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Name the AI in System Shock 2 that shares its name with a Persian king:

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Topic Summary

Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 04. November 2024, 16:06:11 »

yeah, wasn't quite able to find a proper CZ word I would be happy with there. so uhh, when in doubt, zero?

//ok yeah, will have to figure that one out. //ok, this should be slightly better, if 0 is too questionable - attached. might sound weird depending on the situation, but shouldn't really matter all that much, it's understandable enough.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 04. November 2024, 15:34:20 »

Quote by voodoo47:
None:"0"
What.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 04. November 2024, 10:16:21 »

attaching the CZ translated strings. but I will add that I still think if we have full control over all the involved mods (we do, the original CZ translation host will cease to operate in less than 2 months, so systemshock.org will be the only mirror), there is no reason to make this into three mods if it can be just two. the slightly higher maintenance cost is well offset by the increased user convenience, imho.
Posted by: sarge945
« on: 03. November 2024, 10:23:13 »

Quote by CyrusVonNox2001:
Just found this and this looks pretty cool. I think it would be cool if you could modify different weapon stats like in Deus Ex(I understand the inspiration for this mod is from DX), being able to create a weapon specially tailored to your playstyle. I know RosoDude is working to something similar to this, but I don't think its SCP beta 6 compatible. I would prefer to keep the spinning weapon model though, you could still include the maintenance dot and you could just layer the JAMMED text over the model.

Both RSD and Secmod contain something like this

And you should definitely bug @RoSoDude to update his mod instead of playing Resident Evil
Posted by: CyrusVonNox2001
« on: 03. November 2024, 08:09:16 »

Just found this and this looks pretty cool. I think it would be cool if you could modify different weapon stats like in Deus Ex(I understand the inspiration for this mod is from DX), being able to create a weapon specially tailored to your playstyle. I know RosoDude is working to something similar to this, but I don't think its SCP beta 6 compatible. I would prefer to keep the spinning weapon model though, you could still include the maintenance dot and you could just layer the JAMMED text over the model.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 01. November 2024, 19:30:47 »

I guess the idea were that if you are clicking it in the MFD, you already see/know what you are changing.

so no, probably not.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 01. November 2024, 19:00:55 »

A slightly annoying vanilla discrepancy: If you use the weapon MFD or a keyboard shortcut to change a weapon's setting, it will display a HUD message "Setting changed to: whatever". But if you use the Settings MFD to change the setting, there is no HUD message.

Should it be consistent?
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 31. October 2024, 14:45:12 »

Download updated. For real last time this time maybe????
- Swapped order of Requirements and Ammo Types sections so Requirements comes first, since it's somewhat dynamic, and Ammo Types comes last, since it's completely static.
- Fixed bug with weapon icon not disappearing when MFD closed first time when running in vanilla. No idea why vanilla would be any different in this regard.
- Fixed determining how many settings a gun has in vanilla. It's two. It's always two.
- Added automatic fixup of vanilla ammo stack names to not include the stack count.

Note that the string fix code attempts to ensure that the first letter of the ammo name is always capitalized. E.g. "%d pizza bagels" becomes "Pizza bagels". But this uses Squirrel's built-in .toupper() method, which I'm pretty sure operates only in the ASCII space. So if running with localized strings, and the first character becomes a lowercase letter with a character value >128, it will remain lowercase. The engine has no concept of character encodings, so there's no practical way to determine which extended characters are uppercase and lowercase and how they correspond to each other.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 31. October 2024, 08:33:24 »

yeah, I had to take care of this in a slightly awkward manner when fixing the CZ translation.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 31. October 2024, 05:27:00 »

Also fun fact, I'd forgotten that SCP modifies the name strings for some ammo types to remove the stack count, so when running under vanilla I have to programmatically strip those out. E.g. something like "%d shotgun shells" gets transformed to "Shotgun shells".
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 31. October 2024, 01:11:32 »

muahaha (I think the values got garbled when the gamesys got converted to ND, and the decision was to change them to that). also no public linking of the SCP dev section (removed link).
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 31. October 2024, 01:07:20 »

It's a completely pointless "fix", because the engine doesn't even use the value. I just have to update my code to also not use it.

