Creating a Community Buff & Ability Library

from Sins Forums

Hello. I was wondering whether I could spark some interest in the community, especially among the more active modders, to assist in the creation of a library of buff and ability files that could be shared with everyone in the modding community. The idea would be to collect as many of these as possible to ease the creation of later mods, since going in and changing names and descriptions is a relatively easy thing to do compared to writing all the files.

I envision a collection of buff and ability files, and a spreadsheet or similar document detailing each and every buff and ability with: file name, complete description, nameStringID, descStringID, hudIcon, required prerequisite files. Including a unified English.str file and somehow including icon files would also be nice.

modding
35,067 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

good idea, but SOME buff/ability files could also want/need other entity files to be altered, and theefore should have the changed for example ship entity files included ( like my 9 level weapons/toughness & hanger upgrades for starbases also need the larger upgrade limits from the starebase entitys, and in phase scouts the scout frigates were also change along with the changed research and player entities.

hope this info helps

harpo

 

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

In concept it's a great idea. However, given the sheer veriety of ability/buff combinations, and the fact that these files are the ones most often changed by patches, I think it will have to wait until Sins is more or less done with development to truly be worthwhile.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

There are simply too many combinations. The closest thing we will already exists in form of a reference for vital lines of code in abilities in buffs. It's stickied up above. There seem to be a few affects not even used in the game. Aside from that, there are buffs in the game which are coded in such a way that it would be an entirely different buff if you modified the file just slightly.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Hmm, yeah... The impetus behind my idea would be to provide a more thorough document to the community detailing what kinds of abilities are possible, especially for some of the more creative and esoteric solutions to desired effects.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

:)  Like tractor beams, and speed nullifiers and invisibility cloaks... and maybe re-fueling tankers... :)

-Teal

 

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

What me and shadow did.

Instead of listing individual abiliities. We listed types of Buffs. Where in this case, a Buff can be one, or more, acutual Buff entity files.

Using this I was able to desing insanly advanced Abilities. I could (if I wanted to) even make abilities with very basic disision making.

 

Scrounge around this site-

http://wraithmodproduction.enjin.com/

for various ideas.

I also made soem diagrams for various types of abilities, and put the pictures on my Photobucket account. If you can understand then, I'm sure they'd be usefull.

http://s299.photobucket.com/home/EvilTesla-RG

 

In short, don't document EVERY SINGLE TYPE of buff and ability. Document CATAGORIES. General versions of similar types of buffs. And keep on specific example around for an example.

Better yet, IF You do this. DO it on the Modding wiki. It is weak on ability making.

 

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Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting LCCX, reply 4
Hmm, yeah... The impetus behind my idea would be to provide a more thorough document to the community detailing what kinds of abilities are possible, especially for some of the more creative and esoteric solutions to desired effects.

As someone who has yet to really try messing with abilities yet and is very unfamiliar with the system sins uses, I would find this very helpful. I'm hoping you are able to make this happen.

I also made soem diagrams for various types of abilities, and put the pictures on my Photobucket account. If you can understand then, I'm sure they'd be usefull.

I'm definitely going to be checking these out. I haven't put ability equations into my mod yet since I have no idea what is or is not possible. Hopefully your concepts give me some ideas. :)