Creating New Weapons for MechCommander Gold by CMunsta

Transcription

1 Creating New Weapons for MechCommander Gold by CMunsta This document is a preliminary release of info from my research for part 4 of the MechCommander Gold Campaign Builder's Guide. As a few folk have asked about making new components, specifically weapons, I'm creating a quick tutorial on how it can be done. As this is just a quick, early release document, I won't be going over every detail as thoroughly as I usually do, nor will it necessarily be as robust. So if something isn't clear, I'm sorry, but you'll simply have to wait for the full document. I'm literally writing this immediately after successfully doing it for the first time myself. So I'm really just re-describing what I did and re-wording my notes. Nothing more. With that understanding out of the way, let's get started. *** WARNING!!! *** In order to get this to work, we are going to need to modify several files that affect the entire game. That is, these are GLOBAL edits so if someone overrides a file you previously overrode yourself for your campaign, well your shiny new weapon has just gone the way of the Dodo. Sorry but, thems the breaks. In the following description, if I say to put a file in a specific folder and it doesn't exist, create that folder then put the file in there. Lets create an Uber weapon. Why? Because we can. :) I'm going to call mine the Uber Gun.

2 Step 1 The first thing we need to do is to define our new weapon. We do this in the file COMPBAS.CSV which is located in MISC.FST. Extract that file and put it in your {MCX}\data\objects folder. Then open it in a text editor. This file appears to have a line for ALL possible components even if the component is undefined. So we need to pick one of the undefined entries and modify it. I chose entry 162 since it follows 161 which is the Sniper Cannon. Now since these lines are pretty long and confusing, I'll show what I changed the line to, then with headings to show what entry is what, then a description of each heading. 162,Uber Gun,Uber,EnergyWeapon,1,1,3.25,1000,Yes,Yes,Yes,Yes,Yes,Yes,Yes,Yes,Yes,Yes,IS,Yes,0,1,4000,15,2,1,1,0,5,50,125,225,200,26,0,0 (Yeah I know, rather hard to read given the length of the line. Sorry.) lines. OK, here it is again, but with heading and extra spaces to spread it out more (and on multiple Load ID Full Name Abrv Type Crits? tons RP cost 162, Uber Gun, Uber, EnergyWeapon, 1, 1, 3.25, 1000, (Where it fits) Fit Fit Tech Fit Head CT LT RT LA RA LL RL Vehcle Both Side IS Yes,Yes,Yes,Yes,Yes,Yes,Yes,Yes, Yes, Yes, IS, Yes,????miss ranges ?? Ammo Art Disable BR Dmg Recycle heat #miss type min shrt med lng weapon effect ID Flag 0, 1, 4000, 15, 2, 1, 1, 0, 5, 50,125,225, 200, 26, 0, 0 Here's a description of each heading: Entry Description ID Component ID Full Name Name of component Name Abrv Abreviated name of component Type "EnergyWeapon", "MissileWeapon", "BallisticsWeapon", "Ammo", "ECM" and others Load Crits Number of criticals used during loadout.? Unknown. Always appears to be set to 1 Tons Weight of the component RP cost Purchase cost of the weapon, in RP

3 Equip locations. These are "Yes"/"No" flags indicating if the component can be fitted here Head Head location CT Center Torso LT Left Torso RT Right Torso LA Left Arm RA Right Arm LL Left Leg RL Right Leg Fit Vehcle "Yes"/"No" can it fit on a vehicle? Fit Both "Yes"/"No" can it fit on both clan and IS mechs? Tech Side "IS"/"Clan" which side this tech is a component for (can also be "Both" if both sides make it) Fit IS "Yes"/"No" can it fit on an IS mech?? Art Unknown. Artillery? Seems to always be 0? Disable Unknown. Can be disabled? Seems to always be set to 1 BR Battle Rating. Not sure how this is calculated, larger numbers mean higher rating. May be used by AI when selecting targets. Dmg Damage amount this weapon does (if weapon) (can be set to "na") Recycle Recycle time, in seconds, for this weapon (can be set to "na") heat Heat generated by this component, per use. Not sure this is used anymore.? #miss Unknown. Maybe if weapon *can* miss. Always seems to be set to 1? miss type Unknown. Always seems to be set to 0 Weapon Ranges (ranges are in meters) min Minimum range this weapon can be used at. shrt Distance considered to be short range (short will be minimum to this value) med Distance considered to be medium range range (medium range will be short range to this value) lng Distance considered to be long range (max range) (long range will be medium range to this value)? weapon Unknown. This value is used for multiple weapons, but have not figured out what it is for or what it represents.? effect Unknown. (what visual effect to use for this weapon?). Ammo ID Component ID, from COMPBAS.CSV (this same table), that has the definition of the ammo used by this weapon (use 0 for non-ammo type components) Flag Not too sure. Though 1 = streak, 2 = inferno Got all that?

