[DCoder]

W00T! Congratulations.

The only problem is that it can't be an AI player and it won't be picked up as a "Random" country.

How did you determine that it can't be picked by "Random"?

[Renegade]

ph33r the German modding power.

Congrats, pd! You'll be referenced on boards all over the community from now on.

[Blade]

IMO, adding new countries to allies is a pointless time consuming goal, you will have to reorder all the list which is a pain to do. If you add to soviets, you only have to make their new one out of yuri's side and then add an extra side to take over as yuri and as you have found out, just stick an extra yuri one on the end. I would only consider adding a new country if you have a very good idea for a new side specific unit for that country, but don't want to replace an existing one to implement it. Also, if you want to make a mod where you can still play the single player missions, you will have to edit a number of triggers in every mission that use the country numbers above the added one to make them all correctly reflect the new numbering of the list. I had to do this to make all the RA2 allied missions work in YR. BTW, I'd go for poland to be the extra soviet country since i already have a load screen made for them

BTW, since you are the only person so far to have enough skill in assembly hacking to attempt something like this, any chance you could look into the following things and tell us how feasible they are to fix/enable/make work. and possibly implement them? Bear in mind that this thread will likely become a hive of questions about other stuff that other people want to do but are far more difficult to enable than these probably would since these did work in TS (for the most part). I've grouped them into how feasible I think they are with my understanding:

Very feasible:
Make ThirdSide use sidec03.mix for its sidebars, not sidec02(md).mix files so it can have an independant side bar, but leave Nod having sidec02.mix.

Probably feasible:
Make Ice1Set, Ice2Set, IceShoreSet and TrainBridgeSet terrain tile logics work again. The ice isn't parsed by RA2/YR (it is in TS, can get the TS exe for you if you need to compare) and TrainBridgeSet is replaced by WoodBridgeSet (would need all 3 bridges to work or there is no point). These would need art assets and test maps which I can provide as well as control files such as those used by the TX, infact we wanted to add these to the TX but couldn't.

Maybe feasible:
Recreate the superweapon type 'IonCannon', the effect of the weapon can still be activated by triggers. The same goes for the chemical missle. There are actions that can be used with them to target them.

Enable the Spotlight logic without it causing an IE when used (or maybe just tell us why it casues one and what needs to be done to make it work).

Recreate EMEffect that disables base weapons, vehicle units and cyborg infantry while playing an animation over them.

This one is just for me:
Correct animation position for a third campaign selection button and make an animation play for it. Currently I've got the thrid campaign selection button back from RA2 (the old tutorial campaign), but the soviet campaign button stays where it was originally and overlaps so I had to use blank animations and alter the background image to have fixed buttons in the correct position. I can send you a patcher that will patch the 1.001 exe to have this feature as I currently have it working from using a resource hacker.

BTW, don't feel obligated to mess with any of this stuff, but I think some of these features would be more useful than an extra country.

[Marshall7a]

Your patcher program doesn't work for me - it says 'unknown gamemd.exe version'.
Have you perhaps modified the 1.000 gamemd.exe rather than the 1.001 one?
If so, any chance you can modify the 1.001 file instead (as it's the one most people will want to use) ?


Also, is there any chance of adding an extra InfDeath or two?

[pd]

Woah :O

At first I have to say that I fixed the AI player problems (engineer issues) and the pick by "Random" stuff so new country works completely now.

Patch can be get on my homepage.

@ martyr:
Hm, I dunno why it wouldn't work...
I used 1.001, and for others the patch seems to work...

Only thing I can imagine is that you've installed any other patch except from 1.001, because this one's the only one which is allowed to be installed for my patch to work.

Another possibilty that German and English gamemd.exe are different.
Meh, could you ZIP the exe and send it via eMail so I can make a patch that supports that version also?
I dunno...

The InfDeath stuff, I also thought of that.
Should be possible but I dunno.

In fact, anything's possible, question is how and where to make that.

@ Renegade:
Oh man what am I doing?
Never said only one word in this community and suddenly I come with such a thing... :tard:

Before it's worth to reference me I have to solve the compabilty stuff...
btw does the patch work for you?

@ Blade:
Yep reordering sucks, that's why I just put them at the end of the list...
doesn't look that nice but whoever wants to do the reordering should do it himself...

Poland would be cool,
and if you even got a loading screen already send it and tell me what palette it uses (it's important).
I'll put it into the mod (and credit you of course).

Make ThirdSide use another mix file shouldn't be a big problem,
it's loaded once and then the files are read (at least I think so).
Problem is it would have to modify ra2md.mix also, and ra2md.mix is BIIIIIG...

The other stuff... I'll make a kinda wishlist and look for that later, let me just finish my countries stuff and then I'll care of all those things
I can imagine that many wishes will come... but remember that I'm one only person and that I have to go to school, make homework, meet friends etc also

As just said, nothing of what you listed is impossible,
but finding out how and where to make it is a problem. A huge problem also is that there isn't unlimited space in the exe to add stuff.
I always have to find unused procedures which I can replace.

Adding a button is really feasible because I dunno how to write a proc that reacts on mouseover, click etc.
But would be nice practice...

Anyway for the compability stuff, anyone knows whether there are differences between e.g. English and German exe files?
(I don't think so though, but could be possible)
What size do your exe files have? (my is 4,58MB I think, but not that sure)

[Marshall7a]

I can send you my gamemd.exe (gamemd.exe size is 4.58, compressed self extractor is 1.62)
I've sent it to the e-mail address on your site.

This is truly amazing work so well done pd!
I can't wait to add my new country to the game!

I like your idea of adding 3 new countries to play with - it should be more than enough for modders to do what they wish.

Problem is it would have to modify ra2md.mix also, and ra2md.mix is BIIIIIG...

I would have thought that there wouldn't be a problem just placing sidec03.mix (or whatever it's called) loose in the RA2 folder...
Trouble is, you don't want to include the sidec03 reading in the standard gamemd.exe country patch because it would mean that modders would HAVE to include a whole new sidebar - even if they wanted to stick to the original, soviet copy.
Might be nice to make an alternative patcher that included the new sidebar as well, so that modders can choose.

[Renegade]

@pd: German RA2 is installed on the other (dead) machine, I only got English on this one - I can, however, confirm that the patcher does not seem to work on the English 1.001 gamemd.exe.

[pd]

OK martyr sent me the English file (thanks).

I'll make a patch when I'm at home, but I fear that there could be issues because the English exe will be patched to a German one... :scared: would have to be tested.

If there are issues I think I'm going to get the English version of the game, too.
Problem is I'd have to make my hack again :irked:

[Renegade]

Or keep it exclusive to the German version...modders all over the world would envy us

...if there is actually a difference. Since we've got a big, fat CSF in our langmd.mix, I kinda doubt the exe is different...then again, I'm no l33t hacker. Who am I to guess? :lol:

[DCoder]

Logically, the english version would at least have different "version properties" fields, especially "Language=English (United States)".