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How to use a mod with the vanilla/WA campaigns?

vanilla wa campaign

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#1 FraktalTMG

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Posted 06 January 2019 - 08:09 PM

While I'm not very experienced at it, I've been tinkering around with a personal mod project for unifying and standardizing unit/structure stats and tech trees between vanilla, Winter Assault and Dark Crusade, possibly Soulstorm as well once I get there, using the DC Bugfix mod (and Dawn of Skirmish) as a base. Among other things; the list of changes I want to make is very long (as in, the changelog is a 1400-line text file already and new ideas keep coming to me all the time) and I won't bore you with it.

 

Anyway, I'd also like to use the opportunity to fix some bugs I've noticed in the vanilla and WA campaigns. Problem is, if I actually load the mod, the game doesn't load the campaigns into the UI. The warnings.log file only contains a "Warning: Skipping MOD 'w40k' campaign 'DATA:SCENARIOS\SP\dawnofwar.camp'" and if I extract this file using Corsix, the warning goes away but the campaign still doesn't load, even though there is no warning or error message that doesn't also appear when I'm loading the unmodded game. What is forcing the game to not load the campaign? Do I need to dump the entire Scenarios/SP folder or something?



#2 Kasrkin84

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Posted 06 January 2019 - 08:37 PM

For vanilla Dawn of War you'll need to edit data/scenarios/sp/dawnofwar.camp so that the line ModName = "W40k" is changed to whatever your mod is called (i.e. the name of your .module file). You will also need to copy the Movies folder from W40k into your mod's folder.

 

Some elements of the WA campaign (specifically the frontend menus and the mission loading screens) are hardcoded to only work properly when using the WXP "mod" (i.e. the unmodded game), so editing data/scenarios/sp/wxp_disorder.camp and data/scenarios/sp/wxp_order.camp to change ModName = "WXP" to your mod might not work 100% for these elements. You'll also need to copy the Movies folder from WXP into your mod folder.



#3 FraktalTMG

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Posted 06 January 2019 - 09:45 PM

Oh, that's good stuff. Thanks, I've been looking for this info for years.

 

You'll also need to copy the Movies folder from WXP into your mod folder.

 

For the record (and in the name of contributing to community knowledge), there's an alternate solution for that in Windows 8 and above via the command line:

mklink /J .\Movies ..\[whichever expansion the mod is using; in this case, WXP]\Movies

Powershell equivalent:

New-Item -Name Movies -Type Junction -Value ..\[whichever expansion the mod is using; in this case, WXP]\Movies

Executing this from the mod's folder makes it so that whenever the game is trying to read the mod's Movies folder, an NTFS directory junction seamlessly redirects it to the unmodded game's Movie folder. I've tested it on Dark Crusade and can confirm that the game doesn't notice the difference and reads the cinematics just fine, while you save several hundred megabytes of disk space (per mod, if you'd have copied the Movies folder to each one).

 

 

This also works for savefiles, allowing multiple mods to use the same saves (if the mods' content is cross-compatible, of course) for testing (or cheating) purposes.


Edited by FraktalTMG, 01 March 2019 - 11:24 PM.


#4 Industrial_Strength

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Posted 06 January 2019 - 11:53 PM

Oh, that's good stuff. Thanks, I've been looking for this info for years.
 

You'll also need to copy the Movies folder from WXP into your mod folder.

 
For the record (and in the name of contributing to community knowledge), there's an alternate solution for that in Windows 8 and above:
 

 
mklink /J .\Movies ..\[whichever expansion the mod is using; in this case, WXP]\Movies

 
Executing this in a command prompt from the mod's folder makes it so that whenever the game is trying to read the mod's Movies folder, an NTFS directory junction seamlessly redirects it to the unmodded game's Movie folder. I've tested it on Dark Crusade and can confirm that the game doesn't notice the difference and reads the cinematics just fine, while you save several hundred megabytes of disk space (per mod, if you'd have copied the Movies folder to each one).
 
