Gameman112358

Managed to fix it, I think. Dunno what happened exactly; I'll keep an eye out in my testing to see what happened. Also, I was actually tempted to use the Zone Simulator to add more canisters to areas. Mostly because I like being a power hungry maniac at times. XD Probably wouldn't be hard to do either, all things considered. Kinda curious if any modders have ever simply filled a room with tons of canisters to use. Or made the Geneforge give tons of stat bonuses (Much like in the first game) for the sake of roflstomping everything a few times. XD

That thing you were talking about (The whole able to control a large group that isn't in your party) seems to happen if you either screw up their character entries in the Zone Simulator or if you set their attitude to 0. I would need to take a look at that myself. It definitely happens if you screw up character entries in the Zone Simulator. Also, when I said spawn creations, I meant more like temporary creations, not creations that join your party. What I did was that if you have a character with you in a boss fight, the script will spawn several creations to help you. Once the boss has been defeated, I have the script erase the creations (Basically your companion is making expendable creations). Creations that join your party might be pretty useful though, given that they take no essence to level up. But they take a creation slot, meaning that there is an opportunity cost in doing so (taking a creation in means that it will scale better over the course of the game thanks to free level ups, but that means that you lose a creation slot. A slot that could be used for any other creation; Vlish, Drayks, etc.) EDIT: Also, I keep getting an error that goes like this: "0.txt Error: Tried to run invalid creature script..." I don't really know what I did exactly to cause it...

Yeah, fights that have tons of enemies in them don't really translate well into turn by turn combat gameplay. If it was all in real time, I'd probably be happy to add tons of enemies. But it isn't, so what can you do. Spoilers for the endings have been removed, btw. Little tidbit from my experiments; it isn't really possible for companions to be able to shape creations (I really wish they were able to...), but what you can do is make it so that if you have a certain character with you and you're fighting a boss, several creations will spawn on your side, to simulate the effect that your companion is shaping creations to help you fight in battle. The creations made and their strength can be determined by a certain flag in the scripts, which will put more strength into said creations if you are doing more to train your companion. Great for my experiments, considering that Shaila is able to Shape creations. Might also be good if you have a companion that is a Lifecrafter or something like that. Example: Whenever you fight the Presence early in the game, you can make it so that if you have a certain character in your party (in my case, Shaila), several early game creations such as fyoras and artilas will be created to fight alongside you, to simulate the effect that Shaila is Shaping creations to help you. Can be tweaked for late game where in boss fights creations such as Wingbolts, Kyshakks, and War Tralls are spawned. Probably shouldn't apply to every boss fight, at least early on. (Presence in its Fyora form and Servile forms are relatively easy to fight; not worth it to try and spawn a bunch of supporting creations. Servant Mind form is probably where it's appropriate, given that you fight a ton of enemies at once in that fight). I might even add certain unique creations to be spawned, since I kinda think that Shaila would play fast and loose with creation variations (Basically creations that are capable of spraying fire everywhere, having a strong debuff ability, etc. Would only happen in later parts of the game, and aren't going to be so powerful that they trivialize boss fights, to make it fair). Dunno why I think that way, I kinda just do. XD

