Deadly Islands mod (10th Anniversary Edition)

[rob04 10]

Hi Rob, welcome to the forum. Thank you for your comments, much appreciated and I'm glad you are enjoying playing the game with the mod.

Thanks, Species. I don't know how to use the modding tool, so I don't know what can and cannot be done with it. I am curious if you know off hand whether or not any of the following can be done with it:

1) Can the tool be used to make the scout drone dockable? This is annoying to me because it is a nice thing to have in the game, but I don't use it much only because it can't be docked to the carrier. I don't want to risk using a manta to scout an island when there is a scout drone for that purpose.

2) I noticed that the few times I do use the scout drone, it never uses fuel. I can send it around an entire island and if it survives, the fuel indicator reads full fuel.

3) I was hoping that slot 2 in the walrus would get some use. New items for the walrus would not be necessary. I just wish that some items from slot 1 or 3 could be used in slot 2.

Please understand that I am not hinting that you try to do these things in your mod. I am just curious to know if they can be done with the current mod tool. If they can't be done with the mod tool, then maybe BIS can possibly consider these things for a future patch. I do thank BIS for their work on this game. I enjoy playing it a lot. I had the original game many years ago on my Atari 1040 ST and loved it. I think I can say that I love this remake of the game even more.

[species1571 64]

The problem is that there's still a lot of the game code that isn't exposed for modifying. Anything to do with weapons and units is not moddable at the moment, otherwise I would have liked to do something with walrus slot 2, like having missiles and laser at the same time, or maybe a shield module, anything to stop walruses from being so useless in assaults.

As for the scout drone, I don't think it uses fuel, the display you see is just because it uses a common GUI with the other units. I never use the drone myself and I can't really find anything relating to it in the scripts, so making it dockable at the moment also seems to be impossible. The best I could do would be to make it so there is always a drone available. If you don't want the idea of an endless supply of drones, maybe one free replacement every x number of minutes or maybe just one when you arrive at each island.

[rob04 10]

I never use the drone myself and I can't really find anything relating to it in the scripts, so making it dockable at the moment also seems to be impossible. The best I could do would be to make it so there is always a drone available. If you don't want the idea of an endless supply of drones, maybe one free replacement every x number of minutes or maybe just one when you arrive at each island.

Your ideas are good, but it would mean having a new drone even if one was destroyed while flying over an island. Players who use scout drones would not have to produce them, but they should have to as part of the game.

I have an idea about the scout drone. Make a new scout drone in the carrier ONLY if the current drone was NOT destroyed. That way, when the current drone that is not destroyed is abandoned (because it can't dock), there will be another in its place as if it docked to the carrier. Also, if the current drone was destroyed when scouting an island, a new drone would NOT be made, so the player would have to produce another one to replace the destroyed one. I think that this would give an effect that would be similar to having dockable scout drones. I don't know if it can be done. I just wanted to mention it as a possible alternative to dockable scout drones.

Edited May 18, 2013 by Rob04

[species1571 64]

I know, but there's nothing I can see about the drone in the scripts, so I have no way of knowing if a drone has been destroyed or abandoned. I know you don't want an endless supply of free drones. I could do it so that you only get a free replacement drone when you capture an enemy island using a hack capsule. That way, if you use a drone and it gets destroyed, you have to either build a new one or wait until you capture an island. The carrier only carries one drone at a time, so capturing several islands without using the drone would still mean you only had one. I know it's not quite what you are looking for, I'm just thinking of possible ways to make the drone more useful, since I know that having to build and transport a new one every time you use it puts you off using it at all.

[rob04 10]

One of your previous suggestions was to get a new scout drone when the player arrives at an island. I was thinking this would work well if this could be activated by pressing a key rather than being automatic. If the player presses a key, there is a new drone. If the key is not pressed, there is no new drone. For example, a player is at an enemy island and launches a scout drone. It survives, but has to be abandoned because it can't be docked. The player presses a certain key and gets a new drone. This would have the effect of the drone docking to the carrier. If the drone was destroyed on the enemy island, the player does not press the key and now has to produce another drone. I thought this could be done because I didn't think that doing this would involve anything in the scripts for scout drones. I thought it would just be a matter of being able to link this feature to a key, then players could activate this feature by pressing a certain key the same way players can activate manual timewarp by pressing the "k" key. This is the last idea I can think of for the scout drone. If you say it can't be done, then I guess we will have to leave it the way it is. Of course, I'm hoping it can be done.

Edited May 19, 2013 by Rob04

[species1571 64]

Still working on it. I have a solution to make the drone dockable that seems to be working, but need to test some more, but should have something by tomorrow.