4 So basically, my Uber Gun has these parameters: Manufacturing Side: Inner-Sphere Recycle Time: 2s Damage: 15.0 Weight: 3.25 tons Cost: 1000 RP Weapon's full range is 5 meters to 225 meters, in the following breakdown: short 5 50 meters med meters long meters Battle Rating: 4000 (number pulled out of thin air. It is almost double the rating on the Large X-Pulse Laser). (yeah, yeah. I don't recommend this one for REAL campaigns, but might as well have some fun while testing. Right?) I used effect 26, which is the same as the Large X Pulse laser, and I also set the? weapon entry to 200 because that too was what the Large X-Pulse laser had. Though I'm not too sure what those actually control. I think it is sound and visual effect though. If this had been a weapon that uses ammo, then I would need to set the type to BallisticsWeapon or MissileWeapon, and also give it the ID of the type of ammo to use. If using existing ammo, just add the ID of the ammo to the Ammo ID entry. If you want to make some special ammo for it as well, You'll need to add yet another entry to COMPBAS.CSV to define the ammo. I haven't gone that far yet, but you should be able to figure it out (ammo entries start at ID 198). Once you're done, save this file. We have a lot more to do.

5 Step 2 Extract OBJSORT.RSP from MISC.FST and put it in your {MCX}\data\objects folder. Now open it in a text editor. This file tells the game the order in which to sort the components in the store purchase tab. Each line is associated with a component and a sort order. The entries here are simply: Ordering #, Component ID, Component Name A value of -1 as the ordering number means that it will not be displayed in the purchase tab. One problem with this file is that if you wish to have your new weapon show up half-way in the list, then you will need to re-order all the entries that would come after it. Note how this file lists its lines in the same order as the components were listed in COMPBAS.CSV. I decided that I want mine to come after the Rail Gun. Mostly because it is at the end of the list so I won't have to re-order too many entries. So for component 162, I changed the line to: 41,162,Uber Gun The Rail Gun sorts to entry 40, so I'm sorting to 41 for the Uber Gun. This does mean that I have to add one to all the entries that will sort after it. So I went and added 1 ordering number for components 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 37, 38, 42, and 43. Once done save this file.

6 Step 3 The game maintains a master list of components used in the game. So obviously, we will need to add our new weapon to it. Extract ALLCOMP.FIT from MISC.FST and put it in your data\objects folder. Now open it in a text editor. Not really rocket science what will need to be changed here. Under the first heading ([Components]). Increase NumComponents by one then add the new component entry at the end of the list. I added the following: [Componant50] // Uber Gun uc ComponantID = 162 l NumAvailable = 0 Save the file and voila! We are done with this step.

7 Step 4 Now to add a description for this new weapon. Extract the file DESC.FIT from MISC.FST and put it in your {MCX}\data\objects folder, then open it in a text editor. This file contains the descriptions for all the components, mechs, warriors etc in the game. Each heading in this FIT file is of the form [DescXXX] where XXX is the ID of the item being described. For components, this ID is identical to the component's ID. Since my weapon has ID 162, I need to add an entry called [Desc162]. Here's my full entry: [Desc162] //Uber Gun (IS) st DescString = "The Uber Gun will likely make your day very, very bad. At least if you are on the receiving end of it.%nload VAL:%fc8 3.25" (I had to break the string into two lines to show it here.) Don't make the description too long or bad things may happen (I don't actually know. I haven't tried). Look for the longest description in this file and use that as a guide for description length. It doesn't really matter where in the file you add your description, but since the component descriptions are already split among IS and Clan components, we may as well stick to the same rule. As the Uber Gun is an IS weapon (or so I says), I added my description after the one for the Sniper Cannon. The LOAD VAL shown here is basically the weight of the weapon. Though if the weapon uses ammo, you will need to also add the ammo weight to the weapon weight. Not that it really matters since this is for the description text only, but we may as well be accurate. OK, we are done here. Save this file and head on to the next step.