And I misspoke in my previous post. Turns out... you changed it. D'oh.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 31. October 2024, 00:44:20 »

I can get this fixed throughout the entire SS2 ecosystem if need be.

also at this point, whoever is loading mods without SCP deserves to have problems.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 31. October 2024, 00:40:04 »

I figured I'd test this at least once in vanilla SS2, since y'know, I should have been doing that this entire time. And surprise, every gun is showing up as having no settings. Checked the gamesys, and it's because every gun has its Base Gun Description->Number of Settings set to ZERO. In SCP they're all properly set to two, and I'd been using that value. Apparently this was an ADaOB change, since there's no record of SCP changing it.

So how does the game cycle gun settings if there's no valid data in Number of Settings? Well, according to SHKGAME.CPP, in function ShockSettingToggle(), the logic when called is:
- If equipped item isn't a gun, do nothing.
- If it's a psi amp, cycle through available powers in the current tier (not sure I knew about that functionality).
- If it's a melee weapon, do nothing.
- Finally, if it's a gun:
Code: [Select]
   curmode = GunGetSetting(gun);
   GunSetSetting(gun,!curmode);Yeah, it just mindlessly toggles the setting between 0 and 1. This means all gun-type weapons MUST have two settings. No more, no less. Ugh.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 29. October 2024, 14:43:03 »

Behold the power of muscles.
Posted by: Nameless Voice
« on: 29. October 2024, 10:49:47 »

I just learned an interesting thing - the flat melee damage bonus from Strength ignores the armour and resistances of the target.
It also gets the bonus from organ research, but no other bonuses.

So if you hit a researched spider with a laser rapier that does 13 base damage, with lethal weapon, energy 6, and strength 6, you will deal: ((13 * 1.3 * 1.35 / 2) + 6) * 1.25 = 21.7 damage, rather than the 17.2 you might expect.
(Or the 20.8 you would get if the strength bonus was applied to the base damage before all calculations.)
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 29. October 2024, 01:42:14 »

Download updated again! Will this be the last time?!?
- General cleanup of stat line generation code to make them all more similarly structured.
- All changeable stats now check for stat on gun to have been modified even if the gun hasn't been "Modified". Should work for inspecting the anomalous guns in vanilla with nonstandard stats.
- Fixed mistake where the More Info display for energy weapon capacity was mashing the modification and Maintenance bonuses together into a single bonus line.
- Indented text lines that wrap now have a hanging indent.
- Moved the current ammo display to the top stat, getting rid of the awkward two-line "Loaded" section. This was slightly non-trivial, because it uses the super-short names displayed in the bottom-right gun MFD (the ammo names were often too long, wrapping to the next line). But these are internally the projectile names, not the ammo names. Worm-using and energy weapons don't have projectile names, and prism-using weapons display either the effect of the projectile or nothing. So some goofy logic was necessary to always display a sensible name.
- Due to the above change, some string changes have been made:
   Added "Ammo"
   Added "Worms"
   Removed "Loaded"

Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 27. October 2024, 08:41:27 »

ok, "degrade/shot" is much easier to translate than durability, nice. big plus button also looking good.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 27. October 2024, 03:36:49 »

Download updated.
- Slightly rearranged stats to put weapon damage at top of stat list. It's the most important thing after all.
- Added support for displaying modified fire rate. No vanilla modifications do this, so this is just for third-party mod support.
- Changed More Info mode toggle button from >/< to +/-.
- Changed Durability stat to Degrade/Shot. I figured I'd take my own advice from up-thread and not make players do math to figure out the degrade rate. Plus the tiny degrade rate values displayed will be great to throw in the face of people who insist guns break after ten shots. Downside, won't be able to mock people who don't understand what "durability" means. Oh well.

Posted by: sarge945
« on: 21. October 2024, 09:26:37 »

Quote by ZylonBane:
Oh but I can, because the definition I'm using is WHAT THE WORD ACTUALLY MEANS. Just because a bunch of semi-literate ESL game developers decided to use "durability" to mean "condition" doesn't make anyone beholden to that. Durability means "the ability to withstand wear, pressure, or damage". It does NOT mean how damaged something currently is. That's as weird as if someone decided to call hit points "endurance".

