Deadly Islands mod v1.39

[species1571 65]

Anyone else who has experienced a crash when using the equipment preset buttons, please download the mod again, I have introduced changes to prevent this problem.

[moondrift47 1]

Hi Species,

I don't get the crash on the mod anymore but still crashing, which it didn't before I had to re-install. Looks like I will have to reinstall all patches in order!! See if that works.

[SpliceMainbrace 1]

This has been a great mod. At least until I tried the alternate view downward from the scout drone. When I went to the carrier to man the guns, I got the alt-view from the control tower and can't get back to the guns at all. The left-alt key doesn't toggle. As I pan the view the guns move and fire but this is no good for targeting. Whenever I go to carrier weapons screen (0) , I get a brief, momentary view from a gun before the view switches to the control tower.

Have I missed something here? Nothing I have tried gets me back to the guns. Even reloads put me into the new view.

Outstanding work despite my little problem. Makes a good game better.

Edited June 6, 2014 by SpliceMainbrace
oversight added

[species1571 65]

Hi SpliceMainbrace.

You mention the left-alt key, by default this is the downward camera toggle for mantas and not the scout drone or carrier cameras unless you have manually changed this key in the customization menu. Are you playing the game with the HUD switched off? This is the only situation where you should have the possibility of seeing the control tower camera when guns are selected, and in this case you can still get back to the normal gun camera by pressing the "switch camera" key. You will need to check page 8 of the customization menu to see what your key for this is set to, but by default it is C.

Hope this helps.

[species1571 65]

Updated to v1.23:

---Mantas can now dock while carrying a walrus on a hook when the manta simple docking option is enabled. When the manta reaches the carrier, the walrus will be released and will also dock. Note that the verbal message will still play, saying that the manta cannot dock with cargo (feature requested by faber42).

---Pressing the dock key while a hooked walrus is selected, the dock command will be given to the carrying manta instead.

---When using the walrus navigational enhancement option and commanding a walrus to activate or hack a building using the map, the walrus will no longer lose the ability to automatically activate or hack the building when it gets there.

---When a walrus is commanded to activate or hack a building using the map, its program will automatically be cleared when it reaches the building. This will prevent false alarms when using the walrus stuck alerts option and will also allow the walrus to enter offensive stance when the dynamic stance option is enabled.

---When using the walrus stuck alerts option, if a walrus makes no movement at all, for example if it is given a waypoint that cannot be calculated, the stuck alert will now appear sooner than normal regardless of the time delay option setting.

---Added an option to page 5 of the customization menu which will allow the scout drone's altitude to be maintained while it is flying on a waypoint. This will allow you to keep tighter control of the drone's position.

---Enemy islands overview window now has a banded background to improve readability (requested by Rob04).

Thanks to Rob04 for playtesting.

Download page HERE

Edited October 3, 2014 by Species1571

[Savant1974 1]

Hi! Just wanted to say how amazing this mod is, you've adjusted and changed things I didn't think were changeable. I'm hooked on CC again thanks to this.

Quick question: I've tried adding a few custom weapons to the game (taken from my own mod that I really miss playing with) and while they can be built in-game, when delivered to the carrier they don't show up on the item list. THe 'supplies' section does show they're on board, however. These items worked in my own mod so I'm wondering what you've adjusted that allowed you to put in your own custom weapon (i.e. carrier missiles).

As for a suggestion; is there any way you could make the carrier gun adjust its trajectory like the walrus HEAT and Shell guns do? Getting a little tired of it trying to shoot straight and falling far short of the target!

[species1571 65]

Hi Savant1974, thanks for your comments.

Are you talking only about carrier weapons? The mod is written only for the standard carrier weapons plus its own weapons, any others won't be used.

I know what you mean about the shells just falling in the water, unfortunately I don't know a way to correct that, or if it is even possible with the current modability of the game.

[Savant1974 1]

I was referring to the addition of any custom weapons to the game, but I think I found my problem anyway (nothing to do with your mod!)

Pity about the shells, but oh well, it's still a fun game :D

Hey would it be possible to put in a switch so you can at least make the main gun stop automatically firing? Sometimes I pull up to a pier to refuel and there's a droid nearby so my main gun blasts the crap out of the pier ;)

Edited July 11, 2014 by Savant1974

[nicoman 10]

What do you guys mean by 'shells just falling in the water'? Do you mean that the carrier shell gun has a too low range? Because in my version, I changed the impulse of the shell, so that the max range is 3+ km. This way I am able to place some 'spotter', a high flying manta or drone - since Species made them usefull :) - somewhere where it sees the target area, then high fire the shell gun. Switch back to the spotter and whatch where the impact is. On impact data I then adjust the shell gun accordingly and fire again. I'm repeating this procedure untill the projectiles hit the target. Voila - indirect fire :)

[species1571 65]

Hey would it be possible to put in a switch so you can at least make the main gun stop automatically firing? Sometimes I pull up to a pier to refuel and there's a droid nearby so my main gun blasts the crap out of the pier ;)

You can use with the Strip button or hotkey (F10 by default). When you are ready, press it again to restore the guns.

