Would it be possible to make jumpstart start like in LW? I mean you select base, than mission, than cutscene with Bradsford and introduction with base? I would be really looking forward for something like this.
I've just taken a look at the website ini generator and it's pretty handy. Being able to select everything from a list instead of hunting down what it's called in the code is very convenient. For feature requests, MEC editing support and soldier copying would be nice but are easily solved through a bit of ini editing so it's not a big deal. I've noticed that building long lists of items/researches tends to push their respective buttons below the screen and forces you to keep scrolling down to add more which is somewhat annoying. And finally there's no ability to set the defense level of a country. Other than that everything's working perfectly. Thanks again for the great mod.
the ability to upload our edit ini file to the online editor so we can tweak the preexisting one instead of starting all of over again or a offline exe to use on our pcs.
and the ability to edit your current barracks, the one thing i sorely miss from toolboks is being able to edit my current soldiers and i can't find anything that lets me do that.
INI file uploads is next on my todo list for major features to the website, so yeah I am totally on board with that one. That's what I'll be doing next after fixing all the minor missing things and bug fixes. I also want to add the ability to save an ini on the server so you can post links to builds and customize other people's builds more easily instead of sharing full .ini files around cause that's a little awkward.
As for barracks editing, that's more of a separate mod, or rather probably a standalone utility, instead of an addition to JumpStart... JumpStart really is for setting up a custom campaign start. There are some utilities out there for reading save files but I'm not aware of any that write back to the save file again and allow for any live modification.
Damn! i guess thats a secret only Toolboks knew huh? I sorely miss her mod. At least Jumpstart is the next best thing i can make my hero soldiers to my liking so long as its at the beginning of the game.
I wouldn't necessarily call it a secret The save format is fairly well-known and there are a few utilities out there that will read the save files and pull out data. But AFAIK nobody has made a recent or full featured save editor. The last one i remember seeing is the xcom roster viewer that exports soldier info, but doesn't modify it or write it back to the save. I guess it just hasn't bothered any of the current modders enough to make a new one
I have suggestion, to make making a solider less tedious.
When you select a perk it should be removed from the list so it makes the list smaller and easier to navigate since you can't put double of the perk anyway.
Ack, I had that feature working and it broke at some point. I just fixed it. This is now working for extra perks, all the research/foundry/ots links, and items.
Hey here is another feature you can perhaps add, pre-made MEC soldiers... I made 2 of my hero soldiers into MEC and they lost all the special perks i gave them, is it possible to add already augmented soldiers in the barracks so the game doesn't reset their perks?
Also perhaps the ability to copy the last build of Individualized Soldiers? like say we're making soldiers that we want to have the same set of perks, it would be nice if we could just have button to copy a previous build or to use the last used build.
Btw glad to see that perk feature was fixed, this will make it alot easier to make my hero soldiers, now to wait patiently for the upload feature. Great work !
There is, but it currently isn't exposed through the website, it's only currently possible through manually editing the INI file. I'm going to add it, but it's not there yet. You can do it by modifying the downloaded ini to change the class of the soldier you want to be a mec to one of the mec classes (31,41,32,42,33,43,34,44). Of course on the website the mec perk tree isn't there yet so you'd need to manually set all the mec perks. I'll get to that feature soon.
Copying soldiers sounds like a good idea and should be easy to add.
I started on the ini uploader tonight. I've written the lexer for the ini file format so far. I expect it'll be a few days before it's ready.
Ah thank you so much for the ini MEC code! Looking forward to future updates
btw i found what is the max money you can have while not crashing.
" 999999999 " any higher then that results in a crash, haven't tested that number on anything else i don't think anything aside from money goes that high.
Also alot of MEC perks are currently on the perk list in the additional perks option, i just used ini to add an MEC and she has all her perks plus her MEC perks intact.
I noticed when i set country to "USA" it doesn't create a icountry= in the ini file and in-game the character is from a random country.
Also having a strange issue with Rocketer class, whenever i equip them with an armor they lose their rpg slot and i have no idea what this is happening.
I found out, if you have Suppression and Fire Rocket together... it'll create weird glitch where if you either change armors or simply change classes [ Commander's Choice ] it'll lock one of the classes in, in my case it made my rocketer a "gunner" even though its a rocketer and i was locked out of secondary weapon.
This also also a benefit effect say if you made a gunner, you'll have a pistol even though you aren't suppose to.
Use Tutorial/Meld tutorial check box to set if you want to start a game with JumpStart or not, so you don't have to uninstall JumpStart when you just want to start up a normal game.
Hmm. It'd be possible, yeah, but I'm not sure how I feel about exposing hidden stats. It's tough to test to verify it's working correctly and isn't something normally accessible/exposed in the game.