There are lots of possible stories for Shaila, given how little we know about her. I picked the resentful mage one simply because I wanted to give a line of reasoning of why she would become so powerful once you started getting her upgrades. I have trouble imagining some random Geneforged schmuck becoming incredibly powerful over the course of GF5, given how arrogant a lot of them become, but an aspiring mage who already had magical attunement that turned to the Geneforge for more power would make a lot more sense. That's just me though; there's probably numerous reasons people can think of to justify such large gains in power over a short period of time. You are right about the Geneforge thing; thinking about it, the PC must've been astronomically lucky to have the Geneforge do what it did to them. Especially considering that in GF4, if you use the Geneforge twice, you die right then and there. I'll probably make it so that Shaila is cured of her Geneforge-induced insanity and defects when you meet her, and say that the Shapers managed to find a way to cure her (Bit of handwaving on my part, but I'll probably think of a better explanation later). I'm in no hurry. Most of these modifications are for personal use only for now, and really, I'm just spitballing what I've done and seeing if it causes modders to get some good ideas. I'm looking forward to seeing your work in the warrior mod when it comes out. You are right about Shaila regarding stat increases. The stat increases were a tricky thing to deal with. Initially, I was planning to simply make the character replacement have most or all of the stat boosts that the player gave to her over the course of the game, but I got rid of that idea because the free stats are gone, now rolled into her regular stats (To take your example Alhoon, that means that those 18 improvements are now added into the new character's normal stats). That meant that Shaila's power would snowball out of control, possibly being far more powerful than top tier creations made by a Shaper/Lifecrafter (Would need to test this though). Though I should point something out; you can add other stats to creations, such as Quick Action, Parry, Battle Magic, etc. Shaila is no exception to this. The player can increase her Strength, Endurance, Intelligence, and Dexterity, but nothing else. I can just make it so that she gains points in Battle Magic and other stats to ensure that the new character can keep up. I was also hoping that the new character's upgraded attacks and abilities would alleviate this as well (Shaila's Ice Spray is not nearly as good as Essence Orbs or a high damage version of Dampening Field, for example). I would need to test this to see what happens though; she is only one character after all, who takes a creation slot in your party.. I have seen your zone changing over time. It is pretty thorough. I'll keep it in mind as I continue on my modding adventures. The problem with Greta is that her character is literally a generic agent renamed. I checked the zone code that are used to reference her character; it is a generic agent that shoots Searer a bunch and has generic agent abilities. The low level doesn't help. When I'm fighting an endgame boss, I should get that feeling of "Holy sh*t, this is a tough fight!". I don't get that with Greta. I dunno why it was coded and scripted that way; I was expecting her GF4 incarnation, where she has stronger melee and shoots a bunch of Essence Orbs. But it wouldn't be hard to make Greta a harder boss; simply make the Zone Simulator reference a different character that looks exactly like Greta, and use a different script/alter Greta's script to be more unique. Makes me have a few ideas... Greta with Diamond Spray anyone? I'm no completionist; I play on normal, not torment, and I don't try to level grind like crazy, so I know that people that follow just the storyline will be much lower level. I'm not going to make the zones super hard, per se. But rather, more chaotic. You're in the middle of a battle; it should be filled with lot of soldiers and creations on both sides duking it out (Though I can already imagine problems; the Perikalia Orchards are an example of that). If I take your example, bringing in the Unbound in Gazaki-Uss to fight, I would buff the attacking Shaper forces, either by making existing forces much stronger, or by adding more creations and some extra warriors, so that the player still has a chance to turn the tide. Sorry that this post is so long. I like to go into detail with everything I read, so my posts usually end up being really long because of it. EDIT: Spoilers to GF5 endings have been mostly removed. Please play the game and don't read spoilers. You'll enjoy the game more if you don't know what's going to happen next.

