Red Alert: Tiberium Origins MOD

Information and discussion for custom maps and mods.
kaneCVR
Posts: 93
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2013 9:20 pm

Post by kaneCVR »

Announcement:

I'm taking some time off the mod to study for my exams, so the next release for Tiberian Origins will be sometime in February. Thank you everyone, and happy new year!

.

lamgchop
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Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2015 7:56 pm

Post by lamgchop »

Does anyone know what happened to kaneCVR?
Or is there any more updates?

kaneCVR
Posts: 93
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2013 9:20 pm

Post by kaneCVR »

lamgchop wrote: Does anyone know what happened to kaneCVR?
Or is there any more updates?
I'm back. I had to take a long break caused by lack of time due to school and work.

I've published an updated but incomplete version of the mod on moddb, with more to come.

Also, I'm having several issues with the current version of openra, maybe someone can help:

Custom voices do not work correctly for vehicles. I tried adding a custom voice for the HTNX unit witch inherits ^TrackedVehicle, and only the "Select" and "Action" strings are being used by the engine. In contrast, when adding the RMBO unit, everything worked flawlesly. The problem is I wanted the unit to have seperate attack and move voice clips, but the engine uses the clips from "Action" for both attack and move, completely ignoring the "move" section, and "attack" seems to do nothing in this version of openra:

Code: Select all

MammothVoice:
	Voices:
		Select: hx_sel1,hx_sel2,hx_sel3,hx_sel5,hx_sel6
		Move: hx_mv1,hx_mv2,hx_mv3,hx_mv4,hx_mv5,hx_mv6,hx_mv7
		Action: hx_atk2,hx_atk3,hx_atk4,hx_atk5,hx_atk6
		Build: hx_build 
		Kill: hx_kill1,hx_kill2,hx_kill3
The "build:" and "kill" sections are also ignored by the engine.

abcdefg30
Posts: 641
Joined: Mon Aug 18, 2014 6:00 pm

Post by abcdefg30 »

You need to tell the specific traits like Mobile which voice should be used. See https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/blob/b ... ml#L22-L34 for example.

kaneCVR
Posts: 93
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2013 9:20 pm

Post by kaneCVR »

abcdefg30 wrote: You need to tell the specific traits like Mobile which voice should be used. See https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/blob/b ... ml#L22-L34 for example.
That makes sense, didn't think of that, thanks.

So it should be:

Code: Select all

	

AttackTurreted:
	Voice: Action	
Mobile:
	Speed: 90
	Voice: Move
AnnounceOnBuild:
AnnounceOnKill:
Is AnnounceOnKill the sound byte played when the actor dies or a when it kills another actor?

abcdefg30
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Post by abcdefg30 »

kaneCVR wrote: Is AnnounceOnKill the sound byte played when the actor dies or a when it kills another actor?
When it kills another actor. If the actor itself dies, the "DeathSounds" trait is used.

kaneCVR
Posts: 93
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2013 9:20 pm

Post by kaneCVR »

The code worked perfectly, thanks!

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Sleipnir
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Post by Sleipnir »

Please use the Mod SDK instead of asking players to modify their OpenRA installation!

The process is basically the same as what you are doing now - copy your mod directory to replace the example mod, and then make a few tweaks to the mod.config to set up other metadata. This is all covered in the getting started guide and you can also refer to the RA Classic mod.

Please note, however, that if you are on Windows you will need to wait for the upcoming OpenRA hotfix (due within a few days) that works around a GitHub server change that broke dependency fetching.

kaneCVR
Posts: 93
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2013 9:20 pm

Post by kaneCVR »

Sleipnir wrote: Please use the Mod SDK instead of asking players to modify their OpenRA installation!

The process is basically the same as what you are doing now - copy your mod directory to replace the example mod, and then make a few tweaks to the mod.config to set up other metadata. This is all covered in the getting started guide and you can also refer to the RA Classic mod.

Please note, however, that if you are on Windows you will need to wait for the upcoming OpenRA hotfix (due within a few days) that works around a GitHub server change that broke dependency fetching.
I've already made the mod stand-alone, but it still has some dependencies to the RA mod it's based on - the good news is it will no longer override the Red Alert mod.

As it stands, Tiberian origins REQUIRES the Red Alert mod to be installed for the user to be able to play, but it will no longer override it, and users will be able to play both mods using the same copy of openRA. My mod should also prompt for and download files needed for both the Red Alert openra mod and Tiberian Origins, and download / install them in the default location in witch Red Alert would, so launching one mod should make both work.

For now my mod will launch via a Shortcut witch contains the Game.Mod=TO command line parameter, but I'll get around to studying the sdk to get a stand-alone exe for my mod.

I'll upload the new version later tonight after finishing up a few more things.

On another note, I've been trying to restore some of the previous functionality like having different announcer voices for each side, with no success. The old method seems to no longer be working:

Code: Select all

Speech:
	DefaultVariant: .AUD
	Prefixes:
		allies: R_
		soviet: S_
		gdi: C_
		nod: N_
		sog: R_
		esa: S_
Using the above code results in all announcements not working for all sides. By adding

Code: Select all

Variants:
        allies: .AUD
        soviet: .AUD
        gdi: .WAV
below the above code, I can get regular announcements (notifications) to work for the allies and soviet, but nothing for GDI and NOD... I've made sure all files are present and where they are supposed to be, and double checked the names... is there a way to fix this?

