Modding, Mission Design, and Coding > The Modding Workshop

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

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EatThePath:
Late last year I assembled a list of all the FSO changes I thought modders should know about, present in the most accessible way I could. At the time it was my intent to do updates to that list, but it turned out not to be a practical ambition, as it took a lot of manually combing through the changelog and such to get everything together. I think I've got a system in place that lets me avoid all that, so I'm doing it again. My intention is to do one of these every week where there's notable changes, posting at the bottom of the thread, and updating the list in this first post with the cumulative changes since the last major release.

The list is going to be broken down into categories, but those categories will get finer as the list gets longer. Each item has a number, this is a reference number for development in case you think that change might be causing problems and need to look up more info.

So lets get to it. Changes in nighties since 21.4 released, up to January 8th.

* Some bugfixes have led to a change in the fundementals of how the engine tracks the passage of time. This should ideally not impact actual gameplay, but some bugs related to it have been found already. If you encounter anything wierd that might be timing related or in general things not working that used to, please report them so they can be looked into. (#3878)
* Due to changes in controls handling, loading the January 5th or later build will convert your pilot files to a new format and you will have problems using that pilot in older versions of the engine.  0124 and later should allow your pilots to be loaded in old versions again, but your controls bindings in the old version will be reset to defaults. Before updating to any version after 20220105, back up your save and pilot files.But if you are able to do that, please help test these extensive changes. (#2958)Changes

* The AI will disregard the optimum range values of weapons that are locked out (#3762)
* Support has been added for multiple joysticks as well as saving and loading controls presets seperately from pilots. Multi-joy requires manual editing of configuration files until launcher support catches up (#2958)
* Mods can set their own PXO lobby banners. (#3819)
* The hard upper limit on the number of files FSO can load has been removed. (#3872)
* Custom fonts don't break out of their boxes in multiplayer screens anymore. (#3908)Mission making

* SEXP Containers can now store persistent data across missions (#3462)
* Passive lightning can now be toggled with a ship flag (#3772)
* The game will now detect and warn about ambiguous event and goal name references (#3774)
* New flag "hide-in-mission-log" that prevents events involving that ship from appearing in the player's in-game event log. Can be set with ship-create or alter-ship-flag (#3647)
* show-subtitle and show-subtitle-text now have an optional value to set the spacing between lines (#3765)
* change-iff can now accept a team as it's input and change every ship on that team, even ones not yet arrived. (#3632)
* Improved in-engine documentation for ship-guardian and show-subtitle-image (#3671)
* 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)
* The texture replace sexp can now set animated textures or invisible textures. (#3728)
* new script-eval-bool allows a script argument to return a true or false (#3755)
* New destroy-instantly-with-debris sexp allows the creation of ship debris without any other death effects (#3752)
* The limit of definable IFFs has been removed. (#3634)
* "$Asteroid targets" field in mission files lets you set asteroid targets beside the default.  (#3704)
* "$Closeup Label" field in mission files allows setting of the name used when a ship is clicked on in breifings.  (#3798)POF Models

* New $rotate_accel value in pof submodel properties controls how fast rotations start. Wiki (#3786)Lua Scripting

* InnerRadius and OuterRadius added to the weapon class, allowing scripts to access those table values (#3630)
* New gr.GetColor() function gets the current hud drawing color. (#3687)
* New optional angle parameter added to gr.drawRectangle allows you... draw rectangles at an angle! (#3623)
* new isValid support for gamesound handles (#3743)
* drawImage now accepts an angle in radians to rotate the image by (#3777)
* New OnShipDeathStarted hook which fires before the logic of a ship's death sequence starting, vs OnDeath which activates after that logic. (#3684)
* New 'On Mission About To End' and 'On State About To End' hooks (#3731)
* drawImageCentered and drawRectangleCentered added that allow you to define the position of the center of the thing you are drawing (#3800)
* New getShipList() allows for faster looping over the ships in a mission. Check the generated scripting doocs  (#3660)
* Tables can now store custom data associated with their entries to be accessed in lua. Initial implementation includes weapon and ship tables. (#3699)
* Neb2_awacs mission value can now be read or changed (#3746)
* Custom lua SEXPs can now be defined as receiving and returning references that can be various combinations of ship, wing, team, and waypoint amoung other things, like many built in SEXPs. (#3637)#Tables
AI Profiles

* New "$fighterbay departures use carrier orientation:" and  "$fighterbay arrivals use carrier orientation:", settings make path metadata orientations be relative to the mothership, when otherwise they are relative to the world. These will default to on in mods targeting future versions in game settings. (#3698)
* New Animation.tbl holds new extended animation data for ships, with many new features. See wiki for all the details (#3793)Animation

* 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)Gamesettings/-mod

* A new set of visibility factors for nebula missions has been added. Starting here on the wiki[/url] (#3676)
* New settings allow for a minimum size to weapons and other effects at long range, increasing the visibility of distant combat. Not yet on the wiki, see the github PR for documentation currently. (#3656)
* The default volume levels for new pilots in the gamesettings table are actually used now (#3809)Hud gauges

* New "Use Full Wing Names:" and "Use Expanded Colors:" Hudgauge values show full wing name and recolor icons based on health, respectively. (#3703)Lighting Profiles

* New Lighting_Profiles.tbl allows configuration of the post-processing tonemapper. See wiki for details, and play with the possible settings in the F3 lab. (#3801)Nebula

* Nebula poofs can now use animated maps (#3697)Particles

* New "+Parent Velocity Factor:" lets particles inherit the velocity of the thing they were spawned by (#3691)
* New "$Turret target recheck time:" setting allows control of how often turrets check for new potential targets. (#3803)
* new "$Don't automatically select a turret when targeting a ship:" does as it says to better emulate targeting in FS1. (#3888)Ships

* New set-alpha-multiplier sexp allows ships to be made partly transparent (#3436)
* New '$Wingmen Gauge Dot Override:' sets wingmen status dots on a per-ship class basis. If no animation is specified then the default dot animation specified in the HUD table wingmen gauge is used. Wiki link here. (#3711)
* new '+arrival rvec:' value for path metadata  allows control of incoming ship's orientations (#3698)
* new '$Passive Lightning Arcs:' in ships table allows the definition of lightning arcs on the ship's hull. Wiki. (#3733)Weapons

* New flag "secondary no ammo" allows secondaries to not be ammo restricted (#3589)
* New flag "multilock target dead subsys" forces multilock weapons to keep and acquire locks on dead subsystems (#3614)
* 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)
* New "no evasion" weapon flag makes AI pilots not care try to evade fire from a weapon type. (#3677)
* new '+Target Lock Objecttypes:' option for homing weapons allows weapons to be defined as locking on to only ships or only targetable weapons. (#3588)
* HEAD ON: APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE BITMAP. New laser properties allow effects to crossfade to a second image when viewed from directly ahead or behind. Wiki (#3748)
* Secondaries can now require and consume energy if the $Energy Consumed field is set.  (#3847)Tools

* The cheats to switch weapons now use the weapon's raw table name rather than the displayed name (#3702)

Nyctaeus:
Huh, I guess I missed about 70-80% of new features because they are not listed anywhere. 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.

If you want to maintain such a devblog, I greatly appreciate that :yes:

Asteroth:

--- 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.

Nightmare:
IIRC there was something that prevents subsystem flags from being overwritten by other tbms, don't think they were ever added to the wiki

Kiloku:
Yeah, the changelogs can get a bit technical and the more interesting stuff for certain parts of the community ends up hard to find. Something curated like this is awesome. Thanks ETP!

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