Patching extra functionality into <gamemd.exe>

[jonwil]

ummm, dont expect miracles from Pad and me when it comes to coding.
Be thankfull for what you do get
Requests (like the stuff to do with the cursors for weapons etc) should go on the wishlist.

[Bobingabout]

he said he was doing them, we pointed out a minor floor on what he sugested he was doing, and recommended a solution that would improve the problem. also, with a little enhancement to edit existing ones too

[CannisRabidus]

I'm not expecting miracles... but in the event that you guys can enhance something, I'm just suggesting a way to enable it so that it's versatile, from a modder's viewpoint. Hopefully it would fend off requests that you do work over again and again, to enable something that could have been enabled the first time you added something.

[Renegade]

...and I was just asking how hard it'd be.

[jonwil]

ok, making some progress on new bridges.
So far, I got it to recongize the train bridge overlay (when placed between 2 wood bridge end pieces) as a valid bridge overlay in that it is drawn, you can drive on it etc.
You cant blow it up or repair it yet (havent gotten to that code yet)
Still a fair bit of work to go (especially getting all the repair hut code, blow up the bridge code etc going) but its a great start.

I have found functions at 0047E470 and 0047E040 that appear to be identical but we need to confirm that they are in fact identical (or if they arent, whats different)

[~Chronojam~]

OK, important discovery(?) here:
It seems like infantry actually can reload ammo given to it ? it just needs to be in "red" condition (read DeeZire for the testing series/confirmation by death3464).

This means, there is a fully working reloading-engine for infantry. It's just limited to low health. Shouldn't it be relatively easy to extend this to all health conditions?

From deezire.net post--
"- Ammo on buildings works, but seems to override the weapon's rate of fire and ignore Reload and ReloadIncrement, i.e. the weapon will fire all shots rapidly after each other, only to be immediately reloaded completely after running out of ammo - it doesn't even stop shooting for it. "
RA1 charge-up logic leftovers probably. If anybody's looking into this, see if chargeup still looks at your ammo count.

Don't forget, as PD found a while ago, all objects are essentially the same; this means that with effort any ability can possibly be transferred to any object (where practical-- a building couldn't ever c4 another buliding)

(I didn't finish reading after finding this, maybe everything I said here is already addressed later on. If so, just delete this)

[Renegade]

Err...yes.
Do you realize that you just quoted my post, only to quote another of my posts? ^^

Anyway, after my testing afternoon I wrote an Ammo-page on ModEnc, for those who didn't see it yet.

[CannisRabidus]

You cant blow it up or repair it yet (havent gotten to that code yet)
Still a fair bit of work to go (especially getting all the repair hut code, blow up the bridge code etc going) but its a great start.

Getting the damage/repair stuff working would of course be wonderful, but if you can't for some reason, it's not a lost cause. Better to have new working bridge overlay that can't be destroyed and/or can't be repaired than not having new bridge overlay at all.

For some reason bridge overlay can be made to be indestructible if BridgeStrength=1000000000 (1 billion). RVMECH and I have left units pounding such bridges for several hours with no dent made in them. Can you see what's special about a number that large? And if it applies to anything else? Maybe the answer might help in what you're looking for with the bridge repair logic, and possibly would suggest something useful that's not bridge-related.

[jonwil]

The reason damage/repair doesnt yet work is because (as of right now) the damage and repair code doesnt recognize the new bridge overlay or tiles as bridges.

No idea on BridgeStrength but the code for it (along with the code for the keyword that makes a building a repair hut) are things I will probobly look for when I get to that point.

[jonwil]

I found the problem I was having before with getting the game to read the new bridge ends, it was a typo in some code I cloned from existing westwood code (I was reading from [ecx+28] when I needed to read from [ecx+38]).

I have here a test build:
http://users.tpgi.com.au/adsloptd/gamemn.zip
This test build contains:
1.The latest official PaD patch
2.The BaseUnits= fix from PaD (just because it ended up in there)
3.The taunt fix (new countries use tanut files of the form taunts\tau##^^.wav where ## is the country number and ^^ is the taunt number)
and 4.The new bridge code. Use the TrainBridgeSet keyword in the theater ini file (just like in Tiberian Sun). Anything that applies to replacing existing bridge ends (as was done in tests before) applies to the new bridge ends.
For the overlays, use the RAILBRDG1 and RAILBRDG2 overlays (i.e. the overlays that FinalAlert says have overlay data values of 3B and 3C).

I am looking for testing to be done to confirim the following:
1.That the taunt fix is actually working
2.That the new bridge logic is 100% complete and has no bugs. If anything happens (no matter how small) that is different between the new "train" bridge and the existing wooden and concrete bridges, I need to know right away. (with as many details as possible)
and 3.That shooting the new bridge, repairing with repair huts etc etc has absolutly no effect on the bridge whatsotever (if it has any effect, thats a bug right now since I didnt implement that code yet)

BTW, I will probobly implement destroying and repairing code next (but its a fairly large job)

[Bobingabout]

BTW, PD added your taunt fix for new countries to his patch, and edited it to use c##_taunt^^.wav files to coraspond with the rest of the hack. also PD doesn't like the way 2 seperate numbers are placed next to each other like that.

i hope you have the bridge code to intergrate into PDs patch, because he's been playing more on it too

[jonwil]

Bridge code will be going into PDs patch as soon as I finish it (which means as soon as people have tested it and found any bugs and as soon as I write the destroy and repair code)
PD says specifically that the taunt code is staying the way it is described in my post (i.e taunts\tau##^^.wav)

[Bobingabout]

he told me he's already "Fixed" it. i'm pretty sure he meant changed it to "C##_Taunt^^.wav", although, i might be wrong. if he meant added it, i doubt he would have used the word "Fixed".

[pd]

"Fixed" because I moved the string into the data segment where it belongs.
Plus, I turned a unnecessary double-jump into one single jump.

The custom action stuff works.
Not completely though:
The game shows me the correct mouse.sha frame, but it can't be animated yet.
Probably I just gotta find the animation code and change it as well.
Plus, the minimap pointer doesn't seem to work yet. All this to come.

I'm pretty sure it will be ready soon.

[Bobingabout]

what about the "Can't do it there" cursers?