Nicoman- Yes, you can do that, I do it all the time. He is talking about when the carrier's AI is firing, it fires as if it was a straight line shot and the shells just fall in front of the carrier.

[Savant1974 1]

Ah, strip the weapon, that'll do the job nicely :) And yes I used to use manta's as spotters for the carrier's gun all the time but now I can use the scout drone like it was meant to be used, thanks to binding its camera to F9. I have so much fun with this game :D

[Rubini 10]

Hi Species1571,

Thanks for this mod it´s really very good!

I had tried the demo from this game few years ago and left it alone (very bugged at that time) until a recent steam promotion...wow!!

I finished the campaign and a strategy vanilla game without issues or ctds. The game, mainly the strategy mode, is very stable and enjoiable now (using version 1.70025 beta on steam).

Then, since some past days, I´m playing using your mod and as I said , it´s very good!!

I have just one main issue that is annoying me:

- I miss the Left -Alt control (with mouse) of the camera when my units are in AI control. I liked very much that vanilla feature, i like very much to watch my units on variable angles when moving and mainly when in a group attack. Any possibility to bring this feature back or at least making it an optional one?

- And any possibility to have a more freedom cameras on this game (perhaps a real free external camera)?

Anyhow, thank again to make this game yet more enjoyable!

---------- Post added at 17:51 ---------- Previous post was at 17:06 ----------

Hi Species1571,

...

I have just one main issue that is annoying me:

- I miss the Left -Alt control (with mouse) of the camera when my units are in AI control. I liked very much that vanilla feature, i like very much to watch my units on variable angles when moving and mainly when in a group attack. Any possibility to bring this feature back or at least making it an optional one?

...

Hi!

seems that I have to try a bit more with the options of this mod!

I achieve to have back my beloved "free" mouse view just changing the default "below" unit view (from this mod) to another keybind and all is ok! (Left-Alt is now not more used by the mod).

Cheers!!:bounce3:

[species1571 65]

Hi Rubini, thanks for your comments.

Yes, you would need to change the manta downward camera key bind to get the free camera back, or you could also change the bind for the free camera in the main game options. I didn't think the free camera was all that useful, as the mod also gives you a directly behind camera angle.

[species1571 65]

Updated to v1.24:

---Added advanced production screen. The advanced production queue is intended to be used in place of the standard queue. The standard queue can still be used together with the advanced queue, but the next production item in the advanced queue will only start once the standard queue is empty.

Functional benefits of the advanced queue:

The advanced queue allows you finer control over production order, for example you can produce a manta, then a walrus, then a manta, then another walrus in that order, which is not possible using the standard queue.

The advanced queue allows you to set a target stock level for each item, so when any item is below the target stock level, the item will be added to the queue automatically. You can also set the auto-queue priority level for each item as well as how much material must be available for each of the 3 priority levels before items of that level will be queued. For example, you could have mantas as high priority with no minimum material requirement so they always get added to the queue and torpedoes as low priority with a high minimum material requirement so they only get added to the queue when there is plenty of material. Note, when using the minimum material settings, there must be at least 500 difference between priorities. This will correct automatically if you try to change the settings to an invalid combination. Items that have been added by the auto-queue will appear red, yellow or green in the queue to indicate their priority.

Items can be moved up or down in the queue by either of two methods. Firstly, you can select an item in the queue and then use the Move Up and Move Down buttons. Alternatively, select the item you want to move, then hold down the left CTRL key and click the position you want to move it to. Note that you cannot move an item outside of its priority group, for example you cannot move a low priority item above a normal priority or manually queued item, however you can still move items within a set of items of the same priority.

To delete an item from the queue, select the item in the queue and then click the delete button. If you need to delete a block of items, select the first item in the block then hold the left SHIFT key and click the last item in the block, then click delete. Note that you cannot delete auto-queued items in this way. To remove an auto-queued item from the queue you will need to reduce the auto-queue target level for that item and the queue will adjust automatically.

When an item is manually added to the queue, it will go to the bottom of the queue by default. If you want to insert the item at a different position instead, select the desired queue position then hold left CTRL key and click the blueprint item. Doing this without selecting a queue position will insert the item at the top of the queue instead.