WARNING: SPOILERS IN THIS POST FOR BOTH GF4 AND GF5. ALSO VERY LENGTHY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. I've managed to add new characters into the game. You're right alhoon, the Zone Simulator isn't too terribly difficult to use regarding adding characters; certainly not as bad as I was expecting it to be. Which is nice. Anyway, what I've done first is add Shaila into the game. You can get her in Isenwood's Spire, and only if you turn in Mehken to Rawal (Most players seem to do that anyway; Mehken as a companion is short lived, and the extra stats are nice. Might change this later though) (Note, most of this is for experimentation only; no mod releases from me yet. This is me rambling my thoughts and what I'm doing. Any modders reading this may get some ideas though). Why did I implement her? Well, I was a little disappointed that we hear utterly nothing about her after GF4. True, she is a minor character, meant to be your early game boss in GF4, and easily gotten rid of and forgotten by the player, but on the other hand, she was able to get the attention of both the rebels and Shapers, which isn't something to scoff at. My speculated back story for her is that she might've been an apprentice mage trying to learn more potent magic, but the Shapers, for some reason or another, make it very difficult for her to learn more magic, thus preventing her from becoming more powerful (think that mage in Fort Vengeance, if you've gotten that far in GF5. I think her name is Cyprien, or something). It's one of the few explanations I can think of that would explain why she would turn to the rebels in the first place. My thoughts are that during the events of GF4, she was brought to the Foundry, where the GF5 Protagonist starts. Sorta thought that since the Foundry is the place that studies the modifications caused by Shaping (The Foundry seems to analyze any anomaly that comes from Shaping itself), they might know what to do to fix what the Geneforge did to her (Given that she was essentially Shaped by the Geneforge). Of course, given that Rawal runs the Foundry, he implants a control tool into her and pretty much does nothing to cure her (I wouldn't really expect a lying rat like Rawal to keep the Shaper's promise to cure Shaila). She is cured the same way the GF5 protagonist is; using the Geneforge that Rawal has been keeping a secret. The reason is because the GF5 protagonist, before using Rawal's Geneforge, is shown to have been heavily damaged, mentally and physically, from too many modifications that were made too quickly or sloppily. We know that canisters can cause mental instability, and that the Geneforge is even more severe in this regard. We also know (in the case of poor Shaila) that the Geneforge can cause serious physical defects in individuals. How using a Geneforge twice fixes mental instability and physical problems from over-modification is beyond me (since using a Geneforge twice in GF4 kills you right then and there...), but hey, it works out for Shaila in the end, since she is cured ,ironically, by the same device that got her into this mess in the first place. What I was hoping to do was something like your companions in GF3. Weapon upgrades, new abilities, upgraded resistances, companion opinions, etc. The weapon upgrades in GF3 were likely hardcoded, meaning that they can't be replicated in GF5 exactly like in GF3, but there is a workaround. Using the Zone Simulator, you can just add a new character to a zone, essentially your companion with all of the upgrades you want, then make it so that once you pay certain NPCs to train your companion, it simply takes the current companion out of your party and replaces it with the new, upgraded one. It's rough code wise, since you do want to make sure you don't have duplicates of your companions for example, but it does give you more freedom, because you can change the graphics, resistances, attacks, etc. of your companion much more. Shaila as a character I imagine would be very adept at using debuffing magic, causing debilitating status effects (such as curse, weaken, fear, charm, etc.) on her enemies. Stuff like Daze and Fear seem to be essentially messing with the opponent's mental state directly, and given that her mind was completely warped by the Geneforge, she probably pretty good at screwing with the enemies' heads. I wish there was a way for attacks to do multiple status effects on enemies, but I have not found any way to do so yet. So for now, this is how I mapped it out for Shaila in terms of power: EARLY GAME (Dealing with the Presence, doing stuff in the Whitespires, etc.): Shaila is the same as she was in GF4, stat and ability wise. I literally took her stats in GF4 and copy pasted it into GF5. She does have quite a bit of base health (150, to be precise), but her Ice Spray attack isn't going to be the most impressive thing in the world. POST-GENEFORGE USE (You have defeated the Presence at this point, essentially.): Because she is restored by the Geneforge, Shaila is going to be stronger than before, given that now she can channel her power without being distracted by the physical pain and mental instability plaguing her before. Her Ice Spray now will be equal in power to the regular Ice Spray that the PC gets from NPC trainers. She also gains some small stat boosts. Not sure if this is too much in the early game, but I'll take a look when the time comes. MID-GAME (Mera-Tev, helping Astoria): With a fee, Shaila can be taught stronger magic by Shaper Quothe. After her training, she uses a slightly less energy intensive (but no less powerful to the regular) version of the Essence Orbs spell, as well as a few bonuses to stats and resistances. She gets some resistance to mental effects, such as charm, fear, and daze. Additionally, her melee is capable of inflicting the fear status effect in enemies that get hit by said melee. You're not going to use her melee much, given that she's not supposed to be up at the front soaking up damage, but it's decent for 'oh sh*t' situations where enemies bum rush her. Gives her a little bit of crowd control and some time for you to take out enemies that aren't running around in fear. Might be a little too much in this part of the game, but I'll see. LATE TO VERY LATE GAME (You're in the Storm Plains, Dera Reaches, Gazaki-Uss, getting Alwan's quest, meeting Ghaldring, meeting Taygen, etc.): Shaila gets her last and strongest upgrade at this point from Sage Pavyl in Stormhold. It will take quite a bit of money to get the upgrade, but it is one of the strongest upgrades. She gets large bonuses to stats and resistances, as well as a less energy intense version of Dampening Field (The AoE Curse attack Podlings use against you) that does significantly more damage compared to the ones that Podlings use. Her melee now can Slow+Fear (found a limited workaround so it is possible to have two status effects on a melee attack), and she becomes completely immune to mental effects, such as fear, charm, daze, etc. What I want to know if its possible to have attacks (both ranged and melee) have multiple status effects inflicted upon an enemy (such as curse+slow, or fear+curse, etc). I'm also curious if it is possible to have zones be changed in terms of appearance over time (Something like the Shaper school in Greenwood Isle in GF3, where you leave the school, and when you return, there are more people and the areas have been cleaned and swept, to show that the school is being rebuilt). Also, thinking about it, the Zone Simulator can also be good for modifying zones that have disappointing boss fights (IMO, the fight with Greta in Inner Gazaki-Uss for example is pretty underwhelming; she is, code wise, literally a renamed generic agent, nothing else. It would be pretty easy to replace her code to have a unique character for her. I found her GF4 incarnation, the one where she uses Essence Orbs and has a stronger melee attack, to be much cooler and stronger. I could probably think of some other things for her too while I'm at it, but that's for later), or if modders want to make certain zones even harder to get through (probably wouldn't be hard to add a ton of enemies in certain zones, or make enemies stronger, or whatever else is possible).

