[RELEASE] various modifications

Hello everyone. Since not much was going on on this forum, I figured I might as well post what I've been modding the last few times I played Wing Commander Saga. It's nothing ground breaking, but I've had fun doing this.
And technically, it is my first FSO-related personal mod release.

zip download (tell me if you can't access the link)

Q:So, what is this mod about? Is there any new mission? New weapons? New ships?
A:Well, not exactly anything new (a couple of sand box missions I used for testing), but you might find it interesting anyway: primary weapons that fire in bursts, flyable kilrathi fighters, flyable capships and capship missile swarms (that one alters game balance a bit). All that is summed up in the mod's readme - which I hope is readable despite the forum's munching of my indentation (if not, the readme is in the zip file as well).

readme.txt wrote: WCS-modified
============

Wing Commander Saga modifications
by X3N0-Life-Form

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1.What is it?
This is a series of modifications for the game Wing Commander Saga, meant to be run on official WCS releases.
Modifications include:
-Primary weapons set to fire in burst shots rather than synchronized shots
Table files:
burst_primaries-shp.tbm
burst_primaries-wep.tbm
Mission files:
M37-BG-Hermes.fs2
M38-BG-Hermes.fs2
M39-BG-Hermes.fs2
M40-BG-Hermes.fs2
M41-BG-Hermes.fs2
M42-BG-Hermes.fs2
M43-BG-Hermes.fs2
M44-BG-Hermes.fs2
M45-BG-Hermes.fs2
M46-BG-Hermes.fs2
M47-BG-Hermes.fs2
M48-BG-Hermes.fs2
M49-BG-Hermes.fs2
M50-BG-Hermes.fs2
-Kilrathi fighters and bombers available to the player in custom missions - NOTE: Kilrathi ships are using default HUDs
Table files:
kilrathi_available-shp.tbm
kilrathi_available-wep.tbm
-Confed and Kilrathi capship flyable, using Dragon's modified version of the BP2 capship command script - NOTE: capships are using default HUDs; noticed some weirdness with turret control
Table files:
wcs-bp2-csc-sct.tbm
wcs-csc-shp.tbm
Script files:
csc_KeyPressed.lua
csc_KeyReleased.lua
-Capship missiles now fire in swarms of 2 or 4 (depending on the number firing points the turret originaly had (for now - see note)) - NOTE: THIS ALTERS GAME BALANCE, confed capships ALL have more than one tube on their CSM launchers
Table files:
swarm_csm-shp.tbm
swarm_csm-wep.tbm
-(disabled by default)Divided energy consummed by 100 and missile cargo size by 10,000 - NOTE:see 3. to enable this
Table file:
not_a_trainer-wep.tbm-disabled

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2.How do I install this?
2.a.The quick but dirty way
Just dump the table files into <WCS path>/data/tables, missions in <WCS path>/data/missions, scripts in <WCS path>/data/scripts, etc.

2.b.The longer but cleaner way
Install wxLauncher: wcsaga.com/forum/index.php?f=22& ... opic#p8535
Extract the mod archive into your WCS folder
Select wcs-modified in the launcher

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3.That's great, but I don't want to use every modifications
The Freespace Open engine - and by extension Wing Commander Saga, uses text files called tables to store game data. It recognizes these files by their .tbl or .tbm extension. Threrefore, to disable a table, you just need to change the file's extension to something else.
tl;dr version
rename the *.tbm files to something like burst_primaries-shp.tbm_disabled or burst_primaries-shp.tbm.not-tbm or something else that doesn't end in .tbm or .tbl
tl;dr version 2
not_a_trainer-wep.tbm-disabled = disabled
not_a_trainer-wep.tbm = enabled

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4.I wanna mod WCS by myself, bu I don't know where to start
Have a look at how this mod (or any mod) work.
Browse the Freespace Open wiki's modding portal: www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Portal:Modding
Ask questions on the Wing Commander Saga's modding subforum: wcsaga.com/forum/index.php?f=22&rb_v=viewforum
Ask questions on the main Freespace modding forum's WCS subforum: www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?board=46.0

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Credits
See data/tables/wcs_mod-crd.tbm

If you want to try out the kitty fighters or the capships, I suggest setting up a small "mission" in FRED, and make sure they are available in the team loadout. Or have a look at 0_CSC-test.fs2.

Since this is a rather minor release, Im not packing anything into .vp files, that means you can peek into the tables at any time.
Last time I checked, the mod was running smoothly on the release exe - no table conflicts or warnings poping up, but it's been a while.
If you've got any trouble getting the mod to work, if the readme is unclear, have any questions, requests, suggestions, etc. feel free to ask.

And once again: sorry for the lack of pictures.

Would this in anyway affect the original game content?

Yes and no:
-You still can't fly kilrathi fighters, nor any capship in the main campaign.
-Despite firing in bursts, I made sure that every fighter primary and turret still fire at the appropriate rate, making this change purely cormetic (in theory).
-CSM being fired in salvos definitively give an edge to confed capships in close range combat, but doesn't change things that much at long range (when I find some time, I'll give the kitties some swarm missiles as well).

If you want to disable any of the modifications, you just need to remove the related files, the game will fall back to the original data.


Basically, the rule #1 of FSO modding is: don't alter the original content, be it the full game, or another mod. If something goes wrong, the user needs to still be able to play the original game, or mod.
Did that answer your question?

I tried to install the mod and seemed to work (I was able to start a mission with no ship or weapon selection in a kilrathi fighter).

However it had no primary weapons and all missile banks had 0 missiles loaded.
Flying however seemed to work.

Also I experienced a crash in missions with weapon selection but not during ship selection

Probably I did something wrong but does anyone know to do it right?
I created a new pilot profile but it had no effect.

Hmm, could you post the relevant mission as an attachment?

On top of my head, I would think it's either pilot file corruption, which is bad, or the weapons and missiles the fighter uses are not available in the team loadout.

I tested with this mission.

In an arrow it is fine but if I select a kilrathi ship I get the described behavior.
Removing the scramble tag and trying to select weapons lead to a crash

I had to rename the fs2 file to zip because I cannot upload fs2 files

OK, I'll see what I can dig out and get back to you on monday (I'm at work right now, & I can't access the Internet during week ends). If I don't by tuesday, ask for an update (in case I forget to answer ).

Alright, I have no idea what the cause of this can be, BUT I have been have to fix it by manually reloading the player's missiles at the beginning of the mission, which seems to have also given its weapons back.

The really good news is that it's not a pilot corruption error

EDIT - attachment removed, mission still wasn't working (see my next message)
was downloaded 102 times

Unfortunately, the Dralthi still doesn't have any primary weapons and the loadout screen still crashed the game in "WC3-special".

Btw it's fun flying with WC's capships and those burst shots improve the WC3 feeling.

That's odd. As I mentionned, the primaries magically grew back last time, but now I can reproduce that bug.

EDIT - OK, turns out the relevent weapons weren't available in the team loadout. That fixed it on my end.