Pedantry will just result in more bug reports, but whatever. You're obviously set on this, and nothing will change your mind.

When being technically correct goes up against the practical reality of a situation, practical reality always wins.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 21. October 2024, 06:28:05 »

and I'm actually pondering about that one, CZ only has something that is usually used to determine how much a bag of milk is going to last before it spoils, and I don't want to get descriptive here if I can help it.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 21. October 2024, 03:25:06 »

Quote by sarge945:
You cannot have Durability with a completely different definition and expect people to understand.
Oh but I can, because the definition I'm using is WHAT THE WORD ACTUALLY MEANS. Just because a bunch of semi-literate ESL game developers decided to use "durability" to mean "condition" doesn't make anyone beholden to that. Durability means "the ability to withstand wear, pressure, or damage". It does NOT mean how damaged something currently is. That's as weird as if someone decided to call hit points "endurance".

You seem strangely defensive of this objectively wrong usage. It's like you don't trust System Shock 2 players to be even the slightest bit smarter than the average bear.

There aren't a lot of synonyms for durability either. Toughness? Sturdiness? Reliabi-- oops, can't use that one. Nah, not really any good substitutes.

Ah well, bikeshedding is a helluva drug. As is saying "literally every" when what you actually mean is "lots".
Posted by: sarge945
« on: 20. October 2024, 02:58:46 »

Nice job deliberately misinterpreting the point.

I mean, yeah, technically not every single videogame that exists calls it Durability. But that's not the point I was making.

Maybe you'll understand the point if I spell it out slowly.

DURABILITY ALREADY EXISTS AS A CONCEPT IN COUNTLESS VIDEOGAMES WITH A SPECIFIC DEFINITION. The vast majority of people will have played at least one game where "Durability" means a very specific thing. You cannot have Durability with a completely different definition and expect people to understand.

https://www.giantbomb.com/durability/3015-2549/

Even if you can provide a handful of examples where it's called "Condition" or some bullshit, many, many more games call it Durability. Durability and Condition are used interchangeably but they mean the same thing everywhere. Except here.

Sometimes I feel like you're being intentionally dense/thick/argumentative. There's more to life than arguing with strangers on the internet. Maybe instead of "Proving people wrong" (which, uuh, a handful of cherry picked examples does not) you should actually understand the points people make?

I swear some people are allergic to valid criticism...

Whatever. It's your mod. Make it as obtuse as you want. I don't care anymore. I'm not the one who's going to be fielding the bug reports when Durability doesn't work the way everyone expects it to.
[917096339_preview_Char06.jpg expired]
[dying-light-2-weapon-durability.jpg expired]
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Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 19. October 2024, 17:08:37 »

Quote by sarge945:
Like it or not, in literally every other game that exists with item degredation, "durability" means the items current health.


Quit your bullshit.

Anyway, that stat was originally labeled "Reliability", but you came up with a bonkers misinterpretation of what that word means, so Durability it is!

I would just use "Degredation Rate" and not display Durability at all.
Well let's open this up to the mob then shall we? Would y'all prefer the somewhat diegetic "Durability", or the on-the-nose "Degradation/shot", baring to the world SS2's simplistic abstraction of what would in reality be a complex electro-mechanical processs?
Posted by: sarge945
« on: 19. October 2024, 05:53:24 »

Quote by ZylonBane:
If durability meant condition, it would say "Condition". Durability means exactly that: How durable the weapon is. A weapon with high durability will degrade slowly. A weapon with low durability will degrade quickly. This is explained in the readme.

The value displayed for Durability is 100.0 - Reliability->Degrade Rate (%). So Durability: 99% means the weapon has a Degrade Rate of 1, and will degrade by 1% every shot.

Like it or not, in literally every other game that exists with item degredation, "durability" means the items current health.

You may disagree with this definition, but you have to follow established standards (even if they suck) or you will only confuse your audience.

