Adjusting Mind Worm spawn rates

[sirblastalot]

It took 20+ years for me to get around to it, but I'm finally looking into some minor modding for the first time, and I could use some help.

I'd like to adjust the mind worm spawn rate, like a super-"abundant" setting.  I've browsed through alpha.txt and all the other text files in the base directory and I haven't found anywhere that might be exposed, just one reference to a "LIFE" setting.  Also searched online for anyone already doing this and didn't find much.

Could anyone provide a babys-first guide for me on how I might go about finding and modifying this?  Thanks much!

[Vidsek]

In the Scenario Editor there are settings for low, normal, and high worm rates when determining the parameters for the map.  Don't remember at the moment if there is a way to choose one of these when using the random map generator.  And yes, I tend to like higher rates....most of the time...

[sirblastalot]

Does that stack with the sparse/standard/abundant setting or does it just override it?

[bvanevery]

That probably is the sparse / standard / abundant setting.

In alphax.txt there seems to be only one line in the WORLDBUILDER section that could be relevant:

Code: [Select]

1,   ; Fungus           (Fungus coefficient based on LIFE selection)
I bet sparse / standard / abundant is the LIFE selection.  I doubt you have any other way to control this in the stock binary.  So, probably you can choose 1 of 3 settings in the game's menu when you're setting things up, and that's it.  No need to use the Scenario Editor for that.  Nor is that desirable, because you probably don't want a scenario, you probably want a randomly generated map you've never seen before.

I bet this Fungus setting, controls the amount of fungus that appears on the map, as a derivative of the LIFE setting.  You could have a high LIFE setting and not as much fungus to go with it.  Or a low LIFE setting and tons and tons of fungus.  This would affect the mobility of the mindworms that do exist, but you've only got 3 choices for how many mindworms are generated.

Of course, land vs. sea ratios would also have an effect.  Indigenous life forms that spawn at sea, get around pretty darned quickly to land areas.  But they also predictably land on coasts, or attack coastal cities if a sealurk, so they're probably not that terrifying to a land based power in an "ordinaryish" map game.

Aside from the stock binary, you have the Thinker mod binary and The Will To Power mod binary, which is based on Thinker.  They might have more settings available.

I don't know if Yitzi's binary mod has more settings.

[sirblastalot]

I really don't know anything about those mods.  Would they allow me to turn off...basically everything about them?

For that matter, how were they compiled in the first place? Was the SMAC source code released at some point?  I could probably muddle through it and compile my own if I really had to, but I'm shocked there's not just a value somewhere.

[bvanevery]

The source code was never released.  You are in the presence of binary hacking GODS who figured out how get into stuff at the machine code level.  Although after that, there is some kind of technique of .DLL injection that I don't know the details of.  Most of those 2 binary mods are written in C++, but there's that hacking layer to make it possible.

I've never looked at any of that.  I have the raw aptitude to work at that level, but I prefer to spend / waste the time on programming language design, not SMAC binaries I'll never make a dime from.  My own modding was .txt file only and that took 5 calendar years as it was.  By restricting my scope that way, I did cross my finish line and complete the work.  The game can't get any better with only .txt modding.  There are a few things I wish I did have the gumption to solve with binary hacking, such as the horrible probe team mind control formula.  But at least I mitigated it in my modding, and that's just gonna have to be good enough.

No, even with a binary hacked mod, you are not going to be able to change "everything about them".  A lot of people want to do stuff with the UI for instance, and those mods did little or nothing to make that any easier.  It's a lot of hard, hard work to pore through binary code and figure out what makes what work.  UI has gotten very little attention because most of us think it's pretty acceptable as is, and improving the AI or changing the game rules is far more important / impactful.

[sirblastalot]

What I meant was, if I were to use one of these hacked binaries, I would want to turn off all the other modifications they made to be playing a nearly-vanilla game.  Sounds like that's not really an option though.  Disappointing.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yitzi's, then - I believe you have to turn options on in that.  I don't recall if he included scient's bug fixes, though.

