Discussing a mod idea

ChaosXBeing · October 2012

<div class="IPBDescription">while waiting for release</div>I mostly want to focus on expanding the game's core ideas, primarily asymmetry. Asymmetry being both ranged vs. melee and the industrious marines vs. the organically evolving aliens. I also wanted to add more to the rts side of the equation, adding more buildings and research options for both sides, as well adding more variety in the number of possible strategies that each side could choose from.

I'm straying away from anything too major until I can get the easier bits out of the way and get a better understanding of the core game code, but I feel like I'm starting to make some progress. Below are the ideas I plan to implement, ideas I've started working on having an indicator of how far along they are.

<span style="color:#FFFF00"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><b>Last updated: Nov. 27'th, 2012</b></span></span>

<span style="color:#2E8B57"><b>Aliens:</b></span>
<ul><li>Hives are no longer dropped/spawned on tech points, but instead on heat sources. (ex. on top of the generator.)</li><li>Mature hives generate tres and pres like a harvester - <span style="color:#00FF00">Complete</span></li><li>Cysts can only be placed a certain distance away from the hive.</li><li>Harvesters give less res all around, but are able to extend cyst building range - <span style="color:#FFFF00">50%</span></li><li>Harvesters speed up the rate that aliens receive resources. - <span style="color:#00FF00">Complete</span></li><li>Matured cysts can be upgraded, upgrades depending on what kind of hive they're connected to. (I'd like to have more than 1 per hive type.)
<blockquote><ul><li>Shift Hive - Structures within a medium radius mature more quickly.</li><li>Crag Hive - Ruptures on death, releasing a corrosive gas that damages marine armor. (1.5x damage vs. Exosuits, ARCs and MACs.)</li><li>Shade Hive - Emits fog, obscuring skulks/gorges/small structures on the ground. (Scans can see through it.)</li></ul></blockquote></li><li>Infestation deals slow DoT to marine structures. - <span style="color:#00FF00">Complete</span></li><li>Increase structure armor while decreasing structure health, making for structures that can survive more light fire but fall easier.</li><li>Dropped weapons/health/ammo dissolve much faster on the infestation. (Credit to yehawmcgraw for the idea!) - <span style="color:#00FF00">Complete</span></li><li>Eggs starting health/armor decreased, matured egg increased. (Also, the more mature an egg is, the more mature the alien hatched from it.)</li><li>If a marine is killed on infestation, aliens get a small amount of tres.</li><li>All alien lifeforms mature, just like a structure. This gives an alien (skulks specifically) an incentive to stay alive longer.</li><li>Greatly buff base alien regen while on infestation. (The regen evolution would be buffed as well, but not nearly as much.)</li><li>Give Gorges a cyst decoy that doesn't spread infestation. (Free with a cap of 10, like Clogs.)</li><li>Give Gorges the ability to upgrade their structures for pres. (To reward a perma-Gorge, who otherwise just sits on their pres.)</li><li>Gorges gain the ability to consume dropped weapons/health/ammo. This consumes a lot of energy. (Another yehawmcgraw idea!) - <span style="color:#00FF00">Complete</span></li><li>Give aliens some kind of anti-turtle abilities to more quickly bust marine turtles.</li><li>Add more Gorge placed structures and a lot more Khammander placed structures. (Still tweaking some ideas to be more practical.)</li><li>Completely rethink the way Kham researches upgrades/structures, and make it feel more organic.</li></ul>

