Number of ships in a group :?
Moderator: thunderchero
Number of ships in a group :?
Hey
One thing that already annoyed me the first time i played botf
is that you can only put 9 ships into a group.
Instead of clicking 5 times for setting a new route for some 40 ships, it would be very nice to be able to put them all together in a single group.
Is there still a solution for this problem, or does anyone know how it can be solved?
I'm sorry if there's already a question like this, but I didn't find it yet.
thx
One thing that already annoyed me the first time i played botf
is that you can only put 9 ships into a group.
Instead of clicking 5 times for setting a new route for some 40 ships, it would be very nice to be able to put them all together in a single group.
Is there still a solution for this problem, or does anyone know how it can be solved?
I'm sorry if there's already a question like this, but I didn't find it yet.
thx
- thunderchero
- Site Administrator aka Fleet Admiral
- Posts: 7849
- Joined: Fri Apr 25, 2008 2:00 am
- Location: On a three month training mission, in command of the USS Valiant.
I took a quick look into increasing taskforce size as a project about a year ago, and didn't get very far...
sadly i can't find my notes!...
what i remember is not only would the affected .wdf files need modification, and how trek.exe deals with them (this is still unresolved see energy screen project). You also need to setup the .sav files generated by trek.exe and therefore how trek.exe saves and loads this dynamic data.
further while I was able to click to add a tenth ship to a taskforce, it didn't join the taskforce, i.e. it webt through the add sounds but didn't appear in the taskforce pane just was left out.
Getting that far ment testing several 0x0A and 0x09 and resulted in many a CTD.
what I couldn't resolve myself was how trek.exe handled the data of each ship as i added into a taskforce.
my approach was a very naive blunt force approach. So the list of things to identify is:
1. How does trek.exe handle ship data in a taskforce?
2. How does trek.exe store and retrieve this infomation?
3. How is the infomation encode and retrieved by tre.exe from and to a .sav file?
4. Does trek exe. contain any check or limits that can be altered? (my own research suggested this is a 'yes' btw.)
5. Does this work for the AI, does it affect combat calculations/ ground assaults. AI stratergy????
so there you have it. -- good luck!!
EDIT: Alternative approach
Could taskforces be nested within one another?
so 9x9 i.e. 81 ships per nested task force. This I would surgest would need as much understanding and work (if not more) as the above but in a standard taskforce pane individual taskforces could be assigned in to it and these inturn could be manipulated independantly?
E.G.
Fleet consists of
Taskforce 1 -- 5 x Galaxy, 3 x Galaxy-X, 1 x Oberth
Taskforce 2 -- 3 x Reliant, 3 x Constellation, 3 x Defiant
Taskforce 3 -- 4 x Ambassador & 5 x Soverign
so the Main Fleet in this example consists of 27 ships subdevded into 3 groups of nine?
sadly i can't find my notes!...
what i remember is not only would the affected .wdf files need modification, and how trek.exe deals with them (this is still unresolved see energy screen project). You also need to setup the .sav files generated by trek.exe and therefore how trek.exe saves and loads this dynamic data.
further while I was able to click to add a tenth ship to a taskforce, it didn't join the taskforce, i.e. it webt through the add sounds but didn't appear in the taskforce pane just was left out.
Getting that far ment testing several 0x0A and 0x09 and resulted in many a CTD.
what I couldn't resolve myself was how trek.exe handled the data of each ship as i added into a taskforce.
my approach was a very naive blunt force approach. So the list of things to identify is:
1. How does trek.exe handle ship data in a taskforce?
2. How does trek.exe store and retrieve this infomation?
3. How is the infomation encode and retrieved by tre.exe from and to a .sav file?
4. Does trek exe. contain any check or limits that can be altered? (my own research suggested this is a 'yes' btw.)
5. Does this work for the AI, does it affect combat calculations/ ground assaults. AI stratergy????
so there you have it. -- good luck!!