[bvanevery]

Yitzi's patch is not a vanilla interpretation of the alphax.txt file.  There are 3 places, to my memory, where it breaks stuff.  The most troublesome game crashing one, I think is about the missile chassis or something.  There's also something about Stockpile Energy.  This is why I explicitly disclaim compatibility with my own modding work.  You could resolve the conflicts, but you'd have to do so by hand, and maintain 2 separate alphax.txt files.  I looked at how to do that many years ago.  I did not want to become the Yitzi's patch maintainer, absent documentation of the internals of the project, or any special value to my own modding work personally.  It provided modding features that I didn't need, didn't improve AI in any way, and its bugfixes have not been important to my own play.  So noted that it "could be done" and left someone else to do it; no one did.  In particular, Yitzi himself was gone for a long time, and I'm not even clear if he's working on his mod anymore.  Last I remember him posting, he had embarked on the ambitious effort of reverse engineering all of SMAC.

So yeah, Yitzi's patch will turn on 2 or 3 things that are not vanilla SMAC.  At least that's a very small number of warts to deal with though.  Don't think you can turn the Stockpile Energy change off.  The missile settings, I believe if you studied the interpretation formula enough, you could change it back to something that implements default game behavior.  It's just encoded differently.  The 3rd thing, I forget what it was.  Would have to go look in the archives.

EDIT: You can restore Stockpile Energy to default game behavior.  It just uses a different encoding:

  Bottom line: using a value of 2 duplicates the original game.  Values close to that (1, 3, or 4) have very little effect until later in the game when you have dramaticly pumped up mineral production.
  I haven't had a chance to play enough late-mid to late game to say if having more or less cash from this source alters gameplay in any significant way.

EDIT: I found my original list of 3 concerns.  The 3rd one is the AtT prereq and I'll hazard a guess it can be changed back.  So, I believe Yitzi's 3 invasive changes to alphax.txt can be reversed, as long as you use Yitzi's encodings for 2 of 'em.

• the encoding of Conventional Missiles has been changed.  Has the gameplay changed as well?
• the encoding of Stockpile Energy has been changed.  Has the gameplay changed as well?
• the prereq for Ascent to Transcendence has been changed.  Does this change the actual gameplay?

I don't recall if Yitzi's patch offers modding features that the OP was interested in.  One would have to look and see.

The OP clearly wouldn't be interested in The Will To Power mod, as the whole point of that mod is to change gameplay to the author's personal vision.  Yes many changes are provided as options that can be turned on and off, but I'm guessing it would be a lot of work to claw through those changes and restore vanilla behavior.  Something could be easily missed.

Investigating Thinker mod might be worth the OP's time, if it actually has modding features the OP is interested in.  Thinker mod did not intend to change gameplay much at all.  Rather, to put AI terraforming ability on steroids, so that there would be abundant colonization and Condensers / Boreholes / Supply Crawlers.  I know you can turn all of Thinker's faction AIs off, and just have them running with stock binary AI.  Thinker mod incorporates Scient's patch, which has all the long term bugfixes that most people are interested in.

I don't bother with Scient's patch myself.  I only use a stock binary, because I haven't been bitten by bugs hardly ever in practice.  And the one bug I am regularly bitten by, Scient's patch doesn't solve anyways.  But Scient's patch is generally compatible with everything, because it doesn't change how an alphax.txt is encoded and its features are strictly optional.  Like one feature is the ability to specify reactor type in a predefined unit in alphax.txt.  You don't have to put that extra data in an alphax.txt if you don't want to, so stuff doesn't break when you fire up an alphax.txt that doesn't have it.

[Vidsek]

Just a small point: with the Scenario Editor, you have the option to load a map.  The map can be one you designed yourself, or a randomly created one you saved earlier.  If you like random maps, just create them in the basic game, save w/o looking at them, and load to the editor.
Then you can go into set game parameters and set (separate from fungus) Native Lifeforms to Rare, Average, or Abundant.  You don't have to change anything else if you don't want to.

