Modding questions/answers

[anruca]

I've got a question.
With what program can the Notrium engine be edited with?
Not sure if this is the right place to ask the question but seems right.

[Anonymous1157]

You can't modify the engine itself. The best you could do without paying Ville for a copy of the source is decompiling the game, but if you had to ask in the first place, then you really shouldn't be doing it, not to mention that it's probably copyright infringement to try.

If you are actually referring to mods for the game engine, then you can use Notepad. Just open the .dat files in the mod's directory and edit away. By the same token, if you are actually referring to graphics, you can try GIMP, but don't ask me for help with it. (I hate it.)

[Venom31]

I think I understand why anruca asks this. I myself try to "mod" Notrium, but not the way modding is understood usually. I just tweak (kinda "patch") its .dat files to be more like I'm seeing things right. For example, many item combos make some items with a weight more or less than the initial items had together! So we get excess weight or a weight loss, apparently not satisfying the laws of physics . Also, some items like Warp Gun seem to be too nerfed down, rendering them useless (DO NOT remind me of the Looking Glass, I still don't know what to make of it). And so on and so on... Starting from default controls (which are alright except for hard-coded "E" button) and ending with races' balance. The way the temperature effects are done. But there's nothing I can do with "E" and mouse wheel controlling the weapon change, because it's somewhere "inside". Also, changing that would state a problem "how to change weapons comfortably?" and it all comes into changing the GUI itself making the player be able to set his own hotkeys to weapons and what not, and changing the GUI involves making possible to "craft" items (e.g. set a queue to create 100 sniper bullets, not just one at a time), and..........
AND Notrium no longer changes. So many of these points are "never". Unless a Notrium remake is done on the Driftmoon's engine or what...

[anruca]

That too, but i was wondering if I plan on making a new screen appear that covers the whole view.
Like well something similer to a FAQ but in game and helps you if any problems may accur.

A total new screen with posibly a 3 or 4 sides, one shoud have like a side bar from which you can
choose a group and then it show you a few monsters once you have killed it, and there to be a text
button similer to this "<--- or just close" so you can pick another group.

The other side woud posibly give you information about the monster another one as a view if there
is a picture added of the selected type.

And the last one coud be a view of the planet where it is located.
Something like this if it is posible to add it some way.



Any ideas?

[Venom31]

People were making different invetories, but inventory has fixed look I guess. I really don't think one can make this new screen without adding code to Notrium itself

[Pete]

While you can modify the background image of the inventory, I dont think you can mess with how the inventory itself works.

[Venom31]

Hello. Another dumb question. May I use identifier "holes" to prevent identifier overlaps (e.g. some items group end with 238, and the next group goes on from 300)? If it's OK, how large these "holes" may be? I mean, if items are stored in a list or some map (hash-table), then it's probably not a problem (probably...), while if identifier is an array's index... Such use may induce too much bull^&*%

[Anonymous1157]

IIRC, Notrium supports IDs into the thousands. There have been a few notable cases where a certain group of numbers would tard out in other games and one HAD to skip a few hundred, but this isn't a problem in Notrium. Go crazy with it!

[Amarth]

Mmm. I believe they are indeed stored in arrays, not in hashmaps or anything. Then again, each ID probably adds at most a few hundred bytes of memory requirements (if they're not just 4-byte pointers), so I don't think you should worry too much.

Then again, I'm not promising it works if you skip IDs, but I suppose you can just try that out yourself.

[Venom31]

Thanks for the replies! This would be useful in divide-and-conquer approach. Anyway, first one ought to have some fresh ideas about it...

[INFERNUS]

how to put screen shoots on my topic?

[Anonymous1157]

Upload your image(s) to Imageshack, then copy the first forum-style link it gives you and paste it into your post. You will end up with a nice preview thumbnail which can be clicked to view the full image.

[INFERNUS]

tnx

[K1llercurse]

Ok, i am new to modding, and so far im getting it, exept one thing. Any time i make a new map, i put it in the areas.dat and the maps.dat, but it wont show up once i start, it only has the start area. Any help would be much appreciated, sorry for the newbie question.


Nevermind, i kept looking for threads to answer my question, and i found one. Sorry guys, im new at this.

[Anonymous1157]

That's alright. It's a common problem... Or, rather, it's happened to at least me before. I can't remember what went wrong, but what you've just described annoyed me so much that I had to give up modding after Notrium v1.2 (The last version with the old file format). I regret it terribly.