Scan Strength fix for unscanned Sectors (Fog of War)

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

I've another two suggestions:

First, stopping scanvalues appear on hidden, invisible, unexplored sectors. It's annoying to know all the blackholes and stuff before having explored the map. [...] Just show 0 as scan value...

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=452&start=30

Well, Father christmas had been stuck in a 7 years traffic jam , leaving hardly anyone who still cares, but here it is:

Code: Select all

trek.exe at 0xDBC20 change 0xF bytes to:

8D 51 30 B5 01 8A C8 D2 E5 84 2A 75 02 33 DB

-asm-
004DC820   8D51 30      LEA EDX,DWORD PTR DS:[ECX+30]
004DC823   B5 01        MOV CH,1
004DC825   8AC8         MOV CL,AL                   // player empire
004DC827   D2E5         SHL CH,CL
004DC829   842A         TEST BYTE PTR DS:[EDX],CH   // sector scanned?
004DC82B   75 02        JNZ SHORT 4DC82F
004DC82D   33DB         XOR EBX,EBX                 // display scan strength 0

Anyone still having the vanilla ferengi ship textures pack by Stardust (and maybe a better vor'cha texture)? So we could do a minor update of the ECM mode.



Reason for looking at this was I stumbled over relative new Youtube videos showing somebody playing BotF as romulan. Brought back some memories, and I wondered why we never found any hidden romulan special features in trek.exe.

Empire-specific trek.exe features in BotF 1.0.2 (=hard-coded race ID-check)

Cardassians
- manned intel 15% bonus on nativ systems

Federation
- minor race sympathy bonuses for gifts & trade routes
- unique AI code for liberating minor races
- special ships

Ferengi
- free trade routes

Klingons
- new ships crew experience bonus
- assault command for colony ships and troop transports
- [broken training limits bonus] trek.exe code for stbof.res building-ID, but not a race-ID check

Romulans
-

„Only for the Romulans I've observed that even integers are "rounded up" to the next integer (not true for the other empires)“

in Credit Output of a Star System.

[Martok]

SCT!!!! Welcome back!! Great to see you again!

Reason for looking at this was I stumbled over relative new Youtube videos showing somebody playing BotF as romulan. Brought back some memories, and I wondered why we never found any hidden romulan special features in trek.exe.

The Romulans are so awesome, they don't need any special/hidden bonuses or abilities.

[thunderchero]

SCT!!!! Welcome back!! Great to see you again!

agreed welcome back,

Well, Father christmas had been stuck in a 7 years traffic jam

LOL it has not been that long...

Anyone still having the vanilla ferengi ship textures pack by Stardust

these are easy enough extracted from AAM, but he edited the 256 gif's here is a comparison

column 1 (left) vanilla unedited 256
column 2 (center) AAM gif's (starbase and outpost is vanilla unedited 256 since stardust did not edit)
column 3 (right) 512 reduced to 256 with 14% sharpen

compare.jpg (1.27 MiB) Viewed 5562 times

maybe a better vor'cha texture

this is not to difficult, I would just need an example of what you are looking for. top and bottom view or example model

Reason for looking at this was I stumbled over relative new Youtube videos showing somebody playing BotF as romulan. Brought back some memories, and I wondered why we never found any hidden romulan special features in trek.exe.

all combat ships able to cloak is big advantage + Singularity Plant (but are not hidden)

[Flocke]

I've another two suggestions:

First, stopping scanvalues appear on hidden, invisible, unexplored sectors. It's annoying to know all the blackholes and stuff before having explored the map. [...] Just show 0 as scan value...

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=452&start=30

Well, Father christmas had been stuck in a 7 years traffic jam , leaving hardly anyone who still cares, but here it is:

amazing, totally forgot on that suggestion ( viewtopic.php?f=30&t=452&p=6429#p6429 ) but it's great you finally fixed it
and a big welcome by me as well!

[thunderchero]

I played with the vorcha texture a little.

here is vanilla 512 (not Texture mod 1.10 by Jeremy)

vanilla.jpg (160.73 KiB) Viewed 5525 times

here is vanilla 512 edited by me (it could be a little better, but only spent about an hour on editing, once I got it in game I think it is a little too dark?)

new.jpg (133.6 KiB) Viewed 5525 times

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

these are easy enough extracted from AAM, but he edited the 256 gif's here is a comparison

column 1 (left) vanilla unedited 256
column 2 (center) AAM gif's (starbase and outpost is vanilla unedited 256 since stardust did not edit)
column 3 (right) 512 reduced to 256 with 14% sharpen

Thank you very much, I'd choose variant 2 for all ferengi ships and 3 for the stations.

