Wish-A-Mod Foundation

FreadyFish

A spark of hope can change everything.

Research shows that wishes have proven physical and emotional benefits that can give a (man-)child better health outcomes and increase their chances for survival.

-Make-A-Wish America (possibly altered)

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This thread is dedicated to all you creative non programmers out there.

You have struggles in this game, and all you need is that perfect UI mod you so clearly imagine.

But the mod is not in the vault, and you are not a programmer.

Luckily, we are here to help. We make your mod a reality.

In this thread you can pitch for your idea.

Together we discuss your mod and make sure it will work as you have imagined.

I prioritize the best suggestions and try to do as many as I can.

All mods will of course be released to the vault without any copyright.

Focus is on UI-mods, quality of life kind of things, but also open to grand ideas. Let your imagination soar.

PS: I make no legally binding promises, something I learned from here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2OObOM3R_U

bronedooy

hi. Yes, to be honest, a simple mod can enliven not only the game, but also the person who is disappointed in this game. I myself played astracrater, FAF every day, I had a customized game with a hotbuild, templates and mods were configured. But then the problem with the hard drive knocked out of this mode. Now, after a pause, I start over. I've already done some of what I wanted to see in the game. I've tried all the mods! I left what I liked, but there is a dead end, the most pressing questions.

Effective selection of engineers. Assign the E key to select the T3 engineer located NEXT to the cursor. And press SHIFT E so that you can add the next T3 next to the highlighted ones.
Add units similar to those highlighted ONLY on the screen(and not on the entire map) but only with the help of a button on the keyboard.
These are the sharpest ones.
These are second-rate:
use additional mouse keys XButton1,2 mouse keys to control or camera (there is a mod that allows you to create fixed camera positions). For a point-by-point loop, these buttons would be top.
There are issues with the attack range, for example, the inability to turn on the range ONLY on a separate unit all the time. And even earlier there was an Additional Camera Stuff mod. It showed the range of attack and construction of selected units around the cursor. He was enough for me. But it was removed. There are working sercamus faf mod, smart ring display plus and build range review. But they are not complete.
It would also be interesting to finalize the standard Distribution orders for engineers. For example:
I need to build a defense line very quickly, and I give a group of engineers, previously lined up along this line, a command through Distribute orders, and they do the work, but after building the facility, an individual engineer does not switch to help those standing next to him. I suppose this can be done by assigning these engineers to the group.
UI mode, which shows the number of selected units next to the cursor, and yes, I don't think this is possible.
the information panel about the selected unit does not work for me, I do not see veterans, hp and so on. The panel sometimes appears at the beginning of the game, but it works during construction, I see information about the object under construction. It's about the Movable US mod, I've redesigned the game interface with it. I removed part of the game window from the bottom and placed the interface there, the fact is that on a black background, vision perceives these objects more effectively. In addition, there is nothing superfluous on the screen. I placed the map on the second screen.
That's how I've been setting up my new gameplay for 2-3 days now, taking into account past experience.
https://i.ibb.co/pwPCjjv/9420-20241106170602-1.png

bronedooy

There are many disadvantages that, from my point of view, do not make the game perfect, and they all lie in the field of unit management and ease of management, you need to understand that construction is a service process, and the game itself should reveal the skill of the ability to conduct coordinated team actions tactically. And, as a result, now the main skills that a person in my case must master are adaptability to inconvenient controls and the vagaries of the game, not to mention the performance problem. But there is simply no alternative to this game (for me). Therefore, I highlighted the first 2 points with the desire to correct them. And I wanted to share my experience with others. The rest of the points (including the unvoiced ones, for example, "rewedgers hotbuild without difficulties, just one customizable button ") are not very important, although they will give me joy.

Ctrl-K

use additional mouse keys XButton1,2 mouse keys to control or camera (there is a mod that allows you to create fixed camera positions). For a point-by-point loop, these buttons would be top.

Game engine doesnt support that.

Nuggets

I wish for a mod that adds a small for example yellow dot in the middle of tree groups. Small enough to be overlooked if not actively looking for it

Ctrl-K

@Nuggets it is gonna be very laggy if done so with a mod.

bronedooy

@bronedooy said in Wish-A-Mod Foundation:

rewedgers hotbuild without difficulties, just one customizable button

It is decided that the advanced hotbuild has this

magge

Would it be possible that a mod shows the player APM? I use an external tool, but would prefer a mod for that.

bronedooy

who knows which mod to assign hotkeys to upgrade the commander?

