Would anyone be able and willing to take on a mod-enabling project (EXE editing)

[Geo]

Also, I think sky hydroponics labs should be called sky farms, because they are called that in the blurb(s) for that facility.

Essentially, both descriptions seem to fit the same thing? 

[Yitzi]

Less of a free run for 'busters? 

And makes it a lot harder to keep satellites up in wartime (especially if defense pods are made cheaper than other satellites.)

[PvtHudson]

Yitzi, I have decided to test your approach to sats and started a game as Sven, where ODP and OPT are available at Orbital Spaceflight, NMS at Adv. Spaceflight, and SHL at Self-Aware Machines. Difficulty is transcend. I'm using Scient patch.
Several turns have passed since I have acquired Orbital Spaceflight, built OPT, got monument screen, and Planet's map revealed itself. But when I press F6 (Orbital View, if I remember correctly), it still says "Orbital spaceflight has not been achieved yet". May it be so that check to enable Orbital View is tied to ability to build Sky Hydroponic Labs? Did you run into similar issue?

[Yitzi]

I'll look into it; it will probably be fixed in 2.4 or 2.5.

[PvtHudson]

On completely unrelated note, how hard it would be to implement small "roleplaying" feature: once a citizen has become transcendi, he or she cannot be downshifted to worker or any other specialist?

[Yitzi]

So transcendi cannot be switched?  Probably not so hard to implement...but not really sensible (after all, each "citizen" represents thousands of people, some of whom die and are replaced), and extremely bad for gameplay.  If it gets enough votes once I start taking votes, I can implement it, but it's definitely not making the priority list.

[Buster's Uncle]

If you get a chance, how's about looking into the hard-wired special display of the Spartans?

[Yitzi]

If you get a chance, how's about looking into the hard-wired special display of the Spartans?

Special display?

[Buster's Uncle]

Yah.  They, and only they, get the white-on-black flag display.  It cannot be done in custom factions by filling in the right color boxes, but only through labeling the files Spartan.pcx, etc.  Nobody knows why it had to be that way, or why it's set unmoddable in the .exe - and people have been modding the art for over 14 years now...

[Yitzi]

Yah.  They, and only they, get the white-on-black flag display.  It cannot be done in custom factions by filling in the right color boxes, but only through labeling the files Spartan.pcx, etc.  Nobody knows why it had to be that way, or why it's set unmoddable in the .exe - and people have been modding the art for over 14 years now...

Flag display?

And what happens when you try to fill in those color boxes and don't label it "Spartan"?

[Geo]

I recall using the spartan color for their equivalent Mars faction in the Mars Scenario. The population numbers of the bases were blacked out ingame.

[Buster's Uncle]

Some of it's just not being able to get the white outline on the dots on the minimap...

[Yitzi]

Ah, I see...it's all the graphics stuff due to the fact that their color is black, so text and outlines need to be white instead of black...

Graphics stuff is not generally going to make the short list, but when I finish the short list, I should be able to do something in that regard...it'll end up being based on faction color (i.e. if faction color is darker than a certain amount, then it uses the Spartans' special graphics rules.)

Any idea where the faction color is stored?

[Buster's Uncle]

At the bottom of the .pcx in SMAX.  Somewhere in the .exe for SMAC, apparently.

[Yitzi]

At the bottom of the .pcx in SMAX.  Somewhere in the .exe for SMAC, apparently.

My patch is just SMAX...but if it's in the .pcx then I'll need to investigate and find the proper reference to tell the program, so it'll be quite a task.  (I may ask for help from the graphics modders producing test .pcx's so that I can investigate.)  Still, if enough people want it, it should be doable.