This also works for savefiles, allowing multiple mods to use the same saves (if the mods' content is cross-compatible, of course) for testing (or cheating) purposes.
To quote a new member...

Oh, that's good stuff. Thanks, I've been looking for this info for years!

That's my response to your post, 😁
Very useful information! For myself in any case; as I was unaware.

I'll have to look more into available commands; it's been quite long since my Tandy DOS days. 😉

I look forward to using this to save some space when I finally get my new system up, running & begin the tedious process of getting DOW SS up & going with the large # of mods & such involved. Unification alone is a quite the compilation of mods; let alone any alternative art, etc. that one may use.

However; I digress as usual! My apologies!

I just wanted to say thank you for this useful information! As I can think of multiple uses for this just with DOW; let alone other games & programs!

It seems like it will be a useful trick for many game's mods & the like; based on Googling the command. As well as some other handy uses.

Much obliged for bringing it to my attention. Thanks! 👍
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#5 FraktalTMG

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Posted 07 January 2019 - 11:34 AM

You're welcome. FYI, though, do not use a directory junction to point a mod's Locale folder at the unmodded Locale folder if the game is complaining in the log that it cannot find UCS files for the mod. It won't prevent the game from loading, but it will cause the game to complain in the log that even though it can see UCS files for the mod, it cannot load them because they're overlapping with the unmodded originals (since it's the exact same file loaded twice).



#6 Kasrkin84

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Posted 07 January 2019 - 12:03 PM

Oh, that's good stuff. Thanks, I've been looking for this info for years.

 

You'll also need to copy the Movies folder from WXP into your mod folder.

 

For the record (and in the name of contributing to community knowledge), there's an alternate solution for that in Windows 8 and above:

 

 

mklink /J .\Movies ..\[whichever expansion the mod is using; in this case, WXP]\Movies

 

Executing this in a command prompt from the mod's folder makes it so that whenever the game is trying to read the mod's Movies folder, an NTFS directory junction seamlessly redirects it to the unmodded game's Movie folder. I've tested it on Dark Crusade and can confirm that the game doesn't notice the difference and reads the cinematics just fine, while you save several hundred megabytes of disk space (per mod, if you'd have copied the Movies folder to each one).

 

This also works for savefiles, allowing multiple mods to use the same saves (if the mods' content is cross-compatible, of course) for testing (or cheating) purposes.

 

I actually use this method myself. Just thought I'd keep things simpler though.

 

Plus, if you want to share this mod with other people then the directory junction wouldn't work.



#7 FraktalTMG

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Posted 09 January 2019 - 12:40 AM

Observation: the latest version of Dawn of Skirmish that works for the vanilla game (1.40) crashes at the beginning of mission 4 (a couple of seconds after the first objective is completed and the player's starting base is dropped) with a fatal AI error due to squad_ai:GetStats() returning nil when a unit counting script tried to GetSquadName() on it. Included a nil check for GetStats() into the if block around the erroring code, no more errors for the rest of the mission and the AI remained in working order. I wonder what caused it? Four AIs got activated according to the log, could one of them have been the cutscene Chaos guys who don't have anything?



#8 Kasrkin84

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Posted 09 January 2019 - 11:00 AM

The Dawn of Skirmish AI will always return an error if any of the players in a game are set to "npc_race". You can fix this by changing them to something else, like "space_marine_race".

 

EDIT: At least, this is the case for the Soulstorm version. I can't say for definite if this is also the case in vanilla DoW.


Edited by Kasrkin84, 09 January 2019 - 11:01 AM.


#9 FraktalTMG

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Posted 23 January 2019 - 12:57 AM

Question. Why does Orbital Bombardment get interrupted if the Force Commander is killed after he finished casting? As in, he completes the animation, finishes standing still, starts responding to my orders, then gets killed... and the bombardment instantly stops, playing some of the remaining beam animations but without blasts. He already completed the casting, so what's going on? I literally lost count of how many times I've seen this happen. Hell, I've even seen it being canceled when another member of the squad he's attached to got hit with a knockdown weapon!

