Wow. I did not know the vehicle numbering in UA was this nuanced. I guess it makes sense though, as 132 is a big leap away from 62, so perhaps it was not an arbitrary choice.
There is also the viewangle parameter in the LDF which controls the in-plane orientation of the camera, so the matrix elements might be for something else.
This appears to be a more subtle issue than I remember.
I first tried setting all of the robo_data_slot parameters to 0 for every robo, and the game loaded fine. However I noticed that after doing so, the game ignored the robo camera that I set up on the Sulgogar Queen (which does not normally have one). After resetting the data_slot parameter to its usual value of 5, the camera returned. So it appears that the parameter has *some* function.
I then tried adding new robos one by one (Turantul 3, 4, 5, ...) and got up to 14 with the game still loading (which would make around 18 total robos in that script) and also tried it with/without a modified net_ypa that didn't call the network scripts (instead calling the single player scripts) and the game still runs. I did not edit the actual net_robos script to remove the ones defined there.
Just for reference, I'm usually starting the game from the Ua_xp.exe, but vanilla UA also loads fine.
I'll update further if I manage to break it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That's an interesting suggestion. I have not but I'll give it a shot when I finish the rest of the designs. I suppose there's really no reason for the net robos to be in the game. I'll follow up later on this.
Okay thanks for your response. Maybe it would be best for me to explore implementing skies in OpenUA, since I think some of the skies will look bad in the standard color palette anyway.
If you could give me some examples of the types of objects OpenUA supports, that would help me. Also is there any documentation in OpenUA on this topic? I may have missed it, and I wasn't aware it even had this capability until recently.
This is great to see. At one point, opening these files was something that could only be dreamt of.
After playing around with it a bit, I do have a question. I'm interested in adding new skies into the game. Is there a way to replace the sky images in the base files and save a new file (say I wanted to edit 1998_01.bas and swap the image out with some different .png's)? I didn't see an obvious way to do that but let me know if I missed something. I'm less familiar with this part of the game.
I did see an example on the discord where someone made a 3D .obj file with a new sky and added it in UA Open, but trying to make my own version led me down a rabbit hole about how to edit those files.
Thanks for your reply. I actually was asking about the number of robos that can be stored in a script, since I recall hitting a limit there as well (the game would crash when running the .exe). It's good to know the data_slot parameter doesn't play into it.
Since the stations I want to make are one-offs, I'll probably change them on a level-by-level basis as I originally intended, but I'll keep your suggestion about making a new startup script in mind. That never occurs to me for some reason.
I have a situation where I need more robos than the game allows (which I believe is a max of 8 - I can't recall the exact number, but I do remember the game crashing in the past if I added too many). I'd like to have the host stations of a couple of factions change forms depending on the level.
My approach was to define the host station in the level itself and have it take a slot that wasn't being used by something else (I'm not using the Turantul I or Target Host Station so those would be good picks for removal).
However, on closer inspection of the host stations in the robos.scr file, I noticed that the black sect and resistance station shares slot 0, and the Turantul I and Target station share slot 3, so now I'm a bit confused on what the parameter is for.
I also had the thought of just writing over an already existing robo in the LDF file (e.g. making a new_vehicle 58) but I ran into issues where not all of my changes showed up correctly. It seemed to be a mixture of what I wrote and another station that wasn't even the one I was writing over.
My questions are basically:
- How many stations does the game support?
- Does each station need a unique robo_data_slot parameter, and if not, what does it do?
- Is there a better way to add more stations than the game allows than adding them in the ldf file for that level only? There's a certain group that will show up in multiple levels, but I also have a couple of factions that will have a different variant between levels.
Thanks.
Sounds exciting. Must be the season for upgrades as the synchrotron our group uses (the Advanced Light Source) is going dark soon for a few years for similar reasons.
Hey folks. Glad to see the community still exists. I haven't had much time to work on UA the past five years but I am trying to get back into it again. I've had an idea for a short but sweet Sulgogar campaign that I'd like to make (a real one this time, not the one I made way back that was basically a reskin of the resistance campaign).
Hope everyone is doing well.
