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The Lore+ project


Max_Caine

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Fair enough. Anyway, I had quite a bit of time at work to think about what to do with psychic powers. I have made this resolution: I will not be going the midiclorian route. Psychic powers should be strange and mysterious. There should be theories, suggestions, postulations, crazy ideas even, but there should not be a concrete description of how it works. That would destroy the mystery of psychic powers just as effectively as midiclorians did to the Force, and immediatly cause screeches of "WELL WHY DON'T WE DO X TO STOP Y?????". So we'll look at what the Chief Scientist theorises, but there's not going to be anything concrete.

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No, Lore+ items are not retrospective.

HOWEVER.

Lore+ is dependant on very common items - corpses and datacores. You will loose out on UFO mission types as time progresses, because new UFO types replace old UFO types. However alien corpses are very common, and provided you kill:

A Sebillian and Caesan noncom.

A Sebillian and Caesan guard

A Psion

An Andron guard

One of anything else (one Wraith of any class, one Andron of any other class, one Sebillian of any other class etc.)

You will get all the Alien Class Analysis entries.

If you tell me how far in the game you've got, what I'll do is make a special "Press Start To Continue" Lore+ which will pick up from where you started. It shouldn't take too long (but I am not in front of my home computer, so you will have to wait until I get there).

I really love this mod, it adds so much to the game. I just registered just to say "thank you" for it...

...And file a tiny, little complaint ;)

I love the art and the writing, the only thing that bothers me are the triggers that activate these new entries. As you said the mod is dependent on the items: corpses and datacores.

I've been playing xenonauts since V8 but for the 1.0 version I decided to use your mod and I must say I had an experience that has been somewhat "distracted" by entries that in that given moment had no sense of being there. Maybe it's just me but I see this game as a story about an invasion, not just a series of turn-bases scenarios. A story told through research results. That's why the Lore+ mod is so valuable to me.

The only problem I have with it is that sometimes it feels as you were reading a chapter that belongs to a later stage of the story. For example, you will read about Ceasan soldiers much earlier than you actually meet them. The "ufo missions" appear as soon as you identify an UFO - so that, for example, you can read about a Terror Mission even if that didn't happen - yet. And the guys who is speaking to me through those entries acts as if there have been many terror missions already.

In my humble opinion, the UFO missions entries should be triggered only AFTER you experienced one, not after you got the UFO itself. Also Alien analysis should happen only when you have met all the variants necessary on the field so that it doesn't spoil anything - for example I didn't know there were more than 1 type of androns before I got the alien analysis for it.

Just my two cents, I really appreciate your work and the work of the designer, it really is a great addition to the game, despite its shortcomings - which are entirely subjective, I'm aware of that. :)

Edited by Koranis
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Yeah, it's a valid complaint. I struggled for ages to work out a way of triggering the lore. The problem wasn't finding reliable triggers but unique ones and it's as big a problem now as it was then, especially with terror missions as the terror aliens also appear in crash missions. And I can see how you might find some aspects of the class analysis to be distracting. When a333 and I made the original class analysis mod, the game was in a different state and I guess it reflects the game as it was, rather than the game as it is now. Come to think of it, I can probably update the base building mission so it's only triggered by the base datacore, which would leave base attack and terror missions as missions that stand out.

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No, Lore+ items are not retrospective.

HOWEVER.

Lore+ is dependant on very common items - corpses and datacores. You will loose out on UFO mission types as time progresses, because new UFO types replace old UFO types. However alien corpses are very common, and provided you kill:

A Sebillian and Caesan noncom.

A Sebillian and Caesan guard

A Psion

An Andron guard

One of anything else (one Wraith of any class, one Andron of any other class, one Sebillian of any other class etc.)

You will get all the Alien Class Analysis entries.

If you tell me how far in the game you've got, what I'll do is make a special "Press Start To Continue" Lore+ which will pick up from where you started. It shouldn't take too long (but I am not in front of my home computer, so you will have to wait until I get there).

You say above to tell you how far I've gotten and you will make a "Press Start to Continue" Lore+? That would be great if you would. I know you wrote this to cybrbeast but I would like it also. I'm at December 30th 1979. Thanks if you can do it!

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Yeah, it's a valid complaint. I struggled for ages to work out a way of triggering the lore. The problem wasn't finding reliable triggers but unique ones and it's as big a problem now as it was then, especially with terror missions as the terror aliens also appear in crash missions. And I can see how you might find some aspects of the class analysis to be distracting. When a333 and I made the original class analysis mod, the game was in a different state and I guess it reflects the game as it was, rather than the game as it is now. Come to think of it, I can probably update the base building mission so it's only triggered by the base datacore, which would leave base attack and terror missions as missions that stand out.

Just a thought on this: you could add an item to a ground terror crew alien that unlocks the terror mission analysis.

I'm not necessarily sure it's a good idea as it reduces the compatibility of the mod with other mods, but I thought it might be worth throwing out there.

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I have this bug http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/10785-v1-06-Heavy-drone-autopsy-crashes-game and apparently the update was supposed to have fixed it, buy it still occurs to me, so since its a research bug, and your mod modifies the research file I was wondering if maybe the reason the bug still occurs is because of your mod? Also I cant continue the game now because of the bug and cant remove the mod because the game will crash if I load the save.