 

Granted, it's vanilla instead of DC or SS and was likely patched in those, but still.

 

 

On an unrelated note... by the Emperor's gold-plated underpants, vanilla's Unholy Ceremony mission on Insanity with Dawn of Skirmish is brutal. I thought Sacrifice was bad with the full-cap army spawned behind my base when I crossed the bridge in addition to the other side of the bridge literally being packed wall-to-wall with so many Eldar it took me four hours to finish and must've lost an entire company right there. But Unholy Ceremony definitely takes the cake with the AI's love of missiles and Obliterators rendering any attack not backed by massed artillery pointless, to say nothing of the infinitely respawning half-a-dozen Defilers, all of whom individually out-DPS an unupgraded Predator. I'm watching an unmodded Hard LP and the difference is huge. It's like Hyperion Peaks all over again. Hats off to the DoS team.

 

On the other hand, the AI is much less aggressive with vehicles. Unmodded, I remember a huge full-cap blob of Looted Tanks on mission 3 and a constant stream of Vypers and Fire Prisms on mission 6 but with DoS, the AI is still making them but no longer massing them. Granted, this is only version 1.4, but still.

 

Anyway. I discovered that back-porting Dark Crusade stats into vanilla is made significantly easier by dumping both versions of each unit into a file and using Notepad++ with the Compare plugin to diff them. But considering how many units, structures, weapons, abilities, upgrades, etc. there are in the game, it's going to take quite a while. As a matter of fact, I'm a mite conflicted whether I should use Dark Crusade or Soulstorm as a source for updating vanilla & WA stats, seeing as I never played Soulstorm. Which one is more balanced (or at least having less stuff like the BS-tier Defilers of vanilla)?

 

I already figured out that if I want to do everything I intend to put into the mod, I have no choice but to edit the mission scripts (tech tree unlocks and scripted dialogue) as well, since Gabriel talking about Missile Launchers in mission 2 is kinda silly if the tech tree won't allow it for at least four more missions (since I split Marines into Tacticals and Devastators, I'm not letting the player have Devastator Marines until mission 3 and they need a Fortress Monastery to equip missiles, which in turn isn't available until mission 6, which in turn also requires me to restrict the AI from building Killa Kans in mission 2 to actually make it doable on higher difficulties). Which reminds me... is the "squad can choose between multiple leaders" functionality (IG Command Squad, Fire Warrior Squad and O'Kais have that, off the top of my head) exclusive to WA and later, or does the vanilla build already support it? And if it does, can the squad's default entity type be one of the leaders in such a way that the game lumps them together rather than treating the starter as a regular, reinforcable squad member? I know the IG Command Squad doesn't consider the General as a regular member, but I'm still asking. To elaborate, I was originally thinking of combining Terminators and Assault Terminators into a single unit of three Terminators plus a single Assault Terminator leader (who not only does his thing in melee but also reduces incoming ranged damage for the squad, in order to make his presence worthwhile even in a shooty squad), but now I'm considering using the multiple-leaders option to let the player pick squad composition.



#10 Gambit

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Posted 23 January 2019 - 01:38 PM

Why does Orbital Bombardment get interrupted if the Force Commander is killed after he finished casting? As in, he completes the animation, finishes standing still, starts responding to my orders, then gets killed... and the bombardment instantly stops, playing some of the remaining beam animations but without blasts. He already completed the casting, so what's going on? I literally lost count of how many times I've seen this happen.

Once the entity responsible for an ability is dead, ALL its abilities end (usually when the next ability refresh time interval kicks in).

It is engine-based, as the EntityID is attached to its abilities. There are some workarounds, but NOT with abilities such as the Orbital Bombardment, I am afraid.

Hell, I've even seen it being cancelled when another member of the squad he's attached to got hit with a knockdown weapon!

