Modding, Mission Design, and Coding > The Modding Workshop

Modder's Digest Quasi-Weekly (Latest 22-01-08)

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Nyctaeus:

--- Quote from: Asteroth on October 05, 2021, 07:12:36 pm ---
--- Quote from: Nyctaeus on October 05, 2021, 04:21:23 pm ---FSWiki used to be the basically only, reliable source of new features for me but wiki maintainers are not always up to date with new stuff.

--- End quote ---
Are you saying this just in general, or was there something specific that wasn't documented? Even when it is, though, without stuff like this, there's no real way to 'advertise' new features, I feel like. This is a good way to let people know that things have changed and there's new stuff available; no one is religiously checking all the table articles for changes.

--- End quote ---
The former.

In short, I learned about majority of new features from pillaging modpacks like JAD or BP, because teams of such mods usually consists of people of high technical skills [like Axem] or SCP members directly [like The E]. Sometimes FSWiki, sometimes me chatting directly with SCP devs, but still I frequently encounter new features in people's work I had no idea about.

Nightly builds pop-up one after another like crazy. There is no way to go through the all logs looking for the hot stuff. I have a feeling that many modders just miss the new features, because they have no idea that they even exist.

For example: Before I played Warmachine, I wasn't aware that multi-locking missiles are finally a thing. I remember it being discussed couple years ago.

There is no anykind of obvious bulletin for potential modmakers, that enlists new, fancy, available features. I have a feeling that most people simply copy stuff from BP or BtA for their own works... And many remain in the dark for a long time. Including myself.

EatThePath:
More than once I've wowed people by using features that have been in the game, and even documented in the wiki, for years, but nobody really used. Beam bombs being the example most clear in my memory. Multilock doesn't really count because it wasn't in the main engine when we started using it, and it was at least in part due to my pushing that it finally got merged.

But even so... When I'm in the swing of modding I haunt the discord #scp and #github-updates channels perhaps more than I should, and I even check the wiki recent changes page once or twice a week, but there's always surprises for me when I go to make these, especially in scripting and fredding areas. Which is a big art of why I'm motivated to make them! That, and I think it helps make the work the dev team is doing on the engine a bit more visible  :)

EatThePath:
Two weeks in a row, personal best! The process has some wrinkles to smooth out yet but it's definitely helping.
The changes!
Mission making

* The sexp perform-actions has been deprecated, and in turn three new sexps have been added: perform-actions-bool-first, perform-actions-bool-last, and functional-when. (#3608)
* Improved in-engine documentation for ship-guardian and show-subtitle-image (#3671)Lua Scripting

* New gr.GetColor() function gets the current hud drawing color. (#3687)#Tables

* Deep animation code changes, working towards new features but along the way has fixed many old things that never worked. See the github post for a full list of fixes brought by this stage of the ongoing overhaul. (#3609)
* New "Use Full Wing Names:" and "Use Expanded Colors:" Hudgauge values show full wing name and recolor icons based on health, respectively. (#3703)
* New set-alpha-multiplier sexp allows ships to be made partly transparent (#3436)
* New "no evasion" weapon flag makes AI pilots not care try to evade fire from a weapon type. (#3677)
* The game doesn't complain if a ship has primary bank capacities but no ballistic weapons anymore. Useful if you are swapping weapons into a bank in ways besides player standard equipment selection. (#3683)
And the first post will be updated with the cumulative changes, of course.

wookieejedi:
Excellent update, as always! I'll also add this as a table option that technically made it in the same nightly as the other wingmen gauge options:

'$Wingmen Gauge Dot Override:' within ships.tbl. This allows modders to set wingmen status dots on a per-ship class basis. If no animation is specified then the default dot animation specified in the HUD table wingmen gauge is used. Wiki link here: https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Ships.tbl#.24Wingmen_Gauge_Dot_Override:

EatThePath:
Sadly, getting a nice clean, sensible cutoff line in the logs is one problem I've not sorted out yet. Basing it off of when nightlies get built is actually a really good and in hindsight kind of obvious idea that hadn't occurred to me yet, I'll see if I can make that happen in the future

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