I think it's safe to say any modder that messes with GF5's game data knows the risks that come with it. The warning is appreciated however. Currently trying to learn what's going on in the hex file for the scenario data using the simulator. Still very new to this, but I'll pick it up eventually. No crazy mods from me though.

Lol. I just realized that. I'm a freaking idiot. I thought I could be clever and stuff the entire file into the thing. Oh well. Sorry for annoying everyone with my inability to follow instructions. I'll stop wasting your time now alhoon.

Okay, I managed to get the thing to work. The entire GF5scendata.dat file is now decompiled and in front of me. Now I just need to figure out how to add a new character to the game (maybe tinker around more if I can). Any tips? EDIT: Also, the good part about the editor being in OpenOffice means that it works for macs too, I think. Just a little tidbit I thought I'd bring up. EDIT 2: I actually ignored the part where it said to delete everything before and after a certain point. I simply stuffed the editor with the entire file. Looks fine, from what I see. EDIT 3: Ugh. Forgive me if I sound like I'm whining a bit, but trying to edit hex coding is a heck of a lot harder than I thought...

Oh okay. Its the g5 editor 7z link. I see. Looks like the other links are completely gone from the looks of it. Thanks for the clarification. EDIT: Holy hell, alhoon, you weren't kidding when you said that the editor is hard to use. I'm struggling to get it to even work at all. Yikes. How the hell do you get this thing to work?

I changed that entire post because a lot of it was stuff that I wasn't 100% sure of myself, and I was worried that I was going to mislead people, so I changed most of it. I think alter_stat changes on creations probably can survive on creations, but at the same time, I'm not exactly sure how to use alter_stat on creations in game; it only seems to work for the PC, and I've tried to use it on creations, but it never seems to work. If someone can tell me how to alter stats of creations in game, I'd really like to know. I can then test it to see what works and what doesn't. alhoon, are you sure the Zone Simulator links are working? I've tried to get the Zone Simulator, but every time I try to get access to it, I get redirected to this link: https://cdn.calref.net/files.calref/48f6410742eabb88e33f17ee48718589a8663c6e.zip, which then says 'access denied'. Am I missing something here?

That's been done before, in GF4. If you took that servile from the rebel safehouse (name is Khur I think), and you play pro shaper in that game (basically doing anything to help Shaftoe or Eliza), what happens when you go to Moesh's bunker is that Khur proceeds to turn on you and attack you. I looked in the code and saw that all it does is remove Khur and spawns in a new character in his place that is built into the zone. It can probably be replicated in the case of companion upgrades, essentially replacing an old character with a new one. Might be even better, considering you can change everything about said companion after each upgrade if you wanted to (appearance, abilities, attacks, resistances, etc). As for my modifications alhoon, I hate to break it to you, but none of my changes at the moment are worthy to be called mods. I did very minor modifications for my own use back when I first discovered scripting (making the Geneforge in GF4 and GF5 give you much bigger stat boosts, for example), and the ones that did get deeper into the game are clunky, messy, and in some cases, half baked and sloppy. I won't be releasing mods anytime soon. Sorry. But on the bright side, you (alhoon) were the one who showed me that this game has potential for modding. You've also shown me that there are ways to modify this game even more deeply than I thought. I might actually try to go deeper in my attempts at modding (I do it for fun though, mostly). Considering that you wanted to get more people to try out modding, I'd say you've done a good job in that respect. As for the lack of creations problem, it wouldn't be hard to script creations in certain zones to join you. I personally think that the point of an Agent/Infiltrator is to play singleton, but that's just me. Dunno why you brought up Shock Troopers; isn't that class supposed to be strong at shaping, average weapon fighting, weak magic?

I think it uses something different to boost armor and resistances for companions. Need to check. Kinda sad that the weapon upgrades are likely hardcoded; I thought it was a cool mechanic, and it would've really helped ensure that the companion would scale well into the late game (New, stronger attack is more useful than a couple of boosted stats, IMO). Oh well, I'll just have to find a workaround. Edit: Nvm. Question I asked was already answered before.