Ctrl-K

@bronedooy Additional orders extension

FreadyFish

@bronedooy Thanks for the details, as we discussed in the related thread I very much encourage you to try yourself. The code I sent there, experiment with it and I will leave that part for now. If you need any help just let me know.

Should be very doable, I will see if I can do the "add one" code first, it's something I have thought about myself really and will be useful in more scenarios I think.
This is the part I leave to you for now, I would recommend to look at other mods as well for inspiration.
I refer to the expertise of @Ctrl-K here, but will add that it is possible to use third-party software like Auto Hotkey (https://www.autohotkey.com) to bind those mouse buttons to keyboard keys, and then bind those keys to an action. I use it myself. Try getting AHK working and I can send you the scripts for it.
I can look into this, ideally we would want a mod that combines all of them and lets the player decide in settings what to show and when.
Ah yes, very much agree on this one. I wonder if that is for performance reasons, as for each unit they have to get a queue to all other orders after their initial one for it to work completely. Maybe just a few more would be nice so they dont stop so soon. Or just an assist order at the end to the closest one, that should actually make them help eachother fully but then leave them not idle at the end. The problem is that it counts as an "autoclicker" and thus is blocked for mods. Should be discussed with core team, you can try to reach them or I might do it a bit later. Keep me posted if you find something out.
I think this is very possible actually, there are mods that show things around the cursor ("Chat Wheel" comes to mind) and display anything we want. Could try to do a simple demo for this as a start and then we can add more options to it
Ah yes, something is definitely not right there. Not sure what to do, does it work any better if you use one screen only or in some other case? I would recommend to open a new thread for it and see if anyone else has a solution. We can dig into it if you dont get any solution.

Agree with you that mods are quite essential, I couldn't go back to unmodded and frankly more mods should be integrated in my opinion (optional ofc but still standard out of the box).

Focus is on 1 and two then to begin with, sounds good. I'll be back with some code to try out. Good luck on your side!

FreadyFish

@Nuggets It's a good idea! Many tree groups have been missed and needlessly destroyed by the subsequent move order.

@Ctrl-K might be right here, but do you think it would still be a problem if it is optimized by let's say limiting to an area around the cursor and caching it periodically? Any other optimizations or problems that you can see?

maudlin27

A button/hotkey to cycle between low health and high health units in a selection (from memory red alert 2 had such a feature with the 'u' keyboard shortcut)

E.g. press the key once, your current selection is filtered to just the low health units; press a second time a relatively short period afterwards and it goes to just the high health units in the selection; a third time and it's back to all units in the original selection (and if you add/remove units from the selection then it 'resets'/loses memory of the originally selected units)

That said if I ever finish with M28 related stuff and such a UI mod would be permitted on FAF I might have a look myself to figure out if it's possible.

FreadyFish

@magge Should be possible! I guess we just listen to the click events. What should it show ideally and how? Would be fun to have that in the score graph actually for all players, see where things heats up. What is this tool you use?

Ctrl-K

@FreadyFish given that you see them around cursor it can be done in linear time.

FreadyFish

@maudlin27 Very useful! I have actually made an addition to the Group Scatter mod, that I havent released, that can cycle units from most damaged or healthiest, but for now its just one at a time. I have thought for some time to make it possible to click perhaps multiple times to add more and more to the selection. Maybe double every time so it doesnt require 50 clicks. Just going binary healthy/damaged would be easier to use ofc, I will look into it and see if I can add multiple options for different use cases

FreadyFish

@Ctrl-K Thanks, @Nuggets would this suffice for your needs?

Nuggets

I believe so, yes!

bronedooy

@Ctrl-K said in Wish-A-Mod Foundation:

Additional orders extension

Yes, there is definitely this in your build! Thank you very much. I have already used the mod, but I did not figure out everything earlier due to the pressure of factors that affected the condition.

bronedooy

@FreadyFish
I am glad that this topic is here, we must pay tribute to the enthusiasts working on improving the gameplay, thanks to this, the game is still relevant. I understand all this perfectly well, as well as the fact that the game sometimes takes up time and resources. In this situation and in this state, it seems to me that if the developer has not completed this project, then our efforts only prolong the suffering of the game. Depending on my condition, I sometimes behave like a conspirator in our multidimensional world.