I expect a deluge of bug reports from players saying "My weapon is broken but the durability value still says 99%!"

I would just use "Degredation Rate" and not display Durability at all.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 18. October 2024, 22:16:23 »

that was an exaggeration. the point is to make it not as easy to miss, if possible. guess plus/minus would do ok.

ah yes, the readme I didn't read yet. well, it's been a long day.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 18. October 2024, 21:51:50 »

Quote by voodoo47:
whatever sign you think will make the button scream hey I'm important, click me NOW the most.
Why the hell would I want that? It's NOT a "click me NOW" button. It's a "click me if you want to view more optional information" button.

does durability correspond to the gun condition?
If durability meant condition, it would say "Condition". Durability means exactly that: How durable the weapon is. A weapon with high durability will degrade slowly. A weapon with low durability will degrade quickly. This is explained in the readme.

The value displayed for Durability is 100.0 - Reliability->Degrade Rate (%). So Durability: 99% means the weapon has a Degrade Rate of 1, and will degrade by 1% every shot.

Sure, I could just display a "Degradation/shot" stat, but that would be excessively gamey, IMHO.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 18. October 2024, 21:09:10 »

whatever sign you think will make the button scream hey I'm important, click me NOW the most.

yeah, I've already tested it pretty thoroughly, and everything works fine, I had to do some extra adjustments to avoid weirdness and confusion (that modification level vs modifications change you already commented on), but the result is more than tolerable.

oh, is that modify requirement not changing after the first mod level issue fixed? yes, I see it is. very good.


one thing I forgot to mention - does durability correspond to the gun condition? if so, then I'm quite sure it's not working right (my laspistol cond 7 has durability of 99.5%, shotgun cond 9 has 99%).
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 18. October 2024, 20:23:41 »

Yes, I can't think of anything else that needs to be added. Now you get to test the localization test mode.

Maybe I'll just turn the buttons into giant + and - signs.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 18. October 2024, 17:18:35 »

anyway, I'm guessing the string file is done for the foreseeable future, so I think I'll update the CZ translation this weekend.

unless it isn't.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 17. October 2024, 07:18:05 »

it still kind of gets lost between (or rather, below) all the other sidebar buttons. maybe would stand out more with an exclamation mark - not so smooth looking, but more of a chance people would notice.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 17. October 2024, 00:41:40 »

Well, how about a more illustrative button. Is this any better? Looks a bit too pixel art to me but with 9x9 pixels to work with there's only so much you can do beyond simple shapes or characters.

Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 16. October 2024, 19:24:10 »

well, hard to argue with that.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 16. October 2024, 18:12:57 »

SCP turning on the minimap isn't a labor-saving move, it's a "players don't even know it exists" move. Unlike the More Info button in this mod, which is plainly visible at all times, and will be prominently featured in the documentation and screenshots. Anyone who's too dense to access it after all that is probably just some Pokémodder who installed it without even knowing what it does. I couldn't care less about that group.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 16. October 2024, 17:43:25 »

and clicking a button once shouldn't be a problem, that's why we have SCP enable the minimap automatically once the player gets out of the starting area.

eeh ok, shouldn't matter too much either way.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 16. October 2024, 17:40:07 »

Quote by voodoo47:
the expanded info being the default state could work better, perhaps.
Addendum to this: The "more info" mode is persistent. Like, really persistent. It gets saved to a qvar. So if anyone prefers this mode, they only have to switch it on once for the entire game.
Posted by: sarge945
« on: 14. October 2024, 02:40:56 »

Wow, 2000 lines!

*chuckles internally*
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 13. October 2024, 04:14:29 »

Download updated.
- Fixed melee weapon damage not updating while Adrenaline Overproduction active and equipping/unequipping wormskin armor.
- Improved bitmap handling code so the same bitmap can be used for multiple buttons. So no more need to have two copies of identical bitmaps for the setting and unload buttons.
- Added a feature that attempts to prevent the weapon stats from jumping up and down as you toggle the weapon setting, which can have different numbers of lines for the description. Only works if you've scrolled down enough lines for it to do its thing.
- Word wrapping will now preserve the indentation of detailed info lines.
- Commented and slightly reorganized the string file.
- Added a feature, activated by setting a value in the string file, that will switch to a localization test mode. The MFD for any weapon will then display a test report that contains every string in the string file.

