Unique Items - How to do it.

[aajs]

I am sorry if you all already know how to do this, however its new to me so thought I would post it.

For a while I have wanted two things

1) to be able to unlock manufacture for a time and then lock it again....This cannot be done in the short term.

2) be able to have items unlocked in the weapons view that are not unlimited but cannot be manufactured.

Point 2 is doable.....

The scenario is when you want to return some items from an alien that you want to be recoverable to the weapons view but you don't want to make it manufacturable.... Previously some of us modders get around this by unlocking the item as manufacturable and then making a bit of a story fudge by saying you need some item to make this recovered weapon yourself. (Then make the item something the player cannot recover)..

This is a little weak.....

However my new method is this: .... I will use the Alien plasma pistol as an example as something you might want recoverable to the weapons list.

Basically set the item to normal in items.xml

and go about making in manufacturable as normal and unlock the manufacture as normal when the weapon is researched but this time assign it to a manufacturing category that you will use as a dustbin. (Anything you assign to it will never show in the list.

I am using the spare category called. "AircraftWeapons"

Now in strings.xml add a row and put Manu.AircraftWeapons in the first cell. Then just leave the second cell blank.

According to the modding instructions Manu.AircraftWeapons will now be pulled from the game as the corresponding cell is blank.... And viola now anything unlocked for manufacturing but assigned to Aircraftweapons category will show up in the weapons view but will not have an associated manufacturing entry...

The last little bit to tidy up will be to change the string entry for the ManTech.AlienPlasmaPistol I just type a hyphen so that when the unlocked for manufacturing box appears it looks like there is nothing to manufacture.

I hope that makes sense...

I am using this allow soldiers to recover alien weapons from the battlefield in my upcoming alien items mod.

[SoulFilcher]

Thank you a lot! I was trying to do that for my mod yesterday.

[drages]

I couldn't understand your reason here.. You want to make recoverable alien weapons, right? Then why don't u put a manufacture just need the alien weapon? Do you want to limit this?

[aajs]

I couldn't understand your reason here.. You want to make recoverable alien weapons, right? Then why don't u put a manufacture just need the alien weapon? Do you want to limit this?

not sure how well I explained myself but if I set the weapon to normal instead of uncapped, I need to get it into the weapons view right, however I don't want to actually see a manufacturing step.....because why do I want to manufacture a plasma pistol that I have already recovered.......

[drages]

Aha.. you want it directly in your equipment menu? i see then

[SoulFilcher]

I just tried it and the manufacture entries appear in the menu, within a category with no name. And, when I go to inventory after enabling the alien plasma ammo the game stops responding then closes.

[aajs]

I just tried it and the manufacture entries appear in the menu, within a category with no name. And, when I go to inventory after enabling the alien plasma ammo the game stops responding then closes.

Ahhh two things are happening here.

Firstly I suspect The manufacture entries appear in you menu as ##### because you are not doing this in the modular mod system and just deleted the cell to the right hand side in the original strings.xml. This will just delete the label and you end up with the hashes.

Secondly this is the tricky bit....... The reason the game crashes I think from experience is that you are using the original alien ammo..

which is....ammo.alienplasmacell the weapons view cannot handle that object and will crash... you need to basically set ammo.alienplasmacell to capped in items xml.... and then replace ammo.alienplasmacell in everyother game file that lists it with a new object called ammo.plasma.alienplasmacell. (Note the .plasma. in the middle).

Now you have probably modded other games and therefore may already have your own method, however to make this change quickly across multiple files I use notepad++ and use the find and replace in files option.

Hope that helps

[SoulFilcher]

Ahhh two things are happening here.

Firstly I suspect The manufacture entries appear in you menu as ##### because you are not doing this in the modular mod system and just deleted the cell to the right hand side in the original strings.xml. This will just delete the label and you end up with the hashes.

Even with empty strings I am still able to select the empty category and the empty manufacture in the workshop screen. So this method isn't actually hiding anything.

Secondly this is the tricky bit....... The reason the game crashes I think from experience is that you are using the original alien ammo..

which is....ammo.alienplasmacell the weapons view cannot handle that object and will crash... you need to basically set ammo.alienplasmacell to capped in items xml.... and then replace ammo.alienplasmacell in everyother game file that lists it with a new object called ammo.plasma.alienplasmacell. (Note the .plasma. in the middle).

Now you have probably modded other games and therefore may already have your own method, however to make this change quickly across multiple files I use notepad++ and use the find and replace in files option.

I'll try that, thanks.

[SoulFilcher]

I think I know what happened. XCE 0.33 brought the "AircraftWeapons" category back and now t shows up even with your method. Are there other unused categories?

[aajs]

I think I know what happened. XCE 0.33 brought the "AircraftWeapons" category back and now t shows up even with your method. Are there other unused categories?

No I am using XCE 0.33 and this is working fine for me...

I started a new game just to make sure was nothing in my saved game allowing it to work. But its still fine...

I have not finished my aliens weapons mod yet as I am developing alongside my others however, I can upload what I have if you want so you can take it apart and look at it.

Let me know if that will help and I will sort it out.

[SoulFilcher]

Ohh I see. I think I only need the Strings entries to be sure mine are like yours.