Warzone 2100 Forums

Many years ago, when Warzone was new, and when N.E.W.S.T. was young and alive, I made a number of mods which still survive in WDG form. I see that guidance exists for converting old map WDGs to WZ files, but not old mod WDGs. I am quite fond of a weapon rebalancing and unit graphics mod I made, known quite simply as the Luke Mod, and am wondering if there is some way to get it to work in 2.0.7.

It is true, some time ago I was the NEWST modder known as RedFive and am the author of the Luke Mod, the 6-shot Bunker Buster, various graphics updates and bugfixes, the Acid Lake 1v1 map, and a few other slightly less notable things. I disappeared in 2001 to pursue Real Life, and I continue to do so, but it brought me great joy to see this favorite old game of mine revived and available for free on the 'net.

So there is my question: How can I convert my old Luke.wdg mod into .wz form, without disassembling and recompiling the whole thing? Indeed even that would be exceedingly difficult for me, because though in my day I was an accomplished modder and PIE artist, it has been over six years since the last time I executed makewdg.exe, and would pretty much have to relearn everything all over again.

Thanks to anyone who may be able to point me in the right direction, or even if someone quite simply tells me it cannot be done. All the same. I suspect that it is either impossible, or otherwise very stupidly easy to do.

Cheers
Luke

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* Hello Luke - Air Force Academy in CO, if I recall.

* Take a gander HERE

* And HERE

* Basically .wdg was replaced by .wz which is a .zip.

* Welcome back.

- RV aka RJ

All right, you remembered, thanks Rman. Indeed, attended and graduated the Academy and have moved on to fly Hogs for the USAF. Many good memories of the old days. It's been too long... though I found a few of my old mods on file servers, the computer I used to build most of them has long since been trashed. Ha ha, it's almost ironic, because the only way I ever heard about WZ in the first place was because when I bought said computer back in 98 it came with a CD of demo games, one of which was the Warzone demo. Hooked immediately. Anyway enough chit chat.

What I gathered from the new mod format, is that the WZ files reflect a collection of files that you could mirror by building folders in the actual Warzone directory, is this right? I also modded and mapped for Half-Life for a time, and there you could make mods either by modifying actual files in the game directories, or compiling all of them into a PAK file. I imagine this may be similar.

Either way, if I find some patience I'll try to figure this out, for old time's sake. That is, as soon as I can rip all the relevant TXT's out of the Luke WDG. Speaking of which, I am going to need to find a copy of WDG Explorer, if that still exists.

I'll be around, from time to time... Anyone else from the old guard still hanging around, maybe under new names? 4ne? Strata? BS? Cowboy? Man, I can't even remember everyone's name anymore.

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* The rest of your mod ?s are answered HERE

* As for Wdg Explorer on Vista - can't help ya there. Don't use it. XP is likely the last Win OS I'll be utilizing..

* Man so much has happened - personally, like a couple major life changes (went from creating demonstrative evidence for litigation & doing ad copy work in N. Calif. to learning the construction trades & working as a General Contractor in Den., CO to currently upgrading municiple networks for many of the major Telcos across the US &, in '08,  Europe....)

* Then there's WZ: source finally liberated & made cross-platform / portable by a host of talented & dedicated *nix & Mac coders..

* Troman is still here - doing some fab work on the A.I. - you should check-out the latest release with his "AiVolution" - very enjoyable & challenging.

* 4nE - Last I heard from him he was involved with the development of a new "Grand Theft Auto" game - "Las Vegas" was the setting and working title.

* Sab - Last I heard he was still working on TWZ  (he did release a "Land Editor" for TWZ which was quite sweet & dedicated to his grand pa.) Also working on his house & retail comp biz.

* Strata - taking a break from WZ & programming to focus exclusively on his art work.

* Cowboy - started his own company & is selling his own security Software & services.... (Direct Games is still his flagship creation) check him out @ his company site: http://www.bitarmory.com

* There's a bunch more but I'm gonna hit the hay.