Another suggestion in regards to the alien base; I noticed that the aliens still receive a free base regardless if one is already assigned in month 1. Is it possible to force a check on this and not let them have a second base until they've earned it through panic?
Also, on the web-app I don't see the option to setup the country and gender on bulk soldiers. Is this just a feature that has to be typed into the ini?
The 1st month alien base is hardcoded into LW and I'm trying to keep JumpStart from messing with any core game logic outside of game start as this could cause issues with any campaigns that aren't started via jumpstart (like loading a save from a pre-jumpstart campaign). So unfortunately I don't have a really clean way to do this - I have no way to tell if a campaign was started by jumpstart or not. Just disabling the 1st month base if there already are any bases isn't really great either as some people may want to have both.
The only workaround I can think of is to set the start date to the 2nd month - this should prevent the first month base but might have other side effects. You can give the aliens a research penalty to offset that aspect, but exalt and DLC missions may still show up earlier than expected.
As for the bulk soldiers country/gender options, I need to rework the UI for that now that a simple number box per rank isn't sufficient to represent it. I'll get there but it'll take a bit.
Just tested out 1.1 and it works just fine. Can confirm the barracks crash is gone. Noticed a small but substantial bug though, alien grenades do not show up in your inventory if you've added their foundry project to the Jumpstart list, you have to manually add them through console commands (though I suppose adding them in the Jumpstart ini would also work).
In the interests of all I've made up a list of what items correspond to which exalt collectibles, as I couldn't find such a list anywhere else.
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_0 Alloy Bipod END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_1 Breaching Ammo END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_2 Armor Piercing Ammo END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_3 Advanced Suppression Pod END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_4 Impact Vest END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_5 Tactical Sensors END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_6 Walker Servos END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_7 Neural Gunlink END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_8 Shredder Ammo END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_9 Psi Screen END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_10 Rebuild SHIV END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_11 Rebuild Alloy SHIV END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_12 Rebuild Hover SHIV END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_13 Illuminator Gunsight END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_14 Elerium Turbos END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_15 Motion tracker END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_16 Cognitive Enhancer END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_17 Neuroregulator END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_18 Incinerator Module END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_19 Targeting Module END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_20 MEC-7 END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_21 MEC-6 END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_22 Alloy Carbide Plating END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_23 MEC-5 END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_24 AutoSentry Turret END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_25 Chameleon Suit END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_26 Not sure, something available at start so not that important. END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_27 Weapon Supercooler END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_28 The Thumper END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_29 Smartshell Pod END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_30 Holo-Targeter
Thanks for the report. I see the problem and it looks like there will also be a related issue with SHIVs and a couple of other projects. I've added them to my todo list for the next release.
Thanks for the ini list as well. I've actually been working on a web app to generate a .ini file using a friendlier UI than writing ini files by hand, so when that's done you'll be able to select items from a dropdown box by name instead of trying to match them up to the obscure enum values LW had to scrounge for. So far I've completed the basic UI and logic for all the existing .ini entries JumpStart supports. I just need to complete the ini generation itself and I can release the initial version. This first version looks like crap and doesn't have all the features I want, but it''ll be functional and hopefully far easier to use than writing the ini files by hand.
I am really new at using and playing mods. Frankly my experience is limited to installing Long War Beta 15e and a couple of mods using Patcher GUI.
I am very keen to use this mod but I don't really know what or how to modify the jumpstart.ini file.
I am really only interested in getting some blank soldiers so I can customer their appearance, gender, and country of origin. Is it possible for someone to please explain to me what I need to do. All other stats and remain the same for me, although I anticipate that if I can learn how to mod the soldiers then I can probably learn to mod something else in the file.
Thanking all of you in advance, and especially to tracktwo for coming up with this mod.
The soldier ini section (and every section) is very self explanatory. Each available specification is listed and the more confusing ones are explained. In your case the sample blanksoldier=(iRank=<rank>, iCount=<count> ) is what you're looking for. Plug in a rank (eRank_Rookie or anything listed in the explaination) and a number and you'll be good to go.
If you want to set specific genders and countries you'll need to use the individual soldier ini sections:
soldier=(iClass=<class number>, iRank=<rank>, iCountry=<country>, iGender=<1 for male or 2 for female>
Each line of this form will create 1 soldier. You can also leave out the iClass and iRank sections to just give yourself PFCs.
You can use the blanksoldier= command as well as arc1618 says to create a bunch of soldiers quickly, but this only lets you specify their rank but not customize the gender or country.
would it be possible to expand the settings somewhat with random elements ?
example : Alienbase(3)=ecountry_all - startingcontinent would choose 3 random countries for alien bases in all available countries except the player starting continent ?