Unlikely that certain entities don't have an IDs. No ID = No entity, I think. There's probably a number for each entity, it's just probably really goddamn huge in some cases (No idea why). What I wanna know if its possible to script in upgrades for companions like it was in GF3. What I'm trying to do is add companions into the game, and I want to give them upgrades to their weapons, armor, resistances, etc. over the course of the game from certain NPCs. Basically you give your companions upgrades to their overall abilities in return for giving money, doing a quest, or just by having enough leadership. However, I'm not sure how this is implemented; I have GF3's scripts, and I don't really see much indication on how the upgrade works. I only know that 1) The upgrades starts to work when you leave the zone and enter a new one, and 2) Each weapon upgrade sets off a certain flag, increasing it by 1. I can speculate that the flag probably tells the game to change the character script or something like that, but I have no idea how to replicate that idea into this game.

Both of you are correct. I implemented Shaila into the game, though I had to use Mehken's character slot to do so (It was the most convenient at the time). I'll talk more about her implementation and what I tried to do and some of the problems with her addition in the other thread alhoon opened up (Namely, the fact that I tried to code in weapon upgrades for her that you can buy, much like your companions in GF3. Couldn't do it, at least for now).

I'll consider doing the thread later. I'll be honest, compared to the stuff the people in this forum do with this game, I don't really do that much to mod the game. My efforts are pretty small compared to others, and a lot of it did require me to do a lot of things that look awkward in game (I was looking through the code, and I saw that Mehken, the servile you meet early in GF5, had her own custom entry. I completely changed the entry, altering the graphics, abilities, etc., putting my own character in, but what made it awkward is that the custom entry is also used at the Pacification Fields. Basically means that new character meets you at the fields. It was thematically awkward, and I realized that I would have to change around the dialogue and script for a lot of the game, since I've essentially made it so that Mehken never meets the player in the Whitespires). Also, to give you an idea on the character I was working on implementing: It is a character that you meet very early on in GF4. You (the player) had to deal with this character early on in the game. It is also a character that some people think could've been the GF5 protagonist. Edit: alhoon, you talked about the total number for each character. How do you find that? Do you just test every number possible until you find it? Or did you use some other way to do it? I'm not exactly sure how the total number thing works exactly...

@alhoon So you've been using the Zone Simulator to make new characters, huh? Strange. It always seems to lead me to a site that says "access denied" for me, even when using the links further below the post, but maybe that's because I'm trying to access the site via a Macbook. Believe me when I say this, I've done what you've described before, taking certain characters and modifying them to suit my needs. Changing characters and shuffling them around is, like you said, easy. The problem for me lies with the fact that: 1) It takes a character from a zone to do so, meaning that it can look kinda awkward to see. It's easy to notice too. (I've downloaded your Shaper mod, and while I do love the new things you can do in Rockfall, it was noticeable that you were reusing the characters in the Rockfall zone to do so. The creations you create to defend your base, the attacks, all reused characters. Also, I noticed that when you get attacked, your defending creations all disappear. I looked at the code, and again, you're having to use the defending creations as the attacking force. Not dissing you, just pointing out that it probably would've been more convenient if you were able to add completely new characters to zones, like you have done now). 2) I'm limited on what I can do regarding the graphics of the individual. While it would be easy in some cases to simply take a generic warrior with you (which I've done plenty of times), I was sorta going for a more unique look for the companion in my game. Being able to add new characters would make it a lot less awkward. Like you said alhoon, you no longer have to reuse characters in a zone; you can add completely new ones. For me, that means it is possible to add a brand new unique character to the game. Though from the sounds of it, it sounds like the Zone Simulator might require something like hex editing. No experience with that, I will admit, but it won't stop me for trying. I could try to open another thread regarding this. I was sorta thinking I would put what I had in mind for a character in this thread and what I did, seeing as this thread is what convinced me to try editing the game scripts, as well as the fact that this thread could open up more possible modding ideas, but if you're worried that it'll derail the thread, I'll open a new one. Edit: BTW, I have the GF5 Disc, but I've only uploaded the game on my Macbook. I'm guessing I'm going to have to do the editing work with the Zone Simulator on a Windows computer, right?

@Alhoon So you can essentially add completely new characters to the game now? That sounds pretty groundbreaking to me, considering that wasn't really possible before. What editor are you using to do it? I actually kinda want that editor, mainly because I'm trying to add my own characters to GF5 (Big fan of the game, btw). I was trying to go for something like in GF3, where you have long term companions that go with you, they have their own opinions, weapon upgrades, etc. I've been struggling because simply because I wasn't able to add new characters (Among other things), but it sounds like you found a way. Btw, I'm new here, so hello everyone! Big fan of Geneforge, as you can probably tell.