How could one create a mod, that features a "Kill Counter" for Cap's, Titans, Starbases and/or other units?

from Sins Forums

I always loved this feature in RTS games and very few have it.

In order to make myself more clear, i want a setting that whenever we click on a capital ship, titan, starbase and maybe other units as well and then hover the cursor to the interface icon of that ship, it will also display a number relative to how many units this ship has destroyed. In my opinion it would be a very fun addition to the gameplay, especially in a 4x strategy game of massive scope game like SINS.

What kind of interventions one needs to do to make this happen? How could i make this possible? Could someone share ideas, information as to how could this be done? Would anyone else like this feature?

Thanks in advance!

modding
21,785 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

You will need to petition Ironclad. This is not possible to do with a mod.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Why not? How do you know that? Don't modders have access to the interface code?

 

If you say that, you must know something. I'm completely new to SINS modding. I've just installed Maelstrom mod and that's it.

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

You'd need an output to display, Sins isn't tracking ship kills to begin with, experience for instance is simply shared across all the present capital ships, not dolled out for ships they kill.  There is no kill counter, so nothing to inject into the display even if you could pop stats into it.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting RestlessC0bra, reply 2

Why not? How do you know that? Don't modders have access to the interface code?

The Engine while moddable has many things that are hard coded (i.e. not exposed). I am a modder. No.

Quoting RestlessC0bra, reply 2

If you say that, you must know something. I'm completely new to SINS modding. I've just installed Maelstrom mod and that's it.

The maelstrom mod is very good. Please feel free to try all of them out.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Ah i see. Experience is shared across all caps? That's an odd way to measure experience, isn't it?

I wonder why there's no counter for ship kills? Does anyone have an idea why that is? I mean, why Stardock didn't choose to track exp using kills? I don't think counting destroyed ships is really pressuring on the system, is it? Anyway, just a ponder that i have.

 

 

Quoting ZombiesRus5, reply 4

 

Quoting RestlessC0bra,[quote who="psychoak" reply="3" id="3636900"]
You'd need an output to display, Sins isn't tracking ship kills to begin with, experience for instance is simply shared across all the present capital ships, not dolled out for ships they kill.  There is no kill counter, so nothing to inject into the display even if you could pop stats into it.
  
 
Quoting psychoak, reply 3

You'd need an output to display, Sins isn't tracking ship kills to begin with, experience for instance is simply shared across all the present capital ships, not dolled out for ships they kill.  There is no kill counter, so nothing to inject into the display even if you could pop stats into it.
 
 
 
There has to be a way to count the number of ships destroyed. Isn't some (hardcoded) int variable exposed to us that may permit us to count that?
 
 
Ok. One more question ZombieRus5. If you could answer you'd save me a lot of hassle of reading through all the forums all day (although if i get more into it, i might have to anyway). What are the modding tools used to get into the SINS code? Where do i go get them? And one more thing. Asking your opinion as a modder, since i don't know exactly what's hardcoded and what's not. Would it be possible to write a code fragment (outside of the hardcoded stuff) that permits counting of enemy ships destroyed? Also..
 
 
Anyway, maybe i've gone too technical here, and since i don't know exactly what's going on in SINS code i may have confused someone. If you made out something of what i said, please explain a bit more.
 
Other than this just please point me out to the codding tools Mr. ZombiesRus5, because i want to get into the code and see for myself exactly what's going on.
 
Thanks a lot in advance!
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

there aren't really modding tools... just a program that converts the .bin to text and a command tool to convert .xsi to .mesh.
Everything else is pretty much done by hand (or you can use the eclipse plugin that someone made or whatever)

But generally the majority of Sins modding falls into three categories; texture editing, 3d moddeling and  .ini (text) file editing.

There is a lot of hardcoded stuff we just simply cannot alter. 

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

I've spent somewhere north of three thousand hours turning SOA2's abilities into insane workarounds for AI shortcomings, creating random encounters, self replicating objects, variable abilities, etc.  The ability system is the scripting engine, and you can do great things with it.  Everything else is basically asset replacement.

