[Decker]

I have installed a mod, i think it's "whiteboy's rules" to see what its like (i love trying tnew mods)..so anyway, it has the most annoying thing, as soon as you build a battle lab, it's a 5 minute countdown until you can drop paratroopers, but they are horribly overpowered - one drop can easily take out a base (theres all sorts of chrono commandos, psi commandos, tanyas, navy seals, etc)...and there's 4 or 5 planes that drop them. It's overwhelming. I haven't ever done much modding...is there a way to just turn off this feature? The closest thing I could find in the Rules ini is the parachute delay. Please help.

[Pirosom]

Take a look at the Battle Lab in the rulesmd.ini, it must have a Superweapon charge attached to it:

[GATECH]
UIName=Name:GATECH
Name=Allied Battle Lab
BuildCat=Tech
Prerequisite=GAWEAP,RADAR,GACNST
Strength=500
Armor=wood
TechLevel=8
Adjacent=2
Sight=6
Owner=British,French,Germans,Americans,Alliance,Ru ssians,Confederation,Africans,Arabs,YuriCountry
AIBasePlanningSide=0 ;gs 0 for Good, 1 for Evil
Cost=2000
Points=85
Power=-100
Capturable=true
Crewed=yes
Explosion=TWLT070,S_BANG48,S_BRNL58,S_CLSN58,S_TUM U60
DebrisAnims=DBRIS1LG,DBRIS1SM,DBRIS2LG,DBRIS4SM,DB RIS5LG,DBRIS5SM,DBRIS6SM,DBRS10LG
MaxDebris=12
MinDebris=6
ThreatPosed=0 ; This value MUST be 0 for all building addons
;DamageParticleSystems=SparkSys,SmallGreySSys,BigG reySmokeSys
DamageSmokeOffset=1500, 1055, 815
AIBuildThis=yes
TogglePower=no
Spyable=yes
ProtectWithWall=yes
ImmuneToPsionics=no ; defaults to yes for buildings, no for others
SuperWeapon=ForceShieldSpecial

Somewhere in this section will be one of the following:

SuperWeapon=ParaDropSpecial
SuperWeapon=AmericanParaDropSpecial
or something beginning with SuperWeapon=, other than SuperWeapon=ForceShieldSpecial.

Just place an ; in front of one of the highlighted tags or delete the entry to disable it, same applies for Soviet / Yuri Battle Lab (if they also charge a paradrop).

[Decker]

Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for....Wow, I didn't think it'd be so easy. How hard is it to make a mod? Assuming you use only the in-game objects and nothing foreign?

[DCoder]

Depends on what do you want to see in the mod... most of the stuff is easy, tell us what you want to have, and we'll tell you how hard it is.

[Infraid]

Grrr... I'm sure to have posted smth here, where did it go ?!?

Anyway. Roughly, here's what I've written :
- if you have only few time before you for modding, you should work only on balancing units/structures...
- else try looking if you can do smth with the hidden (== unused) shp/vxl Westwood left behind..
- finally, there's still the AI to improve.... there's always smth to mod......

[premier89]

The AI needs more than just improving... lol.


I personally started with TibSun, it helped me learn the whole concept. Then I quit using it (too many internal errors), and started using the far superior notepad.

[Renegade]

Simply start by giving the G.I. nuclear warheads.

[Decker]

Well, I want to have some improved A.I. and use some certain and hopefully unused structures to be made part of the tech tree for a side, as in whiteboy's mod...tons of new buildings, but they are probably all found in the game without the mod.

One of the things I'm not quite sure about is RulesMD.ini. The game without mods runs fine without this file, but mods use it apparently. Does the game just look for this and use it if applicable, but go back to basic game if it doesn't find this?

[Kravvitz]

Originally Posted by premier89

I personally started with TibSun, it helped me learn the whole concept. Then I quit using it (too many internal errors), and started using the far superior notepad.

Do you mean TibEd?

I prefer using the "INI Editor 2", but notepad does do the job and you already have it.

Check out the Tutorials and Download sections of this site and my site for information on modding.

Edit: the rulesmd.ini is in the ra2md.mix --> localmd.mix.

Download XCC Mixer to extract it.

[Infraid]

Originally Posted by Kravvitz

Do you mean TibEd?

I prefer using the "INI Editor 2", but notepad does do the job and you already have it.

Actually, the XCC's INI editor is not that bad... That's what I use