This is clever/fluffy design! I totally approve this as it gives an extra kick to certain weapons, AND it is very realistic. Even in Role Playing Games (like D&D), there is a consentration check when a wizard casts a spell  :p 

Granted, it's vanilla instead of DC or SS and was likely patched in those, but still.

This has not changed with the expansions, too engine-intrinsic to modify.

... Which means that what  I said above is the same for all Dawn of War 1 games.

 

 

Difficulty/AI

Well, this is the Achilles Heel of the game, and in a so arried and diverse game, opinions can only be... Subjective. :mellowthumbsup:

I myself have some complaints - and we were talking with Thud about an AI re-vamping. But it is TOO time-demanding, and at this point we want to focus on Race Mods. Regrettably, this will not change.

Still, the DoWAI version is very effective and much more cruel that the standard AI!

 

 

Which one is more balanced (or at least having less stuff like the BS-tier Defilers of vanilla)?

Most, claim that DC was the best expansion/game, balance included.

As for me, Soulstrom is the only way.

 

 

... is the "squad can choose between multiple leaders" functionality (IG Command Squad, Fire Warrior Squad and O'Kais have that, off the top of my head) exclusive to WA and later, or does the vanilla build already support it? And if it does, can the squad's default entity type be one of the leaders in such a way that the game lumps them together rather than treating the starter as a regular, reinforcable squad member? I know the IG Command Squad doesn't consider the General as a regular member, but I'm still asking.

I do not know the answer to that, sorry.

Soulstorm is the only game I have "exhaust" my modding frenzy :p


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#11 FraktalTMG

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Posted 23 January 2019 - 05:09 PM

I'm preferentially trying to avoid modding anything that requires 3D editing. For example, I'd really like to have SM and Chaos turrets use both weapons at once (that is, hardpoint 1 slot 1 stays as bolter, hardpoint 1 slot 2 empty, hardpoint 2 slot 1 gets a dummy weapon, hardpoint 2 slot 2 gets the missile launcher and the addon increments hardpoint 2 instead of 1) and have done it in Corsix just fine, it's just that I think the entire turret is replaced by the addon, not just the barrels, resulting in the missiles materializing out of thin air while the bolter is blazing away.

 

Another technical limitation I ran into was attempting to combine the Chaos Predator's WA and DC weapons in such a way so that the WA weapons are added on by a global research, the DC weapons are manual upgrades with the same global research as prerequisite (the engine does not allow manual and automatic upgrades on the same unit, unfortunately).

 

Anyway. What about the "corpse gets back up where it died instead of spawning anew" feature the Necrons have? Was that introduced in the WA build or was it in vanilla too? Because I thought it would be neat if every commander could do that, not just the Necron Lord. Mostly as a convenience feature for the player.

 

Also, speaking of abilities. Is it possible to set an ability to start on cooldown instead of immediately ready to go the moment the unit pops out of its production structure?



#12 fuggles

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Posted 24 January 2019 - 07:32 AM

If it's a flagship feature of a race that came with an x-pack then it was added for the x-pack. We'll be back and multiple commanders were both for winter assault.

#13 Gambit

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Posted 28 January 2019 - 05:25 PM

Sorry for the late reply, there was a medical emergency in my family (under control, but still ... unsettling)

 

Anyway. What about the "corpse gets back up where it died instead of spawning anew" feature the Necrons have? Was that introduced in the WA build or was it in vanilla too? Because I thought it would be neat if every commander could do that, not just the Necron Lord. Mostly as a convenience feature for the player.

I am not sure when, but remember that it requires a "get buck up" anim, which meant it requires 3D work.

Also, this is a Necron feature, so I do not think it should be added to other races...

Only miraculous intervention is similar (SoB).

 

Also, speaking of abilities. Is it possible to set an ability to start on cooldown instead of immediately ready to go the moment the unit pops out of its production structure?

