Subset Games Forum

In writing new features for the upcoming v12 edition of the ComaToes Profile/SavedGame Editor, I included the ability to steal a nearby ship, replacing your current one.

Setting an arbitrary ship isn't possible yet. But I thought modders would be interested in the fact that any ship, friend or foe, can potentially be flown by using a custom continue.sav file (bypassing the hardcoded selection of nine ships).

That is intriguing indeed...
It would be amazing to write scenarios where you commandeer enemy ships.

Vhati wrote:In writing new features for the upcoming v12 edition of the ComaToes Profile/SavedGame Editor, I included the ability to steal a nearby ship, replacing your current one.

Setting an arbitrary ship isn't possible yet. But I thought modders would be interested in the fact that any ship, friend or foe, can potentially be flown by using a custom continue.sav file (bypassing the hardcoded selection of nine ships).

But you would need new sprites and .xml/.txt files, right? I have most of these done for enemy ships, if that helps this project...

Whale Cancer wrote:But you would need new sprites and .xml/.txt files, right?

Nope. I cruised around in a Rebel Rigger for a few beacons without modding at all.
I only changed the continue.sav to say that was my ship instead.

Once I add a GUI dialog to arbitrarily set the player's ship, this'll mean modders can create lots of new ships and intend for them to be player controlled, by distributing custom saved games at sector 1.


* Technically, modding to add "img/ship/X_floor.png" and "img/ship/X_shields1.png" for each would be desirable to avoid giant yellow triangle stand-in images that appear in their absence. But ignoring that cosmetic issue, the enemy ships are playable without editing the game's resources.

Vhati wrote:

Whale Cancer wrote:But you would need new sprites and .xml/.txt files, right?

Nope. I cruised around in a Rebel Rigger for a few beacons without modding at all.
I only changed the continue.sav to say that was my ship instead.

Once I add a GUI dialog to arbitrarily set the player's ship, this'll mean modders can create lots of new ships and intend for them to be player controlled, by distributing custom saved games at sector 1.


* Technically, modding to add "img/ship/X_floor.png" and "img/ship/X_shields1.png" for each would be desirable to avoid giant yellow triangle stand-in images that appear in their absence. But ignoring that cosmetic issue, the enemy ships are playable without editing the game's resources.

Questions arise regarding the naming of ship and crew, but aside from that I am in love with this idea.

Kieve wrote:Questions arise regarding the naming of ship and crew, but aside from that I am in love with this idea.

v12 of the tool will edit the state of the ship and crew as well.
Name it, man it, arm it, upgrade it, burn it, breach it, etc, however you want.

Oh, for players who get someone's mod?
Yeah, it'd require the editor to customize the names as would have been done in the hangar.

Let's see...

You cannot pop-up a dialog in sector1 that lets you pick your new ship; continue.sav gets deleted after you're 'done with it' (start a new game, go to hangar etc) ...

Grognak made this modmanager for easier distribution and you guys want to make a step back and start distributing hacked savegames?!? Which further serve no real purpose as there is no point in driving one of the AI ships? They're sideways for starters.

We could've trivially converted any of these ships to playable earlier, how does hacking a savegame alter that fact OR extend your initial selection of 9/18 ships? The only way a hacked savegame becomes a mod is if it is saved using a mod - but trying to run a savegame that runs mod combination XYZ on a game that has mod combination XYA will crash the game because of missing/colliding assets.

Hacked savegames have always been a poorman's mod. It takes about the same time to write a mod as it does to hack a savegame.

shark wrote:Which further serve no real purpose as there is no point in driving one of the AI ships?

Read the thread title.

shark wrote:They're sideways for starters.

The stock ships that the original FTL devs intended to spawn have a vertical layout. I'm not aware of any technical reason modders can't create horizontally oriented non-hangar ships that do not spawn, specifically to be used in custom saved games when hangar space is exhausted.

Besides that, why do you think vertical ships would be a problem in the first place?

shark wrote:Grognak made this modmanager for easier distribution and you guys want to make a step back and start distributing hacked savegames?!?

