Modding Community

Since I have been modding for a few week's, I've noticed the difficulty in the modding on Cortex Command (atleast in the scripting part and joint positioning (which is also a part of the scripting part, so yeah)) and I've thought of a way to deal with this...To create a C.C.M.E (Cortex Command Mod Editor), similar to any other Editor our there. I saw it as a mixture of Paint and Option centers. You'd select whether your making a gun, actor, explosive, module, map of craft and would have associated options for those inside the editor (For example, you could just type in the number of pixels you want it to penetrate and the damage it should disperse upon a Basic Actor (Dummy/Zombie) or position he joints yourself (the offsets)(Gun Example)) I think this would make modding more diverse and easier, plus it would be a time saver for the great modders all around us, that thrive even in these hard conditions...But since I know NOTHING about scripting anything but a calculator or smtin. like that, I turn to the community with my idea, hopping someone will try it one day.

Who ever does this, does not need to give me credit, as I am just the seeder of the idea, I did nothing in the way of realizing it...(I barely know how to make an altered dummy xD)




NikolaAnicic007 out!

P.S All Hard-Core Modders can still use good old scripting, this isn't a re-work of CC it's just a helpfull tool like it's Mod Manager...

Doesn't sound that bad, not sure who would be willing to do such a thing though... once you get to modding, it's not that big of a deal.

Would be super helpful for beginners though. Also some kind of a balancing system would be nice, something that would automatically define stuff like appropriate mass/sharpness ratio for particles so that they don't rape the terrain, etc...

Or go even further and add one of those fancy non-terrain rape scripts once it passes some threshold.

It wouldn't be that complicated to accomplish actually.. I kind of wish there were more features in the developers menus already built into the game, (or a manual on it for loading new pieces or updating and stuff) especially when we provide a lot of the content in the form of mods. It may be something worth considering for Planetoid Pioneers.

For the most part though, CC only needs a couple default templates to create new weapons and artillery.. and they could be stored in a text file. Such a list would include;

A 0-mass projectile for explosion glows that stay in place (Such as the large main glows when a rocket detonates on impact)
A low mass projectile for smoke effects.
A 'bullet' in the form of MOPixel
A 'bullet' in the form of MOSParticle
A rocket-like projectile in the form of MOSRotating (With pointers to requirements for a detonation, such as the 0-mass projectile, and already allocated Pyro.ini Air particles)
A default gib in the form of MOSParticle
A default gib in the form of MOSRotating

And then various LUA;
Heat seeking
Targeting systems
Detonate on impact
Less terrain destruction (optimized)
Explosion timer(s)
Script to 'explode X distance in front of the enemy's face' (a la flak cannon)
Pie chart related scripts

But realistically, all of those can be obtained already from Base.rte (sourcing weapons that have the tech), and everything else will require it's own exception.

Actually the most difficult is probably deciding on and balancing the integrities (force and # of hits something takes before breaking). That could probably use some sort of software for simulating quickly, but there are maps that you can test for balance on. I probably missed many templates, the problem is that some actors/weapons are VERY unique and just have their own exceptions for everything, turning MOs into "Scripted thing". It would be nice to have a list of all the epic scripts users have created so we could credit them instantly to create exceptional weapons faster, but you can always try to PM users on here asking politely to use their scripts. 100% of the time I've asked to use a script, the users have replied allowing me to, and that includes some of the greats like Gotcha!, Weegee, Mehman, DudeAbides, 4zK, and I've even considered attempting to contact Whitty, CaveCricket48 and findude.... not sure how active any of them are anymore though, and to be honest I've been quite busy myself this year so a lot of the scripts I used from them I just kept as personal mods. Even still, like I said, a compendium of (hopefully default-ly optimized) scripts to toss up onto new weapons/ammo/actors would be neat.

I'd love to tackle this myself but I am busy until next year at this time @_@ until then, there's always the wiki... and the search button. And I'm sure if you ran into any errors you can post and people are happy to help. In fact, this is one of the best communities I've seen for a game.

Thanks, everyone.
As I said, I can barely make a gun that works ._.' and that by stealing from Vanilla .-.
Your right, I'm asking too much, but could you at least post those mods you were talking about, or help me make those templates for the guns/actors/craft etc. since that's 50% of the work (if people have a template they can look at, it makes the job A LOT easier...) but yeah...It's a bot of a complicated request ._.'
Thank you for replying !

A little help 'bout those templates would do actually...

NikolaAnicic007

P.S Salvaging from the vanilla factions is hard, in the meaning that it's written differently than most beginners (like myself) can salvage, it's like Humans finding a fully operational Star Ship or Stargate, sure they can use it, but they can't learn from it, and if they can it would take too much time to be relevant...So...Those templates would make a BIG difference...

My comment probably has nothing to do with the topic whatsoever but it may be useful.

I have a program that you can easily make your own walkpath with desired lenght and such. It's pretty old and it was fortunate for me to find it, dont know if its still acquirable. And I haven't used it much myself. Maybe I should share it sometime.

Could be helpful for newbies. I'm thinking how the walkpath code is like Greek for a freshling. (Was for me atleast)

In all honesty a full fledged mod editor is not needed. For the most part the extra work put into a mod editor for all facets of modding would almost surely become an abandoned project before long. For the coding part I personally have made an extension to reduce spelling errors (http://forums.datarealms.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=45476)

What would be extremely useful (and take significantly less time) would be an offset editor, specifically walkpaths and other difficult offsets.
Traditionally I would use the gib editor in game to help me determine offsets in the past before I figured out how to use the image itself to help me with offsets.

This is the program I'm talking about. Very helpful.
Maybe should post a new topic about it and then ask someone to include it in the "Everything you need to know about modding in CC".

Starting the program


Choosing lenght (Up to 50px long)


Choosing Frames (Up to 100 frames(Who would make a 100 frame walkpath????(Extreme pain the ass)(Warning Lag like hell if you have chosen too much frames)))


On the actual path editing (Yes thats 100 Frames )