[rob04 10]

Still working on it. I have a solution to make the drone dockable that seems to be working, but need to test some more, but should have something by tomorrow.

Excellent! I hope it passes your tests and works. Thank you.

[species1571 64]

Updated to v1.09:

-Scout drone can now be docked back to the carrier. To dock the drone, simply send it back to a spot next to the carrier. The drone camera must have been selected at least once since the drone was launched, and it will not dock until the drone camera has NOT been viewed for 10 seconds. This is to allow the drone to get clear of the docking area after launch, and also prevents the drone from docking while it is selected. A warning will now also appear when the drone is being left behind (as long as the drone camera has been viewed since launch).

-Included a fix for a bug in CCGM where loading a saved game while in timewarp would cause the game to crash.

Download page HERE

Edited May 31, 2013 by Species1571

[rob04 10]

Updated to v1.09:

-Scout drone can now be docked back to the carrier. To dock the drone, simply send it back to a spot next to the carrier. The drone camera must have been selected at least once since the drone was launched, and it will not dock until the drone camera has NOT been viewed for 10 seconds. This is to allow the drone to get clear of the docking area after launch, and also prevents the drone from docking while it is selected. A warning will now also appear when the drone is being left behind (as long as the drone camera has been viewed since launch).

-Included a fix for a bug in CCGM where loading a saved game while in timewarp would cause the game to crash. EDIT: I have updated the code for this as it was giving problems when arriving at islands. If you downloaded the mod earlier today, please download again.

Download page HERE, or go directly to the file HERE

Thank you very much for making the scout drone dockable. I like the method you chose to make it dockable. It's about as good as having a button. I have extracted V1.09 of your mod in my carrier command folder and i have tested the scout drone. It works great, however, I came across two problems that I wanted to bring to your attention.

1) My scout drone was hovering over an island. I had viewed the scout drone camera at least once. I left the island without docking the drone, but I didn't get the message saying that I was leaving the drone behind.

2) I was flying over an enemy island. I was looking through the scout drone camera and my drone was destroyed by enemy fire. The words "scout drone destroyed" appeared repeatedly onscreen and the voice over repeatedly said "destroyed". I changed to a walrus view and the voice stopped, but the words still kept coming on the screen. I switched to carrier view and the words stopped.

I also have two questions about your mod.

1) There are three options in the user customization for enemy carrier respawn. If I want to disable this, do I have to select something for all three options or just the first option?

2) In the gui and layouts folders, there is a file I didn't notice before called optionsmenu.layout. What does this file do? I clicked on the options button in the main menu and the options screen looks the same as always.

Again, thank you for making the scout drone dockable.

Edited May 24, 2013 by Rob04

[species1571 64]

Thanks for letting me know.

I have updated the file with a fix for the repeating "destroyed" message, you will no longer get the message if the drone camera is selected.

The message about leaving the drone behind will only appear once the drone goes a distance from the carrier around the same as the normal telemetry range. The mod stops tracking the drone after this, so if it gets destroyed or goes out of range again without being selected again, no message will appear.

Disabling the carrier respawns, set di_enemy_carrier_respawn to 1 and int di_respawn_min_friendly_isl to 35.

The optionsmenu file was included by mistake. It won't do any harm, but I have removed it anyway.

Edited May 25, 2013 by Species1571
Changed advice on disabling carrier respawns

[rob04 10]

Thanks for letting me know.

I have updated the file with a fix for the repeating "destroyed" message, you will no longer get the message if the drone camera is selected.

So all I have to do is download the mod again now? Just out of curiosity, are there any other fixes or improvements to the game that you are currently planning to make in the future in your mod? Thanks!!

By the way, I just noticed 2 private messages from you in my inbox. Sorry for not responding to them. I just saw them recently. I just sent a response today.

Edited May 24, 2013 by Rob04

[species1571 64]

Yes, just download it again. There's one other thing I just started working on yesterday, I won't say what in case it turns out not to be possible.

Edited May 24, 2013 by Species1571

[rob04 10]

Yes, just download it again. There's one other thing I just started working on yesterday, I won't say what in case it turns out not to be possible.

Sounds good. Thanks for everything that you do for the game.

[Guest]

New version frontpaged on the Carriercommandaholic homepage.

Deadly Islands Mod v1.09

[atroublestarter 3]

It's truly remarkable that you have fixed the timewarp load crash before BI have, I've tried your mod and i'm actually really impressed!

There is only one bug that I have experienced so far, and basically if I have the long range surveillance ability and the enemy carrier takes an island (breaking the connection of several islands to my stockpile island) i get the messages saying about it being enabled and disabled repeatedly all over my screen - not sure if anyone else has experienced this?

great work!

