Adding Facilities, Secret Projects, and Interludes?

[JarlWolf]

And if you need imagery for bases, you can ask me or take a look in our downloads section. I can easily find you sprites/ buildings that fit very well with a pallet, and if I put in some effort I can probably come up with something to fit your... theme.

[Yitzi]

I've had a look through the alphax file and I noticed those blank facilities and projects. I also noted three disabled techs which I assume I can replace.
I guess what I'm wondering is: if I replace a blank facility/project, how do I define what it does (for instance, increasing nutrient output)?

You ask a free .exe coder to do it for you, or learn how to do it yourself.  (I will probably be free for such requests sometime in the fall; I'm making good progress with my ideas, though there are no guarantees.  You might have to wait on line behind other people with requests, though.)  You can ask now, and if I really like it I might do it earlier, though chances are against it.

Hm, I figured as much. If I can replace those three disabled techs, that would at least give me three free "slots".

You can indeed.

I'm also thinking of replacing the resonance and progenitor techs. Hey, if I replace Progenitor Psych, would that screw anything up, considering that Progenitor Psych enables communication between alien and human factions?

Whichever one you replace Progenitor Psych with will be the one that lets humans talk to aliens.  You can likewise replace the SMAC techs, but of course any features they have not listed in alphax (e.g. interludes triggered) will carry over to the new one.

Alright.
The first additional interlude would be triggered by the first declaration of Vendetta.
The second would be triggered by the first base lost to an enemy faction.
The third would be triggered by the first time a non-player faction becomes Planetary Governor.
The fourth would be triggered by the first time the player faction becomes Planetary Governor.
The fifth would be triggered by the first Planet Buster used.
Do you think it's possible to implement these?

I won't know for certain until I get to trying it, but they all seem quite possible.  I'd probably have to reduce the number of allowed landmarks to 63, though, just to make space for the listing of which interludes were already triggered.

I would really, really appreciate any help you would be willing to lend me. =)
Though, to be honest, I'm really curious as to how one would go about altering the code of SMAC/X. :3

Ollydbg is a disassembly/debugging program that works quite well for the purpose.  Of course, that does require learning assembly language and assembly-language programming.

[Kilkakon]

Haha welcome--glad that I broke the community in for ya. XD

Good luck with it.

[Sigma]

Has anyone actually suceeded in modifying the assembly code for the game in the way that has been proposed in this thread?

[Yitzi]

Well, not those exact effects, but my patches consist mainly of similar sorts of features.  The only reason I'm not taking on these projects yet is because I'm not finished yet with the stuff I want to do first.  But all these things should be doable.

[Sigma]

I've seen mentioned on yours and others patches all over the place, but since I'm new to the site I haven't been able to find where any of them actually are.  I'd love to see what people who've been doing this for a long time have been able to accomplish.

[Buster's Uncle]

Check here for patches:  http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;cat=2

-And welcome to AC2!

[Kilkakon]

Let us know if you need a hand or anything, Sriseru

[Geo]

One of the most frustrating things about modding interludes is that you can't change the triggers, alas.  (That would take .exe coding, which seems to be possible, but I've never seen it done; pretty much the top of my modding wish list is user-programmable interlude triggers.)

Are the interlude triggers somewhere posted on the forum? And if so, where?

[Buster's Uncle]

There's an old thread at 'poly that seems very comprehensive...

[Geo]

'kay. Guess I'll head over to 'Poly to search for it when the need arises. Thanks.

[sisko]

@Geo: we have the info here at AC2 too
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=articles;sa=view;article=5

[Geo]

Thanks. I bookmarked the whole article thread for future reference.

[sisko]

please note that the interludes are in some way connected to the map of Planet (hard-coded as i remeber).
an .exe modder should be able to tell us more about it. 

[Yitzi]

please note that the interludes are in some way connected to the map of Planet (hard-coded as i remeber).
an .exe modder should be able to tell us more about it. 

The interlude texts are not hardcoded, but their triggers are.  They're not connected to the map per se, but adding new interludes would require adding room for the flags saying what interludes were already gotten; since those flags need to be game-specific, the easiest way to do it would be to have them replace one of the slots allocated for landmarks (so you'd be limited to 63 landmarks).