I don't really care about the syntax, it was mostly just an example (it could as well be written another way such as : Alienbase=ecountry_random Alienbase=ecountry_random Alienbase=ecountry_random )
I've added it to my todo list, thanks for the suggestion! I figure random alien bases, satellites, techs, projects, storage items, and maybe perks might be interesting. Some would certainly be overpowered (getting a free plasma sniper rifle as a random storage item in March), but this isn't necessarily intended to be balanced.
I've added random bases the mod, and they'll be available in the next version:
RANDOM_BASES=4
Would cause 4 random countries to leave the council. This is applied *after* the alienbase directives, and will only pick countries that haven't already left the council, so you can combine both in the same .ini if you like.
superb my intent is on doing an alternative xcom-long war story like : game would start 3 years later, the war has been raging and pretty much the whole world has been taken over and needs to be conquered back. I'm not sure when I'll try this (need to finish current LW game first), and the balancing might be hard but nevertheless it should provide some entertainment ^^ (I'm thinking about giving the player a huge amount of starting money, and giving the aliens a huge amount of research starting penalties.)
Have no idea if this is do-able, but I am trying to use this as a full testing engine, and some of the things I can't do is set missions gone on, kills, critical wounds sustained, officer rank, and (for officers) how many missions they have commanded. Any progress in this direction would be awesome for testing purposes.
I'd like to request compatibility with Gender And Race Aware Custom names list. For some reason that mod is the only one of the mods I use that is an issue. If you install them both, either first, they will install successfully but the game will CTD on start of new campaign.
Thanks, I've reproduced the crash myself. I think I understand the problem and I have a fix. Basically the problem was JumpStart and the NameList mod just involve too much code all running at once, and when they interact together they try to do too much and Unreal forces a crash thinking the game has locked up.
I'll try to get an updated release out sometime tomorrow.
Unfortunately, the game still crashes with both mods installed. I believe it happens when you try to create too many soldiers - like starting at mid game with 60 soldiers. And you also add in creating some special soldiers that you've named and assigned classes and perks to. I don't know what the actual limit is on soldiers before it breaks, but I'm reasonably sure this is the issue, as it works if you just use the sample jumpstart.ini
Yep, I see this problem still exists. I have a new fix that I'll put up in a few minutes. This is still sort of a sensitive area but I've managed to assign myself >100 soldiers without a crash with my latest fix. I'm certain you can still trigger a crash by giving yourself a very large initial barracks, but it should work better now for typical barracks sizes. The main problem here is the game wants to sort the barracks each time a new soldier is added with the blanksoldier command and the sorting is very inefficient and can trip the game's built-in loop detection on a very large barracks.
Feature Suggestions (45 comments)
the ability to upload our edit ini file to the online editor so we can tweak the preexisting one instead of starting all of over again or a offline exe to use on our pcs.
and the ability to edit your current barracks, the one thing i sorely miss from toolboks is being able to edit my current soldiers and i can't find anything that lets me do that.
As for barracks editing, that's more of a separate mod, or rather probably a standalone utility, instead of an addition to JumpStart... JumpStart really is for setting up a custom campaign start. There are some utilities out there for reading save files but I'm not aware of any that write back to the save file again and allow for any live modification.
At least Jumpstart is the next best thing i can make my hero soldiers to my liking so long as its at the beginning of the game.
When you select a perk it should be removed from the list so it makes the list smaller and easier to navigate since you can't put double of the perk anyway.
Also perhaps the ability to copy the last build of Individualized Soldiers? like say we're making soldiers that we want to have the same set of perks, it would be nice if we could just have button to copy a previous build or to use the last used build.
Btw glad to see that perk feature was fixed, this will make it alot easier to make my hero soldiers, now to wait patiently for the upload feature. Great work !
Copying soldiers sounds like a good idea and should be easy to add.
I started on the ini uploader tonight. I've written the lexer for the ini file format so far. I expect it'll be a few days before it's ready.
btw i found what is the max money you can have while not crashing.
" 999999999 " any higher then that results in a crash, haven't tested that number on anything else i don't think anything aside from money goes that high.
Also alot of MEC perks are currently on the perk list in the additional perks option, i just used ini to add an MEC and she has all her perks plus her MEC perks intact.
Also having a strange issue with Rocketer class, whenever i equip them with an armor they lose their rpg slot and i have no idea what this is happening.
I can't reproduce the Rocketeer problem, though. Can you send me a link or PM me an .ini that shows the problem?
This also also a benefit effect say if you made a gunner, you'll have a pistol even though you aren't suppose to.