If you have manually queued too many of an item, you can click the item in the blueprint list while holding the left SHIFT key to reduce the queued quantity as an alternative to cancelling the item in the queue.

Interface benefits of the advanced queue:

Blueprints are listed in alphabetical order, unlike the standard queue which lists them randomly.

Both the blueprint list and the queue are more compact, allowing many more items to be viewed simultaneously.

The blueprint list can be filtered so that only required items will be shown, i.e the total on the carrier plus the total on the stockpile plus the total already queued is less than the carrier's maximum capacity.

The advanced production window will remember your filter tab selections when you exit and re-open the production screen, unlike the standard production screen which returns to all units and all types every time.

The advanced queue can be switched between grouped and ungrouped mode. In ungrouped mode, each individual item will be listed separately. This is useful for fine control of the production order as each individual item can be moved separately. In grouped mode, the same item in adjacent queue positions will be grouped into a single entry with a quantity displayed. This is useful for simplifying the display of the queue.

The blueprints screen gives an overall view of your entire stock inventory, including the total number of each item on the carrier, the total available on the stockpile island, and the total number already in the queue. Any items which are already on the supply barque will be shown in brackets in the stockpile column.

Display of production time for items on the advanced production screen will be presented in real life minutes and seconds.

Notes about the advanced production screen:

There is a slight difference in the way an item's carrier stock level is presented. Carrier stock of an item will be shown as the total quantity of the item in carrier storage plus the total quantity of the item already fitted to units, unlike the standard screen which only shows those in carrier storage. Stock level of fuel will be shown as the carrier's current fuel percentage level.

The auto-queue function will add enough of the item to the queue so that the total in carrier stock + total fitted to units + total on stockpile + total on barque + total in queue equals the total set by the auto-queue setting for that item. For example, if you want to always have enough mantas to have 4 active, plus 2 in carrier stock, plus 1 spare on the stockpile, set the manta auto-queue to 7. This way, whenever you lose a manta, a replacement will be added to the queue automatically.

---Changes to the Enemy Island Overview function:

The overview has now been expanded so that it can be switched between enemy, friendly and neutral islands via a selection on the top left of the overview panel. When displaying neutral or friendly islands, instead of island mission information being shown, the island's production and resource values will be shown.

The total number of islands displayed is no longer set in the customization menu but by a selection on the top right of the overview panel itself.

The list of islands is now scrollable so that all islands can be viewed, rather than only the nearest islands.

When displaying friendly islands, the island's type and whether it is the stockpile will be indicated by icons on the right. You can also use these icons to change the type of the island or move the stockpile there, but there are some limitations to this: Firstly, once you have started to change an island to another type, you can interrupt the change and start changing it to the other type, but you cannot change it back to its original type until conversion completes. For example, if you start changing an island from mining to factory, you can switch the change to defense but not back to mining. You would still be able to cancel the change normally using the island properties window. Second, if you click to move the stockpile to multiple islands, they will each start converting to stockpile and the stockpile will move to each one as its conversion completes. If you can accept these limitations, this may be more convenient than using the island properties window for each island.

---Added a customization option which allows the enemy carrier's progress at conquering neutral islands to be slowed down to a more realistic rate. In my tests, a setting of 50% seems to provide about the right balance of progress between the player and the enemy. If neutral island turrets are also enabled, the enemy will be further slowed down at neutral islands.

---Entering the waters of a neutral island where an enemy Command Centre is being built will cause a message to be displayed. This will save you driving a walrus onto the island and finding that construction is already in progress. Control tower must be repaired to at least 75% for this.

---Added a fix for an issue in CCGM where mantas would be returned to the barque if less than 4 were in service. For example, if you had 3 active mantas and no spares, sending 3 new mantas by barque would result in one of them being returned to the barque instead of being added to storage.

---Once the scout drone has been selected, the map screen can be centred on the drone by double-tapping the shortcut key or double-clicking its shortcut button.

Thanks to Rob04 for continued playtesting and requesting some of the additions in this update.

I have now run into a physical size limit to what can be added to the mod. I have reported this problem on the mods discussion forum but have so far received no reply from Bohemia Interactive. Without a fix from Bohemia, this will be the last major update to the mod. (Edit: this has now been solved)

Download page HERE

Edited December 28, 2014 by Species1571

[Rubini 10]

Hi Species,

Just finished my first strategic game using your mod (v 1.23).

The game is absolutelly stable, no ctds, great frame rates, all in maximum plus 8xcsaa forced on nvidia inspector (use the flag 0x00001201) and added a SweetFx for a bit more vibrance colors&sharpness. Aweasome visuals, great game.