8 Step 5 Here's an easy, slightly odd (as I haven't completely figured out all the ins and outs of this) step that is in fact extremely critical. We will eventually need to create some icons and such for our new weapon, but we need to tell the game what icon number to use. This is done by editing yet another file found in the game FSTs. Extract COMP.RSP from ART.FST and put it in your {MCX}\data\art\logart folder (again, if the folder doesn't exist, create it). Now open it in a text editor. This file defines, in order, which icon/image set the game will use for displaying a component in the logistics screen. The actual number it will use will be the line number we put our new weapon on. So simply go to the end of the file and add a new line. All we need to add is the ID of the component this line is for. We can also add some text after the ID so that we will know what it is, but this is ignored by the game. I added this: 162 Uber Gun (x60.tga) Since this ended up on line 60, my icon set/image number ID will be 60. The x60.tga is just a reminder that all the icons we will be creating will end in 60.tga. That's it. We can save the file now. Just remember that our icon set ID is 60.

9 Step 6 Now we need to create the icons and nameplates for our new weapon so that the game can show it in the purchase screen as well as the inventory. In all, we are going to need five images. Specifically: 1. One large icon (175x100) for the weapon when in the purchase list. 2. One large icon (175x100) for the weapon in the purchase list, but not available. 3. One small icon (30x30) for the weapon when in the player's inventory. 4. One nameplate (200x12) for the weapon when it is available for purchase. 5. One nameplate (200x12) for the weapon when it is not available. Clearly, we've got work to do. The filenames for these icons and images all follow a specific format. I'm not going to describe the whole thing here, but these are the names for the icons and images that we will need: 1. Large icon when weapon available: LSPIL60.TGA 2. Large icon when weapon not available: LSPID60.TGA 3. Small icon for the inventory: LSCICC60.TGA 4. Nameplate when weapon available: LSPFLC60.TGA 5. Nameplate when weapon not available: LSPFDC60.TGA Note the 60 in the filenames here. These must be set to the icon/image set ID number we got from the previous step. Now since I'm not an artist, I didn't want to take too long making icons etc, so I extracted (from ART.FST) the icons and nameplates of other weapons and modified the image a little (just pick an ID from an existing weapon and replace the 60 in the filenames above with this ID for the filename to extract). For the nameplates, I used a Franklin Gothic Medium Condensed font in a 15 point size with bold and italics turned on. This creates a relatively close approximation of the original font used in the game. Here's what I came up with (shown in the same order as above): Place all the images in your {MCX}\data\art\logart folder.

10 Step 7 The weapon is now actually complete. But it we still need to test it out. If all you wanted was to add it to a user made campaign, then you could simply add it to your purchase lists. But lets go a little further. Lets add this new weapon to the default purchase lists that the editor creates for solo missions. Open the file ISSOLO.PUR from your {MCX}\teditor folder into a text editor. This is the default purchase file used for Inner-Sphere side solo missions. Under the [Header] heading, increase the NumComponents by one. Now go add a new component entry to the list. I added this: [Componant28] // Uber Gun uc ComponantID = 162 l NumAvailable = -1 Save the file and open CLANSOLO.PUR and do the same to it (CLANSOLO.PUR is of course the purchase list used for Clan side solo missions). I added this: [Componant21] // Uber Gun uc ComponantID = 162 l NumAvailable = -1 Save this file then go create yourself a solo mission. Now try this solo mission out. You should see the new Uber Gun listed immediately after the Rail Gun (or wherever you told it to sort itself). It'll have the description, icons, text, the works. In game, it'll have a 2 second recycle time, and will cut down enemies like no tomorrow. It'll also look and sound like the X-Pulse laser. If you want to try adding it to multiplayer missions, try editing CLANPUR.FIT, ISPUR.FIT and/or NETPUR.FIT from MISSION.FST (they should be placed in the {MCX}\data\missions folder). I haven't tried this last though so don't come jumping down on me if it doesn't work.

11 The Results Hehehe... I gots me an Uber Gun... Though you can tell the font on the nameplate doesn't quite fit, it is close. I'm sure improvements could be done.

12 So just how many of these puppies can fit on a Hollander anyway? ZOMG! This thing will hurt you.

13 Mwoa..hahahha... None can stand before the might of the Uber Gun. Ok, so Vixen is getting a little banged up. But considering it's a lone Hollander-A versus two Turkina-Ws, two Masakari-Ws and four MadCat-Ws, I'd say it's going pretty well. Note the red lasers. These are the shots from the Uber Gun. Well that about covers it. I hope to see some real weapons being made :).