It's a hidden stat in: XComGame.XGTacticalGameCoreNativeBase.TCharacter.aStats (number 13)
Another suggestion in regards to the alien base; I noticed that the aliens still receive a free base regardless if one is already assigned in month 1. Is it possible to force a check on this and not let them have a second base until they've earned it through panic?
Also, on the web-app I don't see the option to setup the country and gender on bulk soldiers. Is this just a feature that has to be typed into the ini?
The only workaround I can think of is to set the start date to the 2nd month - this should prevent the first month base but might have other side effects. You can give the aliens a research penalty to offset that aspect, but exalt and DLC missions may still show up earlier than expected.
As for the bulk soldiers country/gender options, I need to rework the UI for that now that a simple number box per rank isn't sufficient to represent it. I'll get there but it'll take a bit.
In the interests of all I've made up a list of what items correspond to which exalt collectibles, as I couldn't find such a list anywhere else.
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_0 Alloy Bipod
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_1 Breaching Ammo
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_2 Armor Piercing Ammo
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_3 Advanced Suppression Pod
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_4 Impact Vest
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_5 Tactical Sensors
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_6 Walker Servos
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_7 Neural Gunlink
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_8 Shredder Ammo
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_9 Psi Screen
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_10 Rebuild SHIV
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_11 Rebuild Alloy SHIV
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_12 Rebuild Hover SHIV
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_13 Illuminator Gunsight
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_14 Elerium Turbos
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_15 Motion tracker
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_16 Cognitive Enhancer
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_17 Neuroregulator
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_18 Incinerator Module
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_19 Targeting Module
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_20 MEC-7
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_21 MEC-6
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_22 Alloy Carbide Plating
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_23 MEC-5
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_24 AutoSentry Turret
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_25 Chameleon Suit
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_26 Not sure, something available at start so not that important.
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_27 Weapon Supercooler
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_28 The Thumper
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_29 Smartshell Pod
END_EXALT_COLLECTIBLES_30 Holo-Targeter
Might be useful to include in the ini as well.
Thanks for the ini list as well. I've actually been working on a web app to generate a .ini file using a friendlier UI than writing ini files by hand, so when that's done you'll be able to select items from a dropdown box by name instead of trying to match them up to the obscure enum values LW had to scrounge for. So far I've completed the basic UI and logic for all the existing .ini entries JumpStart supports. I just need to complete the ini generation itself and I can release the initial version. This first version looks like crap and doesn't have all the features I want, but it''ll be functional and hopefully far easier to use than writing the ini files by hand.
I am really new at using and playing mods. Frankly my experience is limited to installing Long War Beta 15e and a couple of mods using Patcher GUI.
I am very keen to use this mod but I don't really know what or how to modify the jumpstart.ini file.
I am really only interested in getting some blank soldiers so I can customer their appearance, gender, and country of origin. Is it possible for someone to please explain to me what I need to do. All other stats and remain the same for me, although I anticipate that if I can learn how to mod the soldiers then I can probably learn to mod something else in the file.
Thanking all of you in advance, and especially to tracktwo for coming up with this mod.
soldier=(iClass=<class number>, iRank=<rank>, iCountry=<country>, iGender=<1 for male or 2 for female>
Each line of this form will create 1 soldier. You can also leave out the iClass and iRank sections to just give yourself PFCs.
You can use the blanksoldier= command as well as arc1618 says to create a bunch of soldiers quickly, but this only lets you specify their rank but not customize the gender or country.
example :
Alienbase(3)=ecountry_all - startingcontinent
would choose 3 random countries for alien bases in all available countries except the player starting continent ?
I don't really care about the syntax, it was mostly just an example (it could as well be written another way such as :
Alienbase=ecountry_random
Alienbase=ecountry_random
Alienbase=ecountry_random )
Thanks.
but anyway at least for alien bases exceptions might also be important
or for satellites the other way around
e.g.
satellites(1)=esatellite_rnd(home_continent) would add 1 satellite to a random country on the player home continent
(note that I'm way more interested myself in the alienbases :p )
have a nice day & good luck with the coding ^^
RANDOM_BASES=4
Would cause 4 random countries to leave the council. This is applied *after* the alienbase directives, and will only pick countries that haven't already left the council, so you can combine both in the same .ini if you like.
my intent is on doing an alternative xcom-long war story
like : game would start 3 years later, the war has been raging and pretty much the whole world has been taken over and needs to be conquered back.
I'm not sure when I'll try this (need to finish current LW game first), and the balancing might be hard but nevertheless it should provide some entertainment ^^ (I'm thinking about giving the player a huge amount of starting money, and giving the aliens a huge amount of research starting penalties.)
I'll try to get an updated release out sometime tomorrow.