For the guys that yet are in doubt to try the mod: it adds tons of very good stuff for the game, including much more fine control over game difficulty (through tons of new possible adjusts and new options at almost all areas of the game), new cameras, dockable scout drone, save game better control, etc, etc. And I must say that all these new options are totally adjustable by the player and that the mod don´t disable anything from original game. A must have mod! I guess that CCGM will stay on my hard drive for long time. Thanks again!

Will try new 1.24 on the next round.

Cheers,

Rubini.

[dram 14]

Hi Species1571,

I just came across your issue looking through the CCGM forums. I used to be a senior designer on the game, but am at present project lead for Take On Mars (TKOM), which uses the same engine, albeit with many changes.

Although I am unsure what the status of the CCGM project is I can offer assistance to modders such as yourself, to a limited extent as TKOM is keeping me very busy. Take On Mars in its entirety is written in enforce script, and I've had to overcome many limitations to file size and such. I wrote almost all game functionality of TKOM myself, so I know the script very well.

There are two main scripts in the game which include practically everything else, and are loaded directly from the game code. These are script.c and ccgame.c.

I assume you've run into a limit of ccgame.c, as I have in the past. You might be able to overcome this issue by moving some functions which are global (do not reference the class Unit and others) to script.c or an include therein. I've not seen the CCGM scripts for some time now, so please accept my apologies for being a bit rusty in this.

In case I do not reply timely, please feel free to PM, I will notice that for sure. In such a case please accept my apologies up front :) I have a huge plate-load of work with TKOM, but am very keen to support modding on CCGM where possible.

Kind regards,

Martin Melicharek

[species1571 65]

Hi Dram, thanks for your reply.

At first I thought this was not going to be too useful as almost every function of the mod has references to classes that prevent them being moved to script.c, but I found that just by moving my declarations of variables that are not those classes (about 30KB of script, I have a LOT of variables) from ccgame.c to script.c, this seems to have increased my size limit for my file included from ccgame.c not just by that 30KB as I was expecting, but by at least a couple of hundred KB. That was from moving variable declarations alone and not any actual code. This should give me enough space to work for a while, so thanks again for the tip.

PS Do you know if there are plans to make more of the game code moddable? There are some aspects of the mod that could be improved upon as well as new things I would like to add, but I am limited by what is accessible.

[dram 14]

Excellent, glad it helped.

I am unsure whether there are plans to make the game code more moddable, but to be honest I do not think so. There was talk of making an SDK but that ran into a few issues that prevented its fruition. I'll try and shoot a question in the studio whether the SDK is possible.

[jaxxa 10]

Hi, Awesome mod.

But I am having one issue with it.

In the campaign I cant activate the Carrier refueling after I load a game.

The first time I goto an island it works, but after loading a saved game I can mouse over the pier to activate it, but it is stuck on "Carrier Refuel Available", but the refueling does not actually start, even when the carrier is right next to it.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[species1571 65]

Hi Jaxxa.

Assuming it is v1.24 of the mod you have, I have made a small change. Can you download again and let me know if this fixes the problem?

[jaxxa 10]

Thanks Species1571

That is working fine now.

I have also found another issue relating to the deck guns on the Carrier in the campaign.

I found that when I switch to them the camera is on the control tower, I can move them and fire it, but the HUD isn't lined up with where it is firing and it appears to be unequipped whenever I open the F12 config menu and I cant reequip it.

Thanks for your help.

[species1571 65]

Could you send me a copy of a save game where this is happening? species1571@blueyonder.co.uk

Someone else reported this on Steam and I thought it was just to do with the HUD being switched off at the same time as the control tower camera is active, and they never replied back whether this was the case, so there must be something else related to the campaign. The mod isn't really designed for the campaign, but I will try to fix problems wherever possible.

[jaxxa 10]

Just sent you an email.

If you need any more information let me know.

Jaxxa

[species1571 65]

Thanks for sending me your save files.

I have made another small update to fix this problem. As I suspected, it only relates to the campaign and not the strategy game.

Once you have installed the updated mod, you will need to re-build the gun or guns that had the problem and send them to the carrier (or go to the stockpile island and they will transfer automatically). Once they have arrived, you will be able to re-fit them using the customization menu.

I also added a fix for the saved game crash you mentioned in your email, although this is a game crash and not related to the mod.

[jaxxa 10]

Thanks

I have rebuilt and delivered the guns and they can fit to the carrier successfully now and can be added / removed from the F12 menu.

However I am still having the issue with the camera controlling it from the command tower.

I found that if I hold F11 the camera jumps to where you expect it to be, but then you don't have the HUD and you have to keep holding to keep the view constant.