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It may be that the 1.06 I updated to was the first 1.06, not the updated 1.06. When I get in front of my computer I'll do a clean reinstall of Xenonauts, take the 1.06 files from that and do and update. Once that's done, I'll announce it here.

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Xenonauts is now 99% d/l'd, so hopefully I'll be able to make the changes. There will be severe changes. I've just been directed to a post by Koranis on Steam, who is warning people not to d/l Lore+ because it reveals information too early. I am going to make some changes to the ACA portion to prevent information being revealed too early, and also make sure that the UMA side missions are revealed in the correct manner. However, there's nothing I can do about base attack missions or terror missions because nothing happens in them which doesn't happen in any other mission type. There's no unique flag set that says "this is a terror mission", or "this is a base attack mission". I can't have people telling others "don't d/l this because it will spoil it for you", as the whole fucking purpose of Lore+ is to help people who don't know what's going on, so I'm going to cut the Terror Mission and Base Attack mission. Sorry if that upsets anyone but now people have the impression that my mod will spoil the game for them, I have to be aggressive in how I cut content I otherwise can't do anything with.

The other changes will be:

  • Caesan Class Analysis unlocked with Soldier corpse.
  • Sebillian Class Analysis unlocked with Soldier corpse.
  • Andron Class Abalysis unlocked with Soldier corpse.
  • Advanced Andron Analysis unlocked with Officer/Elite corpse
  • Advanced Caesan Analysis unlocked with Leader/Elite corpse
  • Advanced Sebillian Analysis unlocked with Leader/Elite corpse
  • Harridan now unlocked with Officer and vanilla Harridan Analysis
  • Wraith now unlocked with Officer and vanilla Wraith Analysis
  • Ground Attack Misison unlocked with Corvette
  • Base Building mission now only unlocked with Alien Base research
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Thought about the base attack entry:

I'm not 100% sure this would work, but you could make an alteration to one of the props in the Xenonaut command centre submap to give it an item which unlocks the relevant lore (e.g. Alien Base Attack Datacore, or something better). Assuming the game will loot it after the mission ends (which I think it will), this would give you the necessary trigger.

You might be able to do something similar with terror missions if you could find a prop or submap which is used in all of the maps.

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There's nothing - absolutely nothing - in a terror mission that will be a reliable flag. And I'm extremely iffy about mucking about with props, when you never know what alterations a dev or community coder might make which will come along and fuck the mod. I've considered corpse and capture combinations in their dozens, but there's nothing I can think of that will do, so it will have to go.

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I'll ask Solver, but this is a mod-specific flag were talking about, so it's highly unlikely that Solver will do it seeing as how if he does it for me, he'd be drowned in other mod-specific requests all angrily demanding "you did it for Max, why don't you do it for me?"

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The changes have been made. I haven't deleted the actual Xenopedia text, just removed the possibility of researching it, in the hope that at some point in the future I'll be able to reinstate the two missions.

UPDATE: It's frustrating, by the only way I can think of re-introducing base attack and terror missions is to do as kabill says, make a macguffin, and plant it on all officers. I will make an "Alien Data Crystal". It will be researchable, and on researching it, it will reveal alien battle plans and reveal at the same time Terror and Base Attack missions, which I will re-write to accomodate the macguffin. I in fact might make several Alien Data Crystals, each of which unlocks ACA or UMA lore. We'll see.

Edited by Max_Caine
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I have this bug http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/10785-v1-06-Heavy-drone-autopsy-crashes-game and apparently the update was supposed to have fixed it, buy it still occurs to me, so since its a research bug, and your mod modifies the research file I was wondering if maybe the reason the bug still occurs is because of your mod? Also I cant continue the game now because of the bug and cant remove the mod because the game will crash if I load the save.

Im also experiencing this bug.

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Okay....I've done a diff of the 1.06 files that I've modified and the updated 1.06 files, and other than the lines which I've added, there's no other difference in the files. I've gone over the Heavy Drone research section in detail, and I can't see any difference between what I've modified and what's there. I've pm'd Chris to ask him what the problem with the Heavy Drone research was, and if he's able to answer, this will hopefully shed light on what the problem is.

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Okay....I've done a diff of the 1.06 files that I've modified and the updated 1.06 files, and other than the lines which I've added, there's no other difference in the files. I've gone over the Heavy Drone research section in detail, and I can't see any difference between what I've modified and what's there. I've pm'd Chris to ask him what the problem with the Heavy Drone research was, and if he's able to answer, this will hopefully shed light on what the problem is.

I think the heavy drone thing was an entry in researches that read "unlock manufacture" instead of "unlock knowledge".

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Yeah, Chris sent me a PM. In researches the original problem was that this:

<Cell ss:StyleID="s75"><Data ss:Type="String">UnlockKnowledge( "Researches.HeavyDroneWreckage" );

AddDamageBonus( "Heavydrone", 0 );</Data></Cell>

Was more like this:

<Cell ss:StyleID="s75"><Data ss:Type="String">UnlockResearch( "Researches.HeavyDroneWreckage" );

AddDamageBonus( "Heavydrone", 0 );</Data></Cell>

I've just downloaded the 1.06 version that I put up on mediafire, and this has the correct Heavy Drone entry in the researches file.

chrys1989, I need you to do some detective work. Could you please open researches.xml, (using either Excel or a text editor like notepad++) do a search for Researches.HeavyDroneWreckage, then please look at the line in the quotes above. Could you tell me what you see there, please.

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