Adding, removing and reordering countries

[pd]

The first feature to break the golden rule of not touching the original game... but in my opinion, it is worth it.

The pre-RP2 "New countries" system was horrible. The reasons might be because it was the first RP feature ever, also my way of concepting at that time was still horrid.

Instead of binding countries to use certain flag images, loadscreens, etc, I plan to go a much more object oriented way.
All these things will be determinable in the country's ini section.

This would be the example for America:

Code:

[Americans]
;Original settings
UIName=Name:Americans
Name=America
Suffix=Allied
Prefix=G
Color=Gold
Multiplay=yes
Side=GDI
SmartAI=yes

;RP2 settings
Flag=usai.pcx
LSImage=ustates.shp
LSPalette=mplsu.pal
LSTextColor=AlliedLoad ;from the [Colors] section, where you can easily add custom entries
SpecialName=Name:Para ;or use the NOSTRING feature here? :)
LoadBrief=LoadBrief:USA
StatusBarText=STT:PlayerSideAmerica ;mouse over text of the countries selection box
TauntPrefix=tauam

This way, each country has the settings in its respective ini section and the hardcoding is gone.
This also means that the order in the list can easily be changed without having to do tons of file renamings.

The tag called "NewPlayableCountries" would be replaced by simply "PlayableCountries" to determine the total amount of playable countries (necessary for the random country choice).
This change I propose because it is more logical... if you remove countries (e.g. only want GDI and Nod) and have to put NewPlayableCountries=-7, that's just stupid.

Since the hardcoding of these setting would be removed for good, these tags become obligatory.
That means, RP2 will have to deliver them in a new rulesmd.ini, and modders who decide to use RP2 would have to add them to theirs.

For that matter, I would of course create a patch ini file and maybe even an ini patcher that would quickly add all the new stuff for you!

That's about it for now!
Leave comments, ideas and worries.