* We'll TTYL8r, Rman

I checked out one of the nightly builds, ran some AIvolution, interesting! I also enjoyed experimenting with the twin-turret unit idea as well as the various other random semi-documented features in the nightly builds. Strangely, unlike 2.0.7, the nightly build refused to run with any hardware acceleration, instead everything appeared to be software rendered. So major slowdown when I tried to play 1v7 Concrete

And digging through some boxes I even found my old copy of legacy Warzone. Nostalgic...

All right, I have made some headway porting the Luke Mod to be 2.0.7 compatible. Vista was no longer a problem after I remembered that you have to run everything in administrator mode (the game itself runs beautifully fast, better than it ever did on this machine under XP).

I did manage to get my modded unit graphics to show up, but none of the weapons mods. Some snags I ran into. I suppose I could read through every single file in mp.wz to try to figure some of this out, but no need to reinvent the wheel.

> Is there a new standard for the new PNG texpages? Relating to transparency and/or page size? I'm gonna have to rework some graphics, I suspect. Looks like the 0-255-0 Green ain't the transparent mask anymore.

> I ripped "messages," "stats," and "texpages" out of my WDG and after converting the PCX to PNG, zipped it all back up and renamed it Luke.wz. Placed this in the mod\global folder, however the mod will not take effect even when invoked by adding "--mod Luke.wz" to the shortcut. I unzipped the aforementioned folders and placed them in the warzone directory, and "some" of my mod took effect (texpages but nothing else). How do I make it command-line selectable as a .wz file stored in mods\global?

> Has the weapons/bodies/etc textfile standard changed at all? For example, I had an easy fix for the Scorpion+Halftrack/VTOL bug, but I don't know if the file structure works the same way anymore. The other textfiles applied tweaks to the various weapons, example turning HEAP into a thermobaric bomb, increasing the number of bullets in VTOL machineguns, and extending the MRL range to mirror that of the Mortars so that it was actually a cool and useful weapon now. To cut to the chase, none of my txt files took effect whether they were contained in folders in the warzone directory, or embedded in Luke.wz.

> Did we break the old limit on the max number of usable PIEs? Or was it number of texpages? If so, I want to create a bunch of new PIEs. I have had this idea forever. Specifically, I will give each unique chassis its own set of propulsion PIEs, so that the coloration across the unit will look consistent. (currently, all bodies in a certain weight class share the same wheel, track, etc PIEs). Thus, let's say you are player Red, then when you build a Project vehicle, it will have gray body, gray propulsion with red insignia, but if you build a Paradigm vehicle, it will have yellow body, yellow propulsion with red insignia, Collective vehicle will have cyan body, cyan propulsion with red insignia, you get the picture. Instead of just having one set of PIEs for each chassis weight class. BodyPropulsionIMD.txt would allow this sort of mod. I'd also try to shape the PIEs such that the propulsion model more neatly appears to "meld" with the shape of its respective chassis... currently the medium bodies especially seem kind of discontinuous when certain propulsions (like tracks) are applied. I'd also adjust the wheels so they actually look like big honkin' offroad wheels, maybe with some mudflaps and that kind of stuff. And am I the only one that thinks the heavy bodies should be just a touch larger in comparison to the mediums?

> Do you have to build some kind of PIEs for shadows now or are those rendered realtime? I think I know the answer to that question.

> Oh yeah just one more thing. Is there a palette limit on the new PNGs? I hope it's 24-bit. I hated struggling with the restrictive legacy warzone palette. I would even accept a 256-color palette if it could be ANY 256 colors, like Half-Life textures.

I just thought of something, since my mod is for skirmish/MP only, maybe it needn't go in the global folder but somewhere else. I'll mess around with that later. But now, bed. Anyway that is all I have time for this week. It's going to be a busy month coming up for me in real life, but I may drop in here every once in a while. Thanks to anyone who can advise. Cheers
Luke

Lots of questions there, let's see if I can answer some of them...

If it looks like software rendering, it is probably just because I turned off linear filtering for now while we try to solve seam problems when zooming.

The new PNGs can be fully RGBA8888, so no palette restrictions to speak of. The PIE and texpage limits should be increased by a lot now. Shadows are rendered in real-time.

