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Modding questions from a newb?

Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 1:25 pm
by rome87
This will be alot of questions so please bear with me.

How do you mod the damage done by a single nuke on a city so that for example a cities population really does = 0 after minimum of 3 nuke strikes regardless of original population?


Anyway to increase the combat ranges of bombers,fighters and subs so that when you play the game scale at 200 you aint penalized with units that have half combat range but retain that number of units ?


Is there any way of creating a mod that modifiers unit variables like adjusting silo nuke capacity,adjusting radar range,airfields fighter capacity etc ? Things like that would really make some interesting mods.

Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 1:31 pm
by bert_the_turtle
You can't.
No way.
No.

Sorry, all those things are hard coded. There is a hacky way to accomplish the increased unit counts without reducing the ranges if you use DedCon: use

Code: Select all

WorldScale 200
WaitDefcon 3
WorldScale 100

in your configuration. This will start off in big world scale so you get the larger unit counts, but switches to the regular scale later. IIRC, this doesn't modify ALL ranges properly, after all, WorldScale isn't supposed to be modified while the game is running.
You may get the desired effect with WaitStart instead of 'WaitDefcon 3', I haven't tried that.

Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 9:34 pm
by rome87
bert_the_turtle wrote:You can't.
No way.
No.

Sorry, all those things are hard coded. There is a hacky way to accomplish the increased unit counts without reducing the ranges if you use DedCon: use

Code: Select all

WorldScale 200
WaitDefcon 3
WorldScale 100

in your configuration. This will start off in big world scale so you get the larger unit counts, but switches to the regular scale later. IIRC, this doesn't modify ALL ranges properly, after all, WorldScale isn't supposed to be modified while the game is running.
You may get the desired effect with WaitStart instead of 'WaitDefcon 3', I haven't tried that.
Forgot to add its to play against the ai not a human player how is the above achieved but with playing against a ai bot ?

Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 10:14 pm
by xander
Same as above, just add AI players?

xander

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 4:45 pm
by rome87
What am i doing wrong i launch dedcon.exe then launch defcon.exe join the server dedcon created but cant see any options to add any ai players ?

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 6:14 pm
by bert_the_turtle
You need to do all that in the console window that DedCon popped up (which is awkward since the Windows input system sucks), or in the configuration files. DedCon comes with start menu entries that let you edit several of those and lauch them selectively.

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 2:21 pm
by rome87
I can find examples of dedcon configuration files that work for human players but cant find any command that adds a ai player please give a example of a simple random 1 human vs 1 ai config ?

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 3:22 pm
by bert_the_turtle
Try

Code: Select all

AddCPU
WorldScale 200
WaitDefcon 3
WorldScale 100

Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 4:41 pm
by rome87
I run that code in the settings file it does indeed add a cpu player but how do i set the numbers players to 2 so 1 cpu player and me human player can play ?

Where can i find the list of possible commands for the dedcon config files ?

Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 6:33 pm
by Ace Rimmer
After a quick search (yes, google is your friend), see here for some 'help'.

I'm guessing 'MaxTeams' might need to be set to 2? I don't have access to Defcon or Dedcon at the moment.

Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 10:55 pm
by NORAD_
About changing the number of nukes the silos have etc, it is possible to change some of these, but it is not with an actual mod and involves editing memory addresses, and other various "hacks" to Defcon. If you had enough programming skills, I suppose you could write a program that would edit the memory addresses, and basically trick Defcon into thinking, for example, the silos hold 20 nukes instead of 10. It's possible to write a program that could automatically adjust the values, and then distribute the changed settings to other players, so they can play with the mod, although I don't know if the whole thing will work in multiplayer. I've tested modifying these settings in games against CPUs on my own computer, and I have been able to easily refill silos, etc. I haven't done any testing over multiplayer, but hopefully it won't work unless all players ran the program on their own computers too. It might also be against the EULA of Defcon to modify the game in this way, I haven't checked.

Before anyone complains about me figuring out how to hack Defcon and cheat, I am only researching it because last year I found a hacker using a similar method to cheat in games. He was modifying one of the memory addresses to allow himself to view other players units. It was in a 2vs2 game, and he even told his ally that he was a cheater, and he could see everything. He even explained part of how he was cheating to his ally.

Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 11:39 pm
by xander
NORAD_ wrote:Before anyone complains about me figuring out how to hack Defcon and cheat, I am only researching it because last year I found a hacker using a similar method to cheat in games. He was modifying one of the memory addresses to allow himself to view other players units. It was in a 2vs2 game, and he even told his ally that he was a cheater, and he could see everything. He even explained part of how he was cheating to his ally.

One need not hack the executable in order to do this. All one needs to do is host the game and turn "Team Sharing" (or whatever the setting is called) on. I would think that this is a far more likely explanation.

xander

Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 1:59 am
by trickser
Maybe it works for radar, but then ghosting is know for years, so probably not worth the effort. For everything else the clients would fall out of sync in multiplayer.
For a modding purpose, the community is just to small to spread an altered exe and still find someone to play with, 'heck , I even haven't seen a map mod being played multiplayer ever, and I am playing regular quiet a while.

Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 8:29 pm
by Ace Rimmer
I think I might have seen three people on a map server once (mod required); long ago, in a galaxy far away...

Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 3:10 am
by psyclog
This game is not dead. :) I am still lurking around as well.. I just tried increasing World Scale to values above 200 in an attempt to reduce the exaggerated airplane speeds (about 30.000 km/h fighter speed on size 200) to normal levels. Sadly, more than 200 isn't accepted, and altering the gameoptions.txt doesn't help.

And when I accidentially left a test server open to the internet, I've had one guy join immediately!

Airplanes speeding as fast as cruise missiles are my only headache as of now.. guess it just can't be fixed. :(