<span style="color:#00BFFF"><b>Marines:</b></span>
<ul><li>Remove many tech points on a map, but have prebuilt turrets in the remaining rooms. If a comchair is put down, these turrets will come online.</li><li>Prebuilt turrets have more health than the standard turret.</li><li>Make every room start with a power node already built.</li><li>Increase blackout time, cut backup lighting by at least 40%. </li><li>Commanders can only scan powered areas.</li><li>Marines can purchase an armor upgrade at an adv. armory. (Unaffected by armor research level.)</li><li>Armor upgrade can not be used in conjunction with jetpacks. (Idea credited to xanroth!)</li><li>A marine without any armor will take low DPS after walking on infestation for a certain amount of time. (Around 10 seconds?)</li><li>Dropped weapons/health/ammo will last much longer without disintegrating. (Except the rifle, that would get annoying.) - <span style="color:#FFFF00">75%</span></li><li>Decrease grenade launcher ROF, increase damage and reload time.</li><li>Have the flamethrower bypass armor, making them far more viable, especially against structures.</li><li>Add flares that marines can throw, maybe two for 5 pres. Flares illuminate a small-medium area for ~20 seconds.</li><li>Exosuits deal damage when standing on something. (ex. Step on a cyst or a skulk.)</li><li>Exosuit claws should momentarily stun small enemies, sort of like the way you used to be able to stun a skulk with a well timed rifle butt.</li><li>Move Exos to the Robotics Factory, and give small buffs to MACs/ARCs, along with a price/build time increase.</li><li>Make the Robotics Factory only buildable on Tech Points.</li><li>Add one-way phase gates, make current phase gates an additional research. (Makes players rely more on beacons.)</li><li>An Observatory needs to do nothing but observe. No phase gate research or beacon, these need to be moved. (Maybe add Obs range/etc research?)</li><li>Add a lot more marine buildings. (Still tweaking some ideas to be more practical.)</li><li>Restructure the entire way marines research tech to make more sense with these new buildings, similar to the Obs research move.</li></ul>

I'm also trying to work out the mechanics of having a back-up generator on every map. This generator could be turned on or off by any marine in the room, with distinct advantages and disadvantages to both teams. When off, the back-up emergency power that comes on once aliens destroy a power node (the red lights) won't come on. When on, everything functions as normal, but the heat generated makes for an ideal spot to drop an alien hive. This would require modelling and texturing though, neither of which I'm very good at, so is a ways off.

Of course, if there's something you'd like to see changed or added, let me know! I'm always looking for more ideas, especially for things on the RTS side.

ChaosXBeing · November 2012

I feel kind of stupid for asking this, but how do I run the sdk? O.o I can't find it anywhere.

nSidia · November 2012

its in the natural selection 2 folder under steamapps

Techercizer · November 2012

I came into this thread expecting these ideas to suck, but after reading them, I have to say they sound pretty fun to play. I like how you're increasing the emphasis of powered/infested territory. Do you plan to make infestation damage structures and power as well?

ChaosXBeing · November 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (nSidia @ Nov 1 2012, 02:44 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2004971"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>its in the natural selection 2 folder under steamapps</div>

Thanks, I thought I'd have to download it through steam somewhere, like a DLC or something. Guess I had it the whole time.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Techercizer @ Nov 1 2012, 03:30 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005058"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>I came into this thread expecting these ideas to suck, but after reading them, I have to say they sound pretty fun to play. I like how you're increasing the emphasis of powered/infested territory. Do you plan to make infestation damage structures and power as well?</div>

Yep, a small DoT effect. I don't want it to be nearly as powerful as, say, bile bomb, but lets the Kham help take out marine forward bases.

I'm also trying to restructure the two teams tres systems so that the aliens get a smaller, more constant stream of res, whereas the marines get larger amounts of res but with longer waits, the idea being they still get the same amount of res just at differing intervals.

ChaosXBeing · November 2012

<span style="color:#696969"><span style="font-size:8pt;line-height:100%">One more question, this time because the documentation is a little fuzzy.

So I ran Launchpad. Made a folder in my natural selection 2 directory and hit create mod. I gave it a name, and it appeared in the dropdown box. I created another folder in My Documents (NS2 Mods/MyMod). Now, do I copy everything in the natural selection 2/ns2 folder into MyMod, or do I put in empty folders with the appropriate names?</span></span>

EDIT:
Never mind, answered my own question.