Per wrote:
.............
If it looks like software rendering, it is probably just because I turned off linear filtering for now while we try to solve seam problems when zooming.

* Dang nab-it.... so that is indeed the bugger I was attempting to definine back in Feb. '07 when I deliberately crashed WZ close to 2 dozen times, posted CTD logs, screenies & a score of posts attempting to isolate the precipitating event - it seemed like I was the only one that could generate the CTD thus relegating it to a local issue (though I was able to do it with diff maps on 2 comps.... hmmm.)

* Alas, its good to know there was something objective meriting investigation because it could be a problem for anyone who plays, (esp. in a fast & furious Coop-Mp game )...

- RV

All right.
Here is something else that I think WZ kinda needs. I recognized the need for it way back when I played alpha campaign for the very first time. It is above my pay grade since I am not a coder, else I would have tried to put it in the Luke Mod. If somebody has already brought this up and/or the discussion has already been beaten to death, feel free to kick me in the nuts and disregard.

Designable defense structures.

That's right. What we already have is, every time you get a new weapon, you can immediately design it onto any chassis/propulsion combo that you already have.

Whereas should you want to put this weapon on a hardpoint or bunker, you have to start a whole new research item, even if you already have 10 different kinds of hardpoints.

It stands to reason that if you can stick any weapon on any available chassis without extra research, you should be able to stick any weapon on any available defensive structure without extra research.

Why pay 800 power to research "HPV Hardpoint" when you already know how to build "Medium Cannon Hardpoint?" Couldn't you just rip out the Medium Cannon and put in the HPV, as you would easily be able to do with your Cobra Medium Tank? There is a lot of redundancy and pointlessness in defensive structure research, and it can be eliminated especially because most of them are "dead-end" research items that are not prerequisites for anything. Some will argue that the huge number of research items helps keep players from quickly maxing out the research tree, but my counterargument is that we should instead make the "brand new kind of weapon" research items much more expensive and slow to complete, so that you actually have time to enjoy your weapons, and of course research rate can always be tempered by enacting lower structure limits.

It would require a bit of modification to the design menu, but I think it would be awesome.

Also, the ability to trash old designs means your build menu wouldn't get crowded with 8 different tabs of obsolete structures like Machinegun Guard Tower or Light Cannon Hardpoint.

Thus, you would have the opportunity to research a few different kinds of emplacements as you progressed in the game, and then apply weapons to them as desired.

Examples of defensive emplacements you could get:

Steel Guard Tower - available after you research construction the first time. Cheap and fast to build, but easy to destroy.
Hardpoint and Bunker - available after researching hardcrete.
Hardcrete Tower - if Paradigm and Collective can put lancers and flamers on concrete towers, why can't I? This would be available after a hardcrete upgrade or two, about the time you normally get the hardened sensor tower.
Revetment - for artillery, like the mortar pits.
Sandbag Emplacement - like what you get for AAA and SAMs.
Maybe one other kind of "tall" and one other kind of "low" emplacement. Perhaps even an expensive "double high" tower that would extend the scope range of any radar you mount on it.

And then, you could design any weapon onto any structure you have researched (or sensor dishes on to the "Tall" structures), and each would confer different properties to the final structure (sort of like type matching weapons effects to different propulsions types... what easily kills a concrete bunker may be ineffective against a sandbag emplacement, and vice versa).

That is all, I gotta get back to work... Real life type work.... analyze and discuss, and when I come back, tell my why it can't be done...

That's an excellent idea. I've also thought about that. And I guess it's not hard to implement.

Luke wrote: > Has the weapons/bodies/etc textfile standard changed at all? For example, I had an easy fix for the Scorpion+Halftrack/VTOL bug, but I don't know if the file structure works the same way anymore. The other textfiles applied tweaks to the various weapons, example turning HEAP into a thermobaric bomb, increasing the number of bullets in VTOL machineguns, and extending the MRL range to mirror that of the Mortars so that it was actually a cool and useful weapon now. To cut to the chase, none of my txt files took effect whether they were contained in folders in the warzone directory, or embedded in Luke.wz.

These are all txt files changes:
http://wiki.wz2100.net/modding_mapping:txt_files