I have not achieved this so far. I have bested MANY AE challenges and limitations, but this eludes me so far.

At the moment, I need this for Witch Hunters as well, so I will give it a second shot.

See, there is an ability of a new Saint unit (brother Kekoulis'es courtesy, as always!) and I need to utilise it.

So hold on, I may find a solution. It WON'T be easy, though.

 

(Off-topic: Did I mention that we now have... THREE saints in the WH project??)


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#14 FraktalTMG

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Posted 04 February 2019 - 07:19 PM

Okay. Ran a quick test of Dawn of Skirmish under Winter Assault and it's super laggy. Like, constant 32 FPS. Match lasted 50 minutes, during which warnings.log produced 20000 "info is null:false bad ability name" errors. Is this the mod or something in the base game? Or is it my CPU (quad-core 1.1 GHz), seeing that even the main menu only pulls 45 FPS?



#15 Gambit

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Posted 04 February 2019 - 07:40 PM

Hmmm.... The "info is null:false bad ability name" type of error is absolutely normal, and it is related to the game updates done to the STEAM version. It is of no consequence.

 

As for the lagging, remember that the game utilities ONLY ONE core ( :sad2:), so this "demotes" your CPU to a merely 1.1GHz one...

And it CAN be the reason.

Note that even on a strong PC, the game is very demanding, at times. Especially MEM-wise (sometimes, even 6GBs are not enough!!)

 

So, I can only suggest the obvious... Upgrade your drivers, defrag... Etc.

Otherwise your CPU is the first component to address.


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#16 FraktalTMG

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Posted 04 February 2019 - 07:42 PM

Just updated my drivers a few days ago (to the extent that I had to Alt-Tab out of the game to check if it was running on the correct GPU) and it's a laptop, so a CPU upgrade is no-go.

 

That being said, the AI pulled some rather... nonstandard behavior. I just finished capturing a Critical Location when the AI charged in with a Falcon and a Seer Council, uncaptured the Critical Location as my entire army (which at that time was two full squads and a commander) was standing next to it and shooting at them, then ran away. I was like "...what in the Warp was that? What was it trying to achieve there?"


Edited by FraktalTMG, 04 February 2019 - 07:47 PM.


#17 Gambit

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Posted 04 February 2019 - 07:45 PM

Dammit...

Then, try using lower quality textures. The game has 3 options.

It may not change anything but it DOES worth the try.

Especially, if your Laptop does not have a dedicated GFX card.


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#18 FraktalTMG

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Posted 04 February 2019 - 09:57 PM

It has a dedicated card, actually. Hence why I was checking if it was running on the proper one, as I already encountered one old game that cannot detect the dedicated card due to Optimus (that is, the monitor is physically plugged into the integrated card and the dedicated card writes its output into the integrated card's framebuffer, resulting in the dedicated card only kicking in if the driver thinks I need it and this behavior cannot be overridden by any means) and thus absolutely refuses to run on anything but the integrated card, which produces an unplayable framerate unless I go OpenGL, in which case I get a playable framerate with graphical artifacts.

 

But this shouldn't affect DoW, as the Nvidia tray app says the executable is using the dedicated card (more specifically, that the card is being used by two programs, the DoW executable and Steam). And this laptop isn't old (bought it new a bit more than two years ago) and the dedicated card has enough power behind it to run the likes of Supreme Commander and XCOM on full graphics at 1600x900, so it shouldn't even break a sweat with a game as old as DoW.

 

Likely not a RAM issue either, as I'm packing 4 GB.

 

For what it's worth, the stuttering appears to be periodic, occurring about 4-5 times per second in even intervals, but the game is fluid between them. Persistent bodies is completely turned off.



#19 fuggles

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Posted 05 February 2019 - 05:18 PM

Sounds like the old ai bug. Are you using latest Dawn of skirmish?

#20 FraktalTMG

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Posted 05 February 2019 - 08:47 PM

1.95 is the latest for Winter Assault.





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