Yitzi's patch is not hard to work with.  For the first two issues Bvanerery found, you do have to check in Alphax.txt that the stockpile energy setting is 2.  The Ascent to Transcendence prereqs can be changed there back to vanilla as well.  I forget at the moment what I did about the missile chassis one, or if it ever came up as a problem for me.
All the new features can be disabled, as a group or one by one.  Some count as bug fixes, some are useful additions, and some are in the realm of sandboxing.
There are a few I personally found useful or fit my style of gameplay.
Sadly, since many involve changes to the code in Alphax.exe, you cannot merge it with any other mod that also changed the exe.  You *can* merge it with Bvanevery's text only mod, and I have for my own use, but it does require a bit of time to go through Yitzi's Alphax.txt by hand to insure the Growth changes are properly inserted.
As for the Faction files, you are free to pick and choose vanilla, Yitzi's, or AIGrowth ones, altho it won't be Bvanevery's mod if you don't pick his.

I (shamefully) haven't played AC in a while, so this is all I could dredge up from memory.

[bvanevery]

Aren't you going to have to look at 1 starting location to save a map?  The stock binary doesn't create any kind of auto saved game on your starting turn.  Knowledge of 1 starting location isn't the worst wart in the world, but it is slightly less than starting a map with no knowledge at all.

Also, if you use the Scenario Editor, aren't you going to be marked as a cheater in your game?  When I occasionally have a game crashing bug, using the SE is my method of last resort.  Because I resent being called a cheater, even when nobody ever sees my scores.  Usual workaround is to find some way in the game to stop the bug condition from arising.  Such as disbanding the right unit, possibly.

Interesting that you did the combo work.  I put my mod under Creative Commons license in case anyone ever wants to roll it in with something else, and release it as a new / their own thing.  But I understand that maintaining things publicly, is a burden.  Entirely why I didn't take on Yitzi's stuff as a burden.

With this much talk, I will finally crack Yitzi's .zip file.

I learn that you can mod the amount of life forms that show up in a fungal pop, like when a city is doing eco-damage and POP, there's a stack of worms.  Also can mod the frequency of fungal pops. 

Looking at the alphax.txt, there's a lot of new variables for modding eco-damage.  Very detailed about that.  I don't see anything about modding the frequency of native life forms in general though.  I suppose you could get more worms by making a game that's very, very sensitive to eco-damage.  Of course, this would be mitigated by one's PLANET rating.

That's about it in the mindworms dept.  Don't see anything else.

[Vidsek]

You're right about seeing one potential starting location (altho it could be a crummy one, the AI does that).
That 'cheater' thing is rude (and probably intended for group play) but namecalling by some Dev I'll never meet doesn't terribly bother me.

I haven't gotten around to doing the Yitzi-AIGrowth merge with your latest release yet.  When I do, I'll upload it here as a curiosity if nothing else.

My (probably forever unrequited) dream is a good bug and AI fixing .exe mod with the best of Yitzi in it merged with your AIG text mod.

I can easily live with a 'normal' population of worms and their ilk for most games.  It would, however, be fun to be able to give Charon a stronger hand sometimes without having to pave the whole place with fungus.

[bvanevery]

Not to dissuade you from your Yitzi-oriented ambitions, but for bugfixing, Scient's patch works with SMACX AI Growth mod just fine.  I just don't use it.  It's not a requirement.

[Vidsek]

Well, yes, I know that.  It's just a matter of practical verses wishful thinking and balancing the fun of playing with the time involved in preparing for playing.

[bvanevery]

Isn't Yizti now focused on reverse engineering all of SMAC?  In other words, I don't think a bugfixing merge between Yitzi's patch and Scient's patch is going to happen.  Sounds like a really dull, awful, boring project, compared to trying to reverse engineer SMAC.  Which I see as a bit quixotic, but at least it's interesting.  For awhile.

And without Yitzi working on such a bugfixing merge, it's probably too painful for anyone else to take on.  That was my conclusion studying the problem 5 years ago.  I figure if this much time has passed, then I was right!