Edit: One thing I do miss is being able to assault an island by land, so I changed it so that islands become deadly much later in the game. Is it possible one day we'll have an option to control how much enemy island defences are upgraded? This way instead of having everything 'deadly', we can make it so that at least we have no 'weak' islands or something similar!

Edited May 28, 2013 by atroublestarter

[species1571 64]

It's truly remarkable that you have fixed the timewarp load crash before BI have, I've tried your mod and i'm actually really impressed!

There is only one bug that I have experienced so far, and basically if I have the long range surveillance ability and the enemy carrier takes an island (breaking the connection of several islands to my stockpile island) i get the messages saying about it being enabled and disabled repeatedly all over my screen - not sure if anyone else has experienced this?

great work!

Edit: One thing I do miss is being able to assault an island by land, so I changed it so that islands become deadly much later in the game. Is it possible one day we'll have an option to control how much enemy island defences are upgraded? This way instead of having everything 'deadly', we can make it so that at least we have no 'weak' islands or something similar!

Thanks for your comments, much appreciated.

I will look into reproduce the repeating message bug and fix it for the next update. EDIT: The current version has been updated to fix this.

My fix for the timewarp crash is a bit brute-force, but seems to be effective. It would be better if they fixed it properly.

I might be able to change the setting for the island upgrades, I will have a look at this too.

Edited May 28, 2013 by Species1571

[species1571 64]

Updated to v1.10:

-Added the ability for unit-to-unit refuelling and repair. Mantas can refuel/repair walruses and walruses can refuel/repair mantas. To refuel and/or repair a unit, hover the manta over the walrus until you hear the activation sound. There may be times when you wish to either only refuel or only repair a unit, so there is a mode selection which can be changed by double-tapping the K key. There are customization options to allow you to configure what fuel levels are required for refuelling and repairing to be possible. Note that when refuelling a unit, there is a 10% spillage factor for any fuel transferred. Repairing a unit has double the fuel cost compared to refuelling, so repairing a unit by 10% will cost 20% of the other unit's fuel, and you cannot repair a unit while it is completely out of fuel. To allow mantas to be refuelled, they will no longer automatically self-destruct when out of fuel. Instead, they will receive 95% damage and remain invincible until they get their first drop of fuel.

-Added ability for walruses to self-repair up to a configurable level at the expense of fuel. Again, the fuel cost will be double the amount of the repair amount. This is intended to avoid walruses getting into a critical repair level where one stray bullet will destroy them, so walruses will not care how much fuel they have to use to get to their target repair level. Walrus self-repair will be 4 times slower than getting the repair from a manta, and a beeping sound will indicate when a walrus is self-repairing.

-Added two customization options to allow finer control of how the mod increases island defence ratings (feature requested by forum member atroublestarter). The first option is the number of levels of defence rating an island receives when the increase is applied. For example, a setting of 1 will increase weak islands to normal, strong to very strong and very strong to deadly. A setting of 5 makes all islands deadly. The other option allows the mod's turret setup only to be used on islands over a certain defence rating, otherwise un-modded turrets will be used. The defaults of these options will cause the same behaviour as previous versions of the mod.

-Fixes:

-Fixed an issue that would cause enemy carrier respawning not to properly disable when the correct customization option was set (thanks to Rob04 for reporting this).

-Fixed an issue that would cause the game to crash when loading a saved game in which the enemy carrier had already been destroyed without the mod running.

-Fixed an error that would cause the long range surveillance upgrade to repeatedly enable and disable under certain circumstances (thanks to atroublestarter for reporting this).

-Fixed a situation where enemy carrier units would appear (sometimes invisibly) at an island even when the enemy carrier was not there, and fire effects being left behind on some islands (not centain that this was mod related).

-Fixed a random (about 1 in 60) chance that a crash would occur when loading from one game to another if a unit which existed in the first game did not exist in the loaded game.

Compatibility remains for the 1.05.0026 beta as well as the recent 1.05 update.

Download page HERE

Edited June 14, 2013 by Species1571

[Dajunka 10]

Love the this mod, it adds a hell of a lot more to the game than I at first thought.

One thing that I am finding more than a problem with the mod is the speed at which the enemy carrier can take my islands, is crazy. It took 2 of my islands before I could travel a small space between my islands. There is no way it can be coming up against any defenses.

Skip that. I think it was my fault. I had 'int di_island_turret_upgrades' set to 6, which I think disables my turrets. I will try again. Some of the descriptions are hard to understand.

Can I disable 'int di_force_production_items =50' by reming it out?

Edited June 1, 2013 by Dajunka

[species1571 64]

Love the this mod, it adds a hell of a lot more to the game than I at first thought.