Vor'cha was in texture mod by Jeremy (ugly turquoise changed to darker green and klingon emblems on the upper wings), but I lost all my files and Joker page downloads are down.

note;
I only checked the ECM research screen, but I remember there are other glitches as well (e.g. some ships showing entirely different textures when zooming in/out in combat).

note2;
according to feedback there must be an edifice.bst bug wrt minor special structures not limited to one per system. But I don't intend to install java on my laptop in order to use the ultimate editor for researching.

note3;
larger task force patch shouldn't be applied to ECM, due to AI issues w.r.t. planetary assault (ground combat calculation often requires task forces with more than one ship), raiding, intercept...

all combat ships able to cloak is big advantage + Singularity Plant (but are not hidden)

Advantages yes, but simple stbof.res file settings. I always thought romulans lack something unique, so my first mod gave them cloaked colony & TT.

Anyhow, I guess they still might hide something from us...

I played with the vorcha texture a little.
here is vanilla 512 edited by me (it could be a little better, but only spent about an hour on editing, once I got it in game I think it is a little too dark?)

Looks great , I didn't expect this effort. Just add it as it is.

[thunderchero]

I'd choose variant 2 for all ferengi ships and 3 for the stations.

I would choose option 4, use original 512 sharpened and windows enhanced.
this is an actual gif (3 min work)

fl3_a.gif (154.62 KiB) Viewed 5515 times

what took longer was saving it with a good palette.

here is before editing

fl3_a.gif (116.17 KiB) Viewed 5515 times

note;
I only checked the ECM research screen, but I remember there are other glitches as well (e.g. some ships showing entirely different textures when zooming in/out in combat).

correct, Jeremy only created *_a.gifs so as the zoomed in/out they changed. But that brings me to next suggestion, To edit the hobs to only use *_a.gifs. with modern systems memory should would be an issue.

Vor'cha was in texture mod by Jeremy (ugly turquoise changed to darker green and klingon emblems on the upper wings), but I lost all my files and Joker page downloads are down.

file is also available here at AFC
https://www.armadafleetcommand.com/get- ... file_id=16

larger task force patch shouldn't be applied to ECM,

I have not noticed any issues myself, but the mod release would not included patch (user would need to install)

Looks great , I didn't expect this effort. Just add it as it is.

thanks, I also already have many vanilla textures that have already been touched up. (vorcha was not one of them)

And the effort is no problem.

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

I would choose option 4, use original 512 sharpened and windows enhanced.

Have a closer look, it's not only the windows. He made the 'peaks' of the warships more weapon-like, changed color of the Marauder and many other minor changes to make the ships less monotonous without overacting.

Jeremy only created *_a.gifs so as the zoomed in/out they changed. But that brings me to next suggestion, To edit the hobs to only use *_a.gifs. with modern systems memory should would be an issue.

Indeed shouldn't be a problem. That's exactly what I've done a about 15 years ago, with a Pentium 3, 500 MHZ, 64 MB ram and poor Nvidia onboard graphics (forced always 512x512). Only problem in huge battles was lag at turn start related to heavy phaser fire.

You can replace 41 00 and 42 00 with 40 00 nowthe programm use at any time the big [512x512] texture, and you have 2other texture you can work with.
I like this more, becouse the ship looks sharper.

http://www.members.aon.at/zelli/ships.htm
I think this hob modification was even part of 'standard for moders', hence the ECM zoom issue:

This Mod needs, BotF standard for moders!!

This files must be used if you want to make a BotF mod where *.hob and/or texure [*.gif] files where changed.
This is necesarry for in-game compatibility!

file is also available here at AFC

I think I remember why some textures are missing in texture mod 1.10. The latest release of the texture-mod by Jeremy was a big downgrade. They removed many good work from earlier releases, e.g. in order to use an unmodded vor'cha texture for the negh'var, promoting it as a good idea. They surely got a big thumbs up from beta testers Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles....

[thunderchero]

Have a closer look, it's not only the windows. He made the 'peaks' of the warships more weapon-like, changed color of the Marauder and many other minor changes to make the ships less monotonous without overacting.

I did notice some of those changes, and all would be able to be duplicated on the better 512 textures easily

I think this hob modification was even part of 'standard for moders', hence the ECM zoom issue:

incorrect, standard of moders was never added to ECM due to conflicts with hades (or any multi installer). Zoom issue was due to texture mod 1.10 only had "a" textures. also just checked standard of moders and it still uses "a" " b" "c" gifs unless there was prior version I do not have.

They surely got a big thumbs up from beta testers Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles....

LOL

PM sent btw