Long time coming back to modding

[EGD Eric]

Hi, its been a while since I've been at Freedom Force. I made a little mod years ago for FFvtr, and I wanted to get back to it, make a few tweaks, and fraps myself playing it, to show it as part of a demo reel, but I run my old mod, and now it doesn't work properly... figured I could mess around with FFedit a bit to try and fix it, so I was wondering: what happened to all the documentation? I remember there was some kind of manual for this thing, but I can't find it anywhere, can anyone help me? Thanks.

[Previsionary]

Hi, its been a while since I've been at Freedom Force. I made a little mod years ago for FFvtr, and I wanted to get back to it, make a few tweaks, and fraps myself playing it, to show it as part of a demo reel, but I run my old mod, and now it doesn't work properly... figured I could mess around with FFedit a bit to try and fix it, so I was wondering: what happened to all the documentation? I remember there was some kind of manual for this thing, but I can't find it anywhere, can anyone help me? Thanks.

Hey, EGD. How have you been? We've not spoken in awhile. What documentation are you talking about? Be a little more descriptive. I assume you mean the docs that came with FFedit and used to be on Freedom Fans before they updated to a new site. If so, if you have ffedit installed, then those help documents are already available on your computer under the Irrational Games folder on your START bar... or you can just search for it using Windows explorer or browsing the Freedom Force/Help folder.

[EGD Eric]

Oh dang, can't believe I missed that. Things have been ok, I'm working during the summer and whatnot, going to university now - computer science; I'd like to try the Dragon Age editor when I get back from the summer, but can't, since all I've got is my laptop right now. I see Dr. Mike came back and made a new mod (with Afghan Ant). That's cool, the Strangers was really awesome, so this one's probably good too. How about you? You still modding?

[Previsionary]

Nice! I hope all your ventures work out for you, sir. And yeah, quite a few old school creators have returned (Grenadier being another), so I think FR is hitting a renaissance period in a small degree. I, on the other hand, am not modding (and haven't done so since late December). FF and I are going through a disconnect period. It's probably Benton's fault.

[EGD Eric]

Well you did create quite a few mods anyway. How's it Benton's fault? I think I'm making some headway in fixing my mod now, but I gotta ask: Are there any known issues with FFvtr modding and Windows Vista?

[Previsionary]

Bentonami destroys everything he touches. It is the way of the Aquaman and his followers. No, it's just lack of interest at this point.

No, there's no problem between FFv3R modding and vista (well, I guess it depends on the version?). All my later mods (Exiles - Hydra) were done on the system. If you need any help/guidance, I can download your mod and see if I can figure out where the bugs are.

[EGD Eric]

Thanks alot man... lets see... I've got my first level, which is really a dummy level that you automatically win. This is so that the first level can start with a base briefing. What happens is that there's some script errors involving FFX (i.e.: ERROR! RPGA attribute astral is not mapped to a bitset enum!) as well as a few other things that I can't figure out, and as I recall, one scripting error will cause the rest of the script to not run at all, therefore the Mission_Win() line doesn't get called, so you're stuck in the first level.

Another thing that's weird is that the console doesn't show up when I press ~. Even though I put ff.CON_ENABLE in startup.py.

I'm guessing that FFX has been updated since I was last modding, maybe that's part of the problem, I dunno.

Here's the mod: To install, just unzip it into your FFvttr folder, and create a shortcut to the game's exe with -AoA_mod in the thing.
http://www.ecoteportfolio.limewebs.com/AoA_mod.zip

[Previsionary]

The errors you're pointing out from ff.log are fine. Those are to be expected. Your issue is with your mod's cshelper.py, specifically line 336. You have a hash mark there commenting out a line, so it's causing errors with the format.

Code Select Expand

def getNearestMinion(hero):
    minDistance = pow(10,6)
    minion = ''
    objects = js.Mission_GetDynamicObjects()
    for object in objects:
        objclass = js.Object_GetClass(object)
        if ((objclass & js.OC_MINION) or (objclass & js.OC_VILLIAN)) and Object_IsAlive(object):
            pos1 = Get_ObjectPos(hero)
            pos2 = Get_ObjectPos(object)
            vector = Vector_Sub(pos1, pos2)
            distance = sqrt(vector[0] * vector[0] + vector[1] * vector[1] + vector[2] * vector[2])
            if distance < minDistance:
                minDistance = distance
                minion = object
    if len(minion) == 0:
       -----> #print "GetNearestMinion(): There are no minions or villains left alive!"
    return minion

remove the mark, and you're good to go. As for the console, the correct command is ff.CON_ENABLE = 1 in localinit.py, which can be found in the FFv3R/System folder.

[EGD Eric]

wow, thanks! What error tipped you off to that?

[Previsionary]

I can't tell you the exact error now because my script.log was overwritten, but the file pinpointed its location. I just had to go in and see what was up. Specifically, it said something about "return minion," so that was a tip. I wouldn't have thought to look there naturally as that file is rarely edited by others.