ChaosXBeing · November 2012

<span style="font-size:8pt;line-height:100%"><span style="color:#808080">Honestly guys, I will get this some day. I promise.

Until that day comes, I have to ask for your help one more time. I can't seem to be able to get my mod to run. It's not that it's throwing errors or anything like that, it simply isn't starting.

I have the shortcut on my desktop with -game MyMod already added to the end, but no matter what I do NS2 always runs unmodified.

I added a line in the main menu that simply outputs "Mod Loaded!" to the console to make sure, but just as I'd thought it never appears. Anyone in the mood to help me out? :/ </span></span>

EDIT:

This problem was solved as well.

For anyone seeing this with the same problem, I had tried to use the launch parameter(-game MyMod) on the default shortcut. (//steam*something*) This doesn't work. You have to go directly to the NS2 .exe or it won't take the parameter.

Also, thanks to Double_hex for his help and support.

ChaosXBeing · November 2012

So I thought I'd get an update out here, and let everyone know that I've been editing the original post with my progress so far. It isn't much, but I haven't had a lot of time to work on it lately either.

I'm also posting because it seems I need a little bit of help again. (At least this time it <i>is</i> actually about modding and not setup!)

I've been attempting to add in the ability for the Gorge to destroy dropped weapons, and the way I've chosen to go about this is to utilize the 'Digest' feature, the same way you can digest Hydras and clogs. That way it would blend in seamlessly with everything else the Gorge can do and I'd get the added benefit of this effect taking time, which is something I'd never really thought about beforehand but liked after I'd wrapped my head around it.

As is my track record, however, it refuses to function properly. I can't shake the feeling I've made some silly mistake again, but I'll just run through the list of things that I've done.

I have imported:
lua/Class.lua
lua/Weapons/Weapon.lua
lua/DropPack.lua
lua/DigestMixin.lua
lua/AlienActionFinderMixin.lua
lua/Gorge.lua

And I did initialize the digest mixin in both the Weapon class and the DropPack class. I have also overwritten their default GetCanBeUsed methods to allow use if the player is a Gorge. I also went ahead and added a GetCanDigest and GetDigestDuration method to both classes, though from what I understand that isn't strictly necessary. Looking at the Hydra and Clog files, that seems to be everything I need to do. Neither class touches the mixin at all, nor do they seem to call it. However, like I said, this doesn't work.

I've also been changing the AlienActionFinderMixin, though with strange results. The OnProcessMove method won't trigger if I look at a shotgun dropped on the ground by a marine, but if I go Gorge with cheats enabled and spawn a shotgun in, suddenly I can get it to enter the OnProcessMove method. The exact <i>opposite</i> results I get with the Weapon:GetCanBeUsed method.

Is there something else that I need to change somewhere? I've even considered that maybe the mixin only works on structures, but I couldn't find anything to support that theory nor does it throw any errors. If anyone would like me to send them the code in full, I'd be happy to message it to you, or simply send it via Dropbox/etc.

Edit:

I seem to be making some progress. I've added a GetIsAlive and Kill method to the Weapon class as sort of a hacky work-around, and oddly enough, I'm starting to see things work. I can get the Digest GUI to pop up telling me to press E, and when I hold it, the bar progresses and the weapon is destroyed upon finishing. Oddly enough though, it only works when I spawn the weapon in, not when it's dropped. I imagine it has something to do with the owner ID, I'll continue to edit in my progress as I go.
Oh, and I've reverted the AlienActionFinder mixin to how it was originally. For some reason, I couldn't get it to run an additional elseif. It just skipped over it, even though the conditions were true. (That's why I had to shortcut into the EntityLiving part.) Laugh if you like, but it works.

ChaosXBeing · November 2012

Edit:

Well, that's embarrassing...

Didn't mean to post this, I was just trying to edit the original post. Seems I hit quote instead of edit. O.o

Discussing a mod idea

Comments