Monday, April 16, 2012

{REQ}-Supcom - FA Conversion

Because I often have problems with FA running slower than vanilla
Is it possible to make a mod that puts FA units and faction into supcom 1?
If it is can somone make it, or go over how to do so, (if it is relatively easy copy paste job, with a little path editing.)|||bioemerl|||lmao|||Could be wrong but... it's possible FA runs slower for you because it has far more units loaded into memory...|||Turn of Forged Alliance units in the unit manager (in the game lobby)?|||brute51|||Hi,
what exactly is running slower? the game in general or something else.. ?|||brandon007|||If I'm not mistaken, porting all the FA units to vanilla would be a breach of copyright since people would be able to get content from another game they may or may not own.|||Sounds like he's too cheap to go out and buy FA and hopes that some idiot will risk a C&D order by porting everything over for him.

Resin|||Resin_Smoker|||bioemerl|||Resin_Smoker|||I OWN Both FA and SUPCOM
However my laptop probably, wont run FA, well (itll run but lag)
I was wanting a mod or explanation on how to go into FA copy paste the units and MAKE a mod, NO DOWNLOADING FROM YOU PEOPLE. Because for whatever reason FA seems to lag.
I wanted to know if it was way to hard to easily do, or if it would slow it down
1. FA DOES run slower than supcom
2. I OWN BOTH GAMES!
3. I DONT WANT A MOD MADE (allthough that would be nice), however I can and will make it myself, but dont know how.
4. Ill make it, but if its pointless or to hard, or causes just as much lag as FA does there is no reason really.|||#4 then it is
Besides no one want to be sued by GPG.
Resin|||Yeah you might own both games but other people won't. Even if you make it yourself it doesn't change the fact that you shouldn't. Personally I found that, FA runs better than SupCom. The AI has sim issues but that's what the Sorian AI mod is for. There is very little point in making this mod.
As Resin said, number 4 is very accurate, there is no reason to make it and risk getting sued over it.|||I don't think you realize how much base lua code, engine methods, etc were changed between SC1 and FA. You can't just port FA units directly, since not all of an FA unit's code exists in its script; it inherits most of its code from the base Unit.lua, defaultunits.lua, etc. You would either have to port that code and modify all SC1 units to use it (yikes) or re-write all of the FA unit scripts that rely on specific elements of FA base code.
That's not even getting into blueprints, which are subtly different as well.

And LD, given that SC2<->FA mods have been around for about 6-8 months now, I think it's safe to say that none of the publishers involved give a crap of people port units between games.|||Mithy|||These are older, lower-profile games with a pretty small modding community. It's pretty safe to say that nobody cares, and with good reason (legal action costs money, even for a giant publisher, so they have to know they'll get something in return).
Even if they did care, so what? They send a C&D. You don't release whatever you were working on. Big deal.|||Well... If its to hard I wont do it then.

Edit:To above, that is something i thought about before asking, allthough it does not appear to register with any of the people above, it also does not register that i have both FA and supcom, id fight you in gpgnet if you wish?

I was not going to release the mod, or even ask for a release, I just wanted to know how to do it. Also, WHY would anyone buy supcom instead of FA when 1. FA is standalone, and 2. Supcom is probably just as much cost as FA, and if i wanted FA units so bad, why not just go and pirate it.
So just deal with the question, I know its to hard to do now, and there is no reason to continue, but
if anyone wants to explain how please do, id like to try even if it is to hard, just instructions, i can install FA and copy paste the units from it. So i dont want a dl, just how to make the mod.
(im wondering if you could make a .bat file to do it when you have both installed, that would mean copyright is not invalidated.)|||Dude, just go do it. It's not like anyone here can actually stop you. As Mithy said, the respective legal departments don't give a damn. I'd have made a FA -> Sup2 port months ago if it weren't for lack of manpower to do it, and I'd have done it even after the legal commandos became involved.|||It really depends on how hard it is to do.|||Porting between SC1 and FA is pretty much like porting between FA and SC2, except that you don't need to convert animations. And it's taken liveordie several months of significant work to port under half of the FA units to SC2. So uh, good luck.|||Ok just a few things i have noticed with this thread...
1) Porting things between Vanilla & FA is simple because the only real differences between the two games is some minor code changes (cpl script folders where removed, toggle buttons got their own group in unit BPs ect), a few engine optimizations, and a new faction. In fact, unless you want to do the work of getting seraphim working in vanilla there are only about a dozen new units between the games, the rest is rebalance.
The reason there is so much work to convert things from FA to SupCom2 is because the engine, mechanics, model/texture formats all got modified heavily.
2) Porting thigns between games is a little tedious trying to find all the differences in code, not to mention rebalancing. Since the older game is not nearly as popular most current modders wouldn't see a point to going backwords. For most people FA is a better baseline than Vanilla.
3) Legally yes you can get a C&D order over it. While chances are slim it wouldn't happen its still not something alot of modders will mess with. I won't touch it myself because I have seen projects in other games get nailed by this.
4) The "Why" behind people buying both games even though they are both standalone is because of what GPG did with multiplayer. If you only own FA and never purchased Vanilla you will ONLY be able to play Seraphim in online games because your GPGnet account won't have a vanilla key to let you access the other 3 factions... though you can play aginst others its just your chosen faction is limited.
5) Your not going to find a walkthrough on how to port units over but in truth if you understand how to add "new" units to the game its pretty simple to do. There are guides for this, the longest one written by me, as well as quite a few other modding help information found in a "Useful Information" sticky in the Mod Dev Support form if you want to learn SupCom Vanilla/FA Modding (There are seperate stickies for CupCom2 stuff)
Believe that covers everything :)|||There are just as many base code changes from SC1 to FA than from FA to SC2, at least if you're talking about engine methods added/removed or behavior changed. There are probably more changes if you consider base weapon and unit lua files.
Additionally, the blueprint format between FA and SC2 hasn't really changed at all (a few new additions, like Navigation, weapon effects, etc), while I seem to recall quite a few differences between SC1 and FA blueprints.

Remember that when you port a unit, unless you change all of its projectiles, emitters, etc to existing SC1 versions, you need to port all of those projectiles, all of the emitter blueprints, etc and change every path and blueprintid that references those to the new location in your mod folder. And that assumes that FA emitters will even work in the SC1 engine.
It's a crapton of work. It's probably doable, but don't let anyone tell you it's easy or that you won't run into a bunch of problems that require either major sacrifices in functionality or some significant modding experience to work around.
I'm still not even sure what benefit you hope to gain by doing this - do you really think the SC1 engine was somehow more optimized? That's completely naive - in reality, SC1 ran better because it typically had fewer units in play, simpler effects, etc. If you try to port all FA mechanics to the SC1 engine, you'll find it'll run just as poorly, if not worse.

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