One thing that I am finding more than a problem with the mod is the speed at which the enemy carrier can take my islands, is crazy. It took 2 of my islands before I could travel a small space between my islands. There is no way it can be coming up against any defenses.

Skip that. I think it was my fault. I had 'int di_island_turret_upgrades' set to 6, which I think disables my turrets. I will try again.

Can I disable 'int di_force_production_items =50' by reming it out?

No, it can't be remmed out, it needs to be set to something. You could set it to 200, that way it will never activate.

The enemy carrier never has to fight your turrets (unless you go to the island he is attacking), his capture rate against your islands is time-based, so the turret options have nothing to do with it. He does capture islands at least 4x faster than you can, that's why I set the option to buy yourself some time by taking him out early on.

Thanks for the feedback.

Edited June 1, 2013 by Species1571

[Dajunka 10]

Thanks Species. This is not really what I was looking for. I didn't really want deadly islands, advantages for the enemy carrier or adjustments to the tech. It was all the other stuff that I was interested in. I was hoping that I could switch off the things I didn't want, and keep the things I did want.

---------- Post added at 02:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:44 PM ----------

What I would like to see is for you to split this mod up. Have one mod (deadly Islands) giving the advantages and extra fire power to the enemy, and the other mod (Enhanced play) having all of the other juicy bits and fixes.

I would very much like to have the enhanced play, but I want to be able to walk all over the enemy, because I hate the enemy. ;)

[species1571 64]

Thanks Species. This is not really what I was looking for. I didn't really want deadly islands, advantages for the enemy carrier or adjustments to the tech. It was all the other stuff that I was interested in. I was hoping that I could switch off the things I didn't want, and keep the things I did want.

---------- Post added at 02:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:44 PM ----------

What I would like to see is for you to split this mod up. Have one mod (deadly Islands) giving the advantages and extra fire power to the enemy, and the other mod (Enhanced play) having all of the other juicy bits and fixes.

I would very much like to have the enhanced play, but I want to be able to walk all over the enemy, because I hate the enemy. ;)

All of the functions in the mod are optional and can be disabled by changing the customization settings. For example, if you don't want any enemy island upgrades, set di_island_rating_upgrades to 100. Any of the "bool" options that are set to 1 by default, can be disabled by setting them to 0.

My point about the enemy carrier never having to fight against your turrets is nothing to do with the mod, that's just the way the game is designed, his capture rate is time-based.

[Dajunka 10]

All of the functions in the mod are optional and can be disabled by changing the customization settings. For example, if you don't want any enemy island upgrades, set di_island_rating_upgrades to 100. Any of the "bool" options that are set to 1 by default, can be disabled by setting them to 0.

My point about the enemy carrier never having to fight against your turrets is nothing to do with the mod, that's just the way the game is designed, his capture rate is time-based.

Oh!

Sorry, I didn't know that. I can be a right dunce.

So by adjusting these setting so....

int di_force_production_items =200

di_island_rating_upgrades = 100

Gives the enemy no advantages, and the tech/blueprint stays vanilla, but I still get all the other nice additions?

[species1571 64]

No worries. Yes, the di_island_rating_upgrades is the main one. di_force_production_items only unlocks production for YOU, not the enemy. di_adaptive_enemy actually helps you a little bit if he has more islands than you, but swings the other way when you have more than him.

[Dajunka 10]

Question: In the vanilla game you say that the enemy capturing your islands is time based, I didn't know this, that's a bit of a cheat on the games part, and a bit of a disappointment. The thing is, I have seen the enemy fail at taking my islands and move on. Is there some random factor involved here?

Bah!! I can't do this. By the time I have captured all of the firewalls on a island, and I'm not all that slow, the enemy has captured 2 or 3 of my islands. It's not much fun or point playing against a cheating AI, to many games these days do this, and it sucks.

Edited June 2, 2013 by Dajunka

[species1571 64]

Question: In the vanilla game you say that the enemy capturing your islands is time based, I didn't know this, that's a bit of a cheat on the games part, and a bit of a disappointment. The thing is, I have seen the enemy fail at taking my islands and move on. Is there some random factor involved here?

Yes, there is a chance that he will fail to capture the island. It also involves your island's strength, so if you connect the island to a defence island, he will take longer or maybe fail altogether.

Bah!! I can't do this. By the time I have captured all of the firewalls on a island, and I'm not all that slow, the enemy has captured 2 or 3 of my islands. It's not much fun or point playing against a cheating AI, to many games these days do this, and it sucks.

This is the reason I added the adaptive enemy option and the enemy carrier respawn limits, it gives you some motivation to take him out early in the game, so you can make up lost ground.