EDIT: Alternative approach
Could taskforces be nested within one another?
so 9x9 i.e. 81 ships per nested task force. This I would surgest would need as much understanding and work (if not more) as the above but in a standard taskforce pane individual taskforces could be assigned in to it and these inturn could be manipulated independantly?
E.G.
Fleet consists of
Taskforce 1 -- 5 x Galaxy, 3 x Galaxy-X, 1 x Oberth
Taskforce 2 -- 3 x Reliant, 3 x Constellation, 3 x Defiant
Taskforce 3 -- 4 x Ambassador & 5 x Soverign
so the Main Fleet in this example consists of 27 ships subdevded into 3 groups of nine?
You should take a look at GWTForce and GTForceList
Slots are 4 bytes in size. You could try reducing the size to 2 bytes and get 18 slots. This would mean rewriting any code that accesses the slots.
Nesting taskforces would be even harder. If the code could be somehow manipulated to do this you'd need a way to tell whether an ID is a ship or a taskforce ID.
Slots are 4 bytes in size. You could try reducing the size to 2 bytes and get 18 slots. This would mean rewriting any code that accesses the slots.
Nesting taskforces would be even harder. If the code could be somehow manipulated to do this you'd need a way to tell whether an ID is a ship or a taskforce ID.
The reason I suggested taskforce nesting (single layer only) was it could use much of the existing gui -- however most of the behind the scenes programming will need to be changed.
Has anyone actually looked at the program code for this or knows where it is located with out my original notes I'm left scratching my head!!
Has anyone actually looked at the program code for this or knows where it is located with out my original notes I'm left scratching my head!!
- Spocks-cuddly-tribble
- Code Master
- Posts: 1884
- Joined: Sun Apr 27, 2008 2:00 am
Here are some old notes wrt:Peter1981 wrote:Has anyone actually looked at the program code for this or knows where it is located with out my original notes I'm left scratching my head!!
Extending the TASKFORCE size
First of all, GUI files(+ exe handling of them) is the main work. Without this issue solved, the project is just a silly nerd timewaster.
=> Max number of ships: (maybe more values to find)
Code: Select all
4492AB cmp eax, 9
4492C4 cmp eax, 9
4492F8 cmp edx, 9
=> Decreasing the slot size (senseless task -> hundreds of values to find/change for a max size of only 18 ships)
Some of them:
Code: Select all
scrap order
46943D add ebx, 4
Train_ships
46916B add ecx, 4
Raid_order
4697B7 add esi, 4
Build_Space_Station
468C92 add ecx, 4
=> Increasing the blocksize of GWTForce & GTForceList (senseless task due to file structure!)
Most but not all are related to the subject, on the other hand maybe some needed values are calculated !
Code: Select all
447BBE mov ecx, 6Ch
447BE8 add ebp, 6Ch
448F2B mov ecx, 6Ch
4494C5 sub esp, 6Ch
4495A2 add esp, 6Ch
449822 sub esp, 6Ch
449862 add esp, 6Ch
449895 mov ebx, 6Ch
449FB3 mov ecx, 6Ch
45713F mov eax, 6Ch
457144 mov ecx, 6Ch
4575D0 mov eax, 6Ch
457D01 mov eax, 6Ch
457D0E mov ecx, 6Ch
4668EC mov edx, 6Ch
4669CB mov edx, 6Ch
4668EC mov edx, 6Ch
4669CB mov edx, 6Ch
466B14 mov edx, 6Ch
466B25 mov edx, 6Ch
466B46 mov edx, 6Ch
466CB4 mov edx, 6Ch
46C350 push 6Ch
46C37B push 6Ch
46C39F push 6Ch
46C3E7 push 6Ch
46C46C push 6Ch
46C498 push 6Ch
46C4BD push 6Ch
46C505 push 6Ch
48284C mov ecx, 6Ch
48EE08 mov eax, 6Ch
48F058 mov eax, 6Ch
4FEEA5 sub esp, 6Ch
4FEF67 add esp, 6Ch
55371F add eax, 6Ch
55B4BB add eax, 6Ch
I don't know how many bugs is too many but that point is reached somewhere before however many in BotF is.