 

Sins is a locked down system.  You can change everything about appearance, stats, what abilities they have.  You can get crazy and do insane things with abilities like some of us nut jobs have.  You can not change how things work.  You can't make ships have six ability slots instead of five, or make the gui's display things they aren't already designed to read.

 

The various window files have an ordered list that the program reads from.  The event window for instance has the font, duration, and positioning, in that order.  The program won't read anything else.  We have no code injection system, and the mechanisms by which the window files are read are hard coded, ignore this and try to make it do something else and you will simply generate errors.

 

Now, if you want to turn the game into a battle between space unicorns with magic for abilities, complete with miscasting, random impacts, species specific restrictions, etc, you can.  It would probably take you a thousand hours to understand the ability system well enough to get it all done without referring to other works, but the capability is there.

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Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting RestlessC0bra, reply 5

There has to be a way to count the number of ships destroyed. Isn't some (hardcoded) int variable exposed to us that may permit us to count that?
 
 
Ok. One more question ZombieRus5. If you could answer you'd save me a lot of hassle of reading through all the forums all day (although if i get more into it, i might have to anyway). What are the modding tools used to get into the SINS code? Where do i go get them? And one more thing. Asking your opinion as a modder, since i don't know exactly what's hardcoded and what's not. Would it be possible to write a code fragment (outside of the hardcoded stuff) that permits counting of enemy ships destroyed? Also..
 
 
Anyway, maybe i've gone too technical here, and since i don't know exactly what's going on in SINS code i may have confused someone. If you made out something of what i said, please explain a bit more.
 
Other than this just please point me out to the codding tools Mr. ZombiesRus5, because i want to get into the code and see for myself exactly what's going on.
 
Thanks a lot in advance!

pyschoak has given the best explanation. The only scripting available is via the ability/buff system. And that is not a real scripting language. It is more an Action->Command pattern implemented via their configuration file format they use for all entities.

I've also invested thousand of hours into modding sins too and also went as far as to create the Eclipse plugin which helps with entity coding (we say coding but it's not quite that extensive). You can explore the entity structures exposed here http://zombiesrus5.com/wiki/doku.php (Temporary home since google code was shutdown). I wouldn't worry about the eclipse plugin until you invested some time looking at the Sins modding setup.

I also have 21 years of actual software development in C++, Java, etc (post-graduate, yes I'm aging ;) ). I feel quite confident we aren't steering you the wrong way when we say the engine is closed/hard coded and there is no way to create program fragments to interface with the engine.

 

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Ok, i understand. Thanks all for giving me insight into the mechanics of SINS.

I wish Stardock could let us have a peak inside the critical code, just to change, or add a few things. Like.. the one i said. It's such a nice fun addition. I searched for it on google first and didn't find anyone asked this before. Nobody had come up with such a feature before i wonder? Anyway.

 

Quoting ZombiesRus5, reply 8

I also have 21 years of actual software development in C++, Java, etc (post-graduate, yes I'm aging ;) ). I feel quite confident we aren't steering you the wrong way when we say the engine is closed/hard coded and there is no way to create program fragments to interface with the engine.


I'm also looking for post grad programs in computer science right now. I have work to do. : D

Quoting ZombiesRus5, reply 8


I've also invested thousand of hours into modding sins too and also went as far as to create the Eclipse plugin which helps with entity coding (we say coding but it's not quite that extensive). You can explore the entity structures exposed here http://zombiesrus5.com/wiki/doku.php (Temporary home since google code was shutdown). I wouldn't worry about the eclipse plugin until you invested some time looking at the Sins modding setup.

 

 

I will look into it, but this website gives me error 404 not found.. But i found other forums discussing about it, so i'll probably search there. You might want to look on that website. Thanks again.

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting RestlessC0bra, reply 9

I will look into it, but this website gives me error 404 not found.. But i found other forums discussing about it, so i'll probably search there. You might want to look on that website. Thanks again.

A period got put on the end of the URL.

 http://zombiesrus5.com/wiki/doku.php