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Sleipnir
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Post by Sleipnir »

kaneCVR wrote: but it still has some dependencies to the RA mod it's based on
This is straightforward to handle with the SDK. Just make sure that you keep INCLUDE_DEFAULT_MODS="False" in your mod.config and then copy the parts of the RA mod that you want to include into a ra directory in the SDK mod directory. Again, this works the same way that you should be used to.

We put a lot of work into developing the SDK to solve some of the biggest problems faced by and caused by modders, and as of release-20171014 SDK based mods are the only type that we officially support. I don't mean that in terms of not helping with problems like the ones here (unless they are things already solved by the SDK), but more in terms of users - if anybody asks the dev team for support (or complains about how much work it is to install mods) and it turns out that they are modifying their main OpenRA install instead of using SDK-generated installers then the official advice is to do a clean reinstall of OpenRA and encourage the mod authors to migrate to the SDK.

kaneCVR
Posts: 93
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2013 9:20 pm

Post by kaneCVR »

Sleipnir wrote:
kaneCVR wrote: but it still has some dependencies to the RA mod it's based on
This is straightforward to handle with the SDK. Just make sure that you keep INCLUDE_DEFAULT_MODS="False" in your mod.config and then copy the parts of the RA mod that you want to include into a ra directory in the SDK mod directory. Again, this works the same way that you should be used to.

We put a lot of work into developing the SDK to solve some of the biggest problems faced by and caused by modders, and as of release-20171014 SDK based mods are the only type that we officially support. I don't mean that in terms of not helping with problems like the ones here (unless they are things already solved by the SDK), but more in terms of users - if anybody asks the dev team for support (or complains about how much work it is to install mods) and it turns out that they are modifying their main OpenRA install instead of using SDK-generated installers then the official advice is to do a clean reinstall of OpenRA and encourage the mod authors to migrate to the SDK.
The only parts of the Red Alert mod my work needs is the MIX files - those are stored in C:\Users\username\Documents\OpenRA\Content\ra\v2 - and I see no point in including an additional copy of these files since both mods use them, and 99% of users probably play the Red Alert mod more then anything else... so... why waste space?

I would like to include additional files (music and video mix files) into C:\Users\username\Documents\OpenRA\Content\to - can the SDK copy them to said location when installing my mod?

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Sleipnir
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Post by Sleipnir »

In that case, you don't need to do anything special. The Mod SDK separation only applies to the OpenRA-specific game/mod files that are installed to Program Files on Windows (or similar locations on other platforms).

All OpenRA mods (SDK or not) use the same support directory, so you just need to make sure that your mod.yaml references the "~^Content/ra/v2/" directories in the Packages and ModContent sections. It can then read and install the standard RA content files from the standard RA content locations.. You can do the same thing with "~^Content/cnc" for the cnc content too. For you own custom content you should define your own mod directory in the content directory. You aren't limited to pulling all of your content in the same place!

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Inq
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Post by Inq »

Sleipnir wrote:
kaneCVR wrote: but it still has some dependencies to the RA mod it's based on
This is straightforward to handle with the SDK. Just make sure that you keep INCLUDE_DEFAULT_MODS="False" in your mod.config and then copy the parts of the RA mod that you want to include into a ra directory in the SDK mod directory. Again, this works the same way that you should be used to.

We put a lot of work into developing the SDK to solve some of the biggest problems faced by and caused by modders, and as of release-20171014 SDK based mods are the only type that we officially support. I don't mean that in terms of not helping with problems like the ones here (unless they are things already solved by the SDK), but more in terms of users - if anybody asks the dev team for support (or complains about how much work it is to install mods) and it turns out that they are modifying their main OpenRA install instead of using SDK-generated installers then the official advice is to do a clean reinstall of OpenRA and encourage the mod authors to migrate to the SDK.
I honestly preferred the old system & ingame mod browser... The SDK just seems to add multiple layers of complexity, toil & labor, to a once simple process.

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Sleipnir
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Post by Sleipnir »

Once simple for modders... until the next OpenRA release comes out and breaks compatibility! Once simple for players... until they want to jump between different mods that require different OpenRA versions, and have to quit then launch the specific mod chooser that works only with the mod they want, plus a bunch of duplicate RA+TD+D2Ks that they don't :)

The SDK approach was the only way that we could solve this, and the end result is much much simpler for players (install mod -> launch it from their start menu, or switch from the ingame server list). I'm a bit surprised you don't think it is worthwhile, considering that your own mod faces exactly this problem (which I assume must be hurting your player base quite a lot)!

kaneCVR
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Post by kaneCVR »

Sleipnir wrote: Once simple for modders... until the next OpenRA release comes out and breaks compatibility! Once simple for players... until they want to jump between different mods that require different OpenRA versions, and have to quit then launch the specific mod chooser that works only with the mod they want, plus a bunch of duplicate RA+TD+D2Ks that they don't :)

The SDK approach was the only way that we could solve this, and the end result is much much simpler for players (install mod -> launch it from their start menu, or switch from the ingame server list). I'm a bit surprised you don't think it is worthwhile, considering that your own mod faces exactly this problem (which I assume must be hurting your player base quite a lot)!
It's because we don't yet understand this method. It's simple for you since you have extensive programming knowledge, but we're newbies. (dammit Jim!) I'm a doctor, not a programmer - I don't even do anything IT related (apart from collecting vintage x86 hardware) - so everything I learn I have to learn on my own with limited available time - BUT it's pretty fun and extremely satisfying, especially when I find solutions on my own - so I'm kind of excited about exploring the SDK.

Speaking of witch - can someone lend a hand regarding my announcement (notification) issue? I can't get side specific notification voices to work.... I posted code examples above.

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