And with that, this simple little "Hey let's display some of the internal weapon stats" mod has exceeded two thousand lines of code, making it by a wide margin the largest non-SHTUP mod I've ever created for SS2. Oh well, at least we're finally in the home stretch! Until someone asks for SecMod compatibility!
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 11. October 2024, 19:34:34 »

well, I never really tried to run the numbers, but I was fully aware you can one shot (or rather, whack) rumblers, and if you can do that, then you are kinda op.

also power armor + both psi shields and they will be doing like 1 point of damage, so you can go grab a coffee and don't even have to pause the game. for you are become death, the destroyer of worms.
Posted by: sarge945
« on: 11. October 2024, 06:40:18 »

Adrenaline Overproduction? More like Adrenaline Overpowered.

Also, don't forget to add the Trade Mark (™) symbol after Lethal Weapon.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 10. October 2024, 07:36:50 »

Download updated.
- Various code cleanup
- Weapons with no minimum equip requirements (in vanilla just the wrench) now display their weapon category with level 0 as the requirement instead of "None". This ensures that the weapon category is always displayed.
- Added a full readme
- Added handling of Adrenaline Overproduction to melee weapon damage calculations, which also required...
- Added handling of Recursive Psi (since Adrenaline bonus is based on PSI level)
- Added full implementation of proposed mod MFD interoperability protocols

RoSo, you should review the description of the proposed mod interop protocol in the readme. While it may seem a bit much to propose an entire generic architecture when there's currently only two mods that would benefit from it, once SS2EE is released we might see an uptick in modding activity, so it would be good to establish some standards.



I don't think I was ever fully aware of how insane the Adrenaline Overproduction bonus can be.

It's kind of funny how Strength is just added on for calculating melee damage. You'd think it would be the most important stat for melee, but nope.

Fun Fact: The internal ID for Recursive Psionic Amplification is "PsiPsi".
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 09. October 2024, 07:50:23 »

systemshock.org kids, 50% awesomeness and 50% sarcasm.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 09. October 2024, 01:27:27 »

That's a good point. I can see how posting a picture of melee weapon stats might not have been the best choice to accompany an update in which the major new feature was the addition of melee weapon stats.
Posted by: Nameless Voice
« on: 09. October 2024, 01:11:33 »

Okay, it probably wasn't the best idea to focus so much on the laser rapier in the last round of screenshots, since that weapon has only one stat.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 09. October 2024, 00:03:29 »

Noooooooooo. In the collapsed state you can see all of a weapon's stats at a glance. The expanded view is just for people who want to know WHY some stats are boosted.

Just because the purpose of this mod is to provide more info doesn't mean it abdicates its responsibility as a UI element to be somewhat aesthetically pleasant. "SHOVE IT ALL DOWN THEIR FACE HOLE" is not the way to go.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 08. October 2024, 20:19:49 »

the expanded info being the default state could work better, perhaps. and then people who want to see less info despite installing a mod that exists solely to show more info could click the button to do just that.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 08. October 2024, 20:17:33 »

I assure you all, it will be documented when this releases.
Posted by: Nameless Voice
« on: 08. October 2024, 20:02:52 »

Quote by voodoo47:
ooh, sneaky button. pretty sure at least 1% of players is going to figure that one out all by themselves.

I don't think I'd ever notice that button, and if I did I'd probably assume it switched to the description of then next object in your inventory.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 08. October 2024, 19:58:59 »

Until someone thinks of some other information they want crammed into this thing.

Quote by voodoo47:
also, about that unload button dimming - pretty neat but creates a discrepancy, as the reload button does not do that.
A reload button in any game that greyed out when you're fully loaded would be really damn weird. Reloading should always be a valid action attempt.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 08. October 2024, 18:51:05 »

'kaaay.

anyways, strings done? will update the CZ translation if so.
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