Special Power FRom Shortcut Error

pi314159 · 11-24-2004, 04:21 PM

In my mod, I've now got Officers that can paradrop Reinforcements every few minutes. It works great. Howevever, the game's developed a little glitch that I need some help solving.

Apparantly, the officer's presence on the battlefield causes the normal generals ability (ranger paradrop) to appear constantly ready on the side bar. That is, instead of developing that shroud that gradually disappears over time, it stays lit and appears to be read. Clicking on it turns your cursor into the paradrop icon, but you can't click to call in reinforcements... the timer in the command center works fine, though, and after the 4 minutes are up you can drop the rangers from the shortcut without a problem: the glitch is purely visual. (note, I don't have the officer's paradrop on the sidebar short cut)

Now, I don't know what the problem is, but I have a potential solution... of course, I don't know how to enact this solution. I think the problem might be that the short cut for the ranger paradrop uses the same icon as the command button for the officer's drop and that the engine doesn't like that. If that's the case, simply creatng a duplicate iconaand saving it under another name would solve the problem (if tht IS the problem), but unfortunately, I don't know how to do that.

So... if anyone can offer me any assistence, thanks a bunch!

Vanguard · 11-24-2004, 06:14 PM

It's not the icon, it's the fact that your guy whose special power calls in the drop, uses the same ENUM as the ranger drop, there is no work around for this without reverse engineering, which will break the law and enevidably screw up the game.

pi314159 · 11-24-2004, 07:14 PM

So... What you're saying is that this problem is unsolvable?

CodeCat · 11-25-2004, 04:48 AM

It is unless you can find an unused ENUM that suits your needs...

pi314159 · 11-25-2004, 01:03 PM

Well, what's an ENUM exactly? I know where in the Code it occurs "ENUM = whatever", but what exactly does it do? I think it makes sure icon that sticks on the battlefield as the planes are coming in... but I don't know.

More importantly, where are the unused enums? What are they?

CodeCat · 11-25-2004, 05:41 PM

An ENUM controls the special power itself. It controls things like whether a power starts off charged or not, whether it can be targeted at shouded areas, etc. The game reads all enums and powers, and links them to each other. The problem is that you can't make new enums, so you're stuck with the ones you have. And as you've seen, if two powers with the same enum exist at the same time at any time, they interfere with each other. But it's perfectly valid to use duplicate enums AS LONG AS THEY ARE NEVER EVER USED AT THE SAME TIME.

pi314159 · 11-25-2004, 06:58 PM

I'm afraid this doesn't answer my question... all I know about enums is the one file they are found in.

And I used that enum three times: Once for the standard USA paradrop, once for the Dozer drop (commanded by the officer), and once for the generic reinforcement drop (Also commanded by the office). The officer, in my mod, is not buildible and cannot be generated in any way... there's only 1 per player per game, it spawns with the dozer at the very beginning.

Now, explain this in greater detail, please, or tell me the changes I need to make to the officer drops? (Each faction has it's own officer, each officer has it's own two drops, so that the units and dozer droped match the faction dropping them.)

CodeCat · 11-26-2004, 04:50 AM

What I said, you should make sure all of the powers have unique enums. I don't know which you're currently using, but if two different powers have the same enum, they conflict with each other.

So what you need to do is make sure all the enums are unique, by using some unused ones for the new power.