overwrite the list entirely and end at 60. Fill the list 61-67 with placeholders and extract and rename all the RA2 movies (I replaced e with x when I renamed them). Then just add all the RA2 art.ini entries from 68 onwards to the artmd.ini list and make sure you place an extra placeholder at the end of the list, YR won't read the last entry otherwise. Because all the indecies are the same, the movies in map work fine. You need to alter the settings that call maps by name in the basic section IIRC for all the maps though.

[DCoder]

Wow, that's much smarter than what I did...

Check your PMs for the file link.

On the same note... Some missions append the [Houses] list (A1), others overwrite the standard houses (A2) as well. Do they need different house enumeration operations?

Edit: one more thing, your list doesn't mention disabling [GHOST], which was not available in RA2.

Edit #2: Well, very quaint, the IE only happens when the second map of the campaign (attached in a ZIP) is loaded at ~48%. If I swap the filenames with the third map, it loads fine, and crashes when this particular map is supposed to load. Which suggests it's a map problem. Can anyone look over this and tell me what the hell is wrong?

I am thinking it is because this map redefines the standard houses instead of appending new ones, but then again I am too tired right now to think straight. Which means I'll probably spot the answer myself, first thing in the morning...

I'm also attaching an except in case PD strolls by this topic.

[Blade]

For those that append the list, all the houses that are higher number than where YuriCountry gets enumerated have to be adjusted by one where they are called by a trigger or script. Those that are just modified don't need to be adjusted, they stay where they are in the list.

Yeah, I didn't disable GHOST, I haven't got everything that needs disabling in that list yet.

Compare my map with your map, I can't see anything obvious, but mine doesn't give me an IE (though not tested with RP installed).

[DCoder]

D'oh... That is obvious now that I think about it. Thanks.

Debug.txt shows an exception right after parsing the countries, which hints at [Houses] too. Guess I'll have to edit that map-fixing script to treat the two map types differently. Somehow.

Edit: Well, A2, S2 and S9 are the only ones that include the original houses.

[Blade]

So your script renumbered even the lower number houses then?

[DCoder]

Yeah. I think I am going to include two hardcoded [Houses] arrays in the script (one containing the original RA2 houses and the other containing the YR houses), make it read the [Houses] off the map, append the second internal one with its contents and then do the renumbering based on the differences of the two internals.

Edit:
OK, the script now works and reenumerates things correctly. But I still can't get A02 to run, although comparing my version to yours says the only difference is my version not disabling the GGI and similar stuff. That means this is more likely a rules problem... And Rock Patch makes no difference in this case.

Edit #2: Check out the attachment. Sov 01, in FA2. The darker pavement area is impassable ingame, FA2 says it's terrain type 0xf , FA2 with disabled mod support says it's terrain type 0xb. Removing TX and enabling mod support says it's still 0xf, which hints at this being an YR issue.
To make it more interesting, I can't even find this tile in the terrain placement tool in FA2. :blink:

Edit #3: I found the cause of the A02/S02 crashes - new dummy countries with nonexistant CSF definitions and duplicate Name= entries. Costed me a whole day of tracking down...
However, now I get an IE (except attached) in S02 whenever I try to scroll to the enemy base, even if it is still shrouded. Any ideas what causes it?

Edit #4: OK, I reuploaded those maps you asked for, shout at me if I _still_ managed to boop something up.

[Blade]

I don't recognise that tileset at all, though I'm assuming its in the Urban Theater yes? I will have to check that out, the only thing that could make it change between RA2 and YR is if the tileset is in YR as well and has changed between RA2 and YR.

[Saberhawk]

Yeah. I think I am going to include two hardcoded [Houses] arrays in the script (one containing the original RA2 houses and the other containing the YR houses), make it read the [Houses] off the map, append the second internal one with its contents and then do the renumbering based on the differences of the two internals.

What about reading the houses off the map, deleting any present on the original house list and then rewriting just those houses on the list?

[DCoder]

Yay, I just tracked both A02 and S02 IEs.
A02 IE dissapeared by itself this morning.
S02 IE was due to ... drum roll...

Code:

;rulesmd.ini:
[DOG]
DeploysInto=ADOG

;map:
[DOG]
TechLevel=1

The UndeploysInto=/DeploysInto= tag(s) can be used on infantry to get two or three infantry units to be treated as the same type by the 'select all of type' button. However, if such an infantry unit is modified by an mp game mode file (and probably by maps as well) then an IE can occur when a human player views an AI-owned War Factory.