Managers exist to distribute whatever resources mods tend to require. If saved games are useful to modders, a manager can be extended to cover them.

shark wrote:We could've trivially converted any of these ships to playable earlier

Doing so uses up limited hangar space. See the title.

shark wrote:how does hacking a savegame [...] extend your initial selection of 9/18 ships?

The FTL engine can give the player control of ANY ship in the game. The 9-ship hangar menu is just an in-game GUI to set one from a short list when a new game is created, but there's no technical restriction that makes those 9 special. A saved game can be modified afterward to override that to become anything in blueprints.xml or autoBlueprints.xml, a significantly longer list of options.

shark wrote:The only way a hacked savegame becomes a mod...

This rant is not relevant. I never claimed editing continue.sav is itself a mod. I said modding possibilities can be extended by doing so.

In clarifying how the basic ship stealing trick works out of the box, I mentioned modding isn't necessary to make a non-hangar ship playable. The trick by itself is a proof of concept. Or possibly a challenge for someone wanting to play the game in a restricted vessel.

shark wrote:It takes about the same time to write a mod as it does to hack a savegame.

Hack a savegame? I've already written the editor that can manipulate every aspect of a ship in any given save game in minutes.

shark wrote:Hacked savegames have always been a poorman's mod.

A traditional mod covers resources, defaults, and scripted events. A saved game controls the runtime state of the game. Each can do things the other can't.

shark wrote:continue.sav gets deleted after you're 'done with it'

Yes. And any mod/manager that incorporated custom saved games would include the means to copy a new one the mod provides as a starting point (there may be several to choose from).

shark wrote:trying to run a savegame that runs mod combination XYZ on a game that has mod combination XYA will crash the game because of missing/colliding assets.

A mod that appends a new non-hangar ship and includes a saved game that flies that ship, will avoid colliding with other mods that do the same, or mods that fight for hangar assets.

There's no reason to use a saved game that depends on custom assets in the absence of said assets.

Vhati wrote:

shark wrote:It takes about the same time to write a mod as it does to hack a savegame.

Hack a savegame? I've already written the editor that can manipulate every aspect of a ship in any given save game in minutes.

idunno.jpg

Vhati wrote:

shark wrote:Hacked savegames have always been a poorman's mod.

A traditional mod covers resources, defaults, and scripted events. A saved game controls the runtime state of the game. Each can do things the other can't.

True. There is beauty in cracking the file format of a savegame. But my point still stands

Vhati wrote:

shark wrote:continue.sav gets deleted after you're 'done with it'

Yes. And any mod/manager that incorporated custom saved games would include the means to copy a new one the mod provides as a starting point (there may be several to choose from).

This is the real reason I posted again. You're right, I didn't think about this. This makes it worth it

Vhati wrote:

shark wrote:trying to run a savegame that runs mod combination XYZ on a game that has mod combination XYA will crash the game because of missing/colliding assets.

A mod that appends a new non-hangar ship and includes a saved game that flies that ship, will avoid colliding with other mods that do the same, or mods that fight for hangar assets.

And why not pursue a way to increase hangar size?

shark wrote:

Vhati wrote:

shark wrote:Hacked savegames have always been a poorman's mod.

A traditional mod covers resources, defaults, and scripted events. A saved game controls the runtime state of the game. Each can do things the other can't.

True. There is beauty in cracking the file format of a savegame. But my point still stands
[...]
And why not pursue a way to increase hangar size?

I was under the impression that this was one of the hardcoded limits modders have grudgingly had to live with. I was already writing the editor for fun and happened to stumble across the stealing trick, so I thought it worth mentioning that there will soon be a way to circumvent that particular limit.

In an ideal world, the hangar size would've been moddable to begin with. And had the engine supported in-game cutscenes, there'd be an excuse to script hull breaches and such into events and make it unnecessary to set game state variables' values directly. In the sense that a saved game is a workaround for mod-crippling dev oversights, I can understand the use of "poorman's X".

I disagree if you mean underpowered and sloppily-implemented method made redundant by other more sophisticated means.
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