Engineer and Pioneers Question

[Tankkiller99]

Okay I just need someone to point me in the right direction. Where are their files that tell you what they can build and at wheir are is the directory that tells you things that are buildable?

[Provac]

as far as I know as long as the building has a construction_ext in it the engineers should be able to build it. Just check between the files that can allready be built and focus on the construction ext part.

[Tankkiller99]

Yeah that's what I was looking at but I was hoping their'd be a simple file that would list all the engineers buildables that way i could hopefully learn how to add the 105 mm howitzer as a buildable all the time for the engineers and the flakvierling for the pioneers. But its a bit complicated.

[darkelf]

There is no single file that lists what any given unit can build. But there are things called construction_menus, which can be found in all buildings, and engineers have certain construction_menus available to them, find the names of those (under engineer_ext in the ebps file) and add that to the 115 mm howitzer's ebps. Like this:


GameData["construction_ext"]["construction_menus"]["construction_menu_entry_0x"] = "name of construction menu"

Replace x with the first entry number with no other construction menu name in it.

[Tankkiller99]

Can u show me step by step how u did it Dark i tried it and when i went in game it didn't work and also when i used the infantry commander thing to see if the howitzer was still there it showed up the icon i mean but not in the engies defensive structures menu.

[darkelf]

Sure, but this will end up with an unmovable howitzer. I'll write a quick tuturial on it. Check back here tomorrow morning. Also, it may not work as I can't check it in-game (I'm still using beta)

[Tankkiller99]

Thx i'm fine with an unmovable howitzer as long as the engineers can always build one at all times throughout the game. :)

[darkelf]

Ok, here’s how to turn the howitzer into a buildable turret for allies.

Step 1:
Copy the ebps for the machine gun nest (as a base for the howitzer building), and rename it to 105_mmhowitzer.lua (or rgd, depending on which file you copied).

Step 2:
Now open up the modstudio and do the following:
1) Open up the newly created building, and find the weapon names (green) and change the weapon name (red) to: weapon\allies\ballistic_weapon\howitzer\m2a1_105_mm_gun.lua
http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/9960/combatexthowitzer1yw9.jpg


2) Remove the hold_ext entry from the file. Right click on hold_ext and select delete.
http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/2616/holdexthowitzer1fb3.jpg

3) And since we really shouldn’t have a bunker enclosing the howitzer, it’s a good idea to remove the animator line. Same procedure as above.
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/1815/animatorhowitzer1fa1.jpg

4) Now we will change the icon to the one used for the howitzer upgrade. Navigate to the ui_ext and down to icon_name (green) and change the value (red) to: abilities\ability_allied_howitzer_upgrade

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/1917/howitzericon1xg3.jpg

5) Now for the ingame name of the howitzer. We will be using the name “105 mm howitzer There are 2 ways to do this:
a. Add it to your mod’s .ucs file, and then putting the number from the .ucs into the ebps under ui_ext in the screen_name entry (red) like this:

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/7313/howitzerscreennamemb3.jpg

124001 being replaced by the number from your .ucs file

b. The other and somewhat less time intensive way of doing it is adding the name in plain text under screen_name. In other words, instead of the numbers in the above version, enter the name of the howitzer in plain text in the red area of the above pic. (I will be doing this in the sample file that accompanies this tutorial since I couldn’t get my ucs to work in DOW, so I’m pretty sure I won’t get it to work now either). But when you do this, you also have to change this (green) to say text:

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/3496/howitzerscreenname2sz8.jpg

Get to this by clicking on the + beside ui_ext and clicking on screen_name, then click on CoH UCS Ref and choose “text” from the dropdown menu. Then it will read what you enter as plain text and display it as such

6) Now we will change the help_text of the building. You can do this in 2 ways too, same as above, only with help_text instead of screen_name (found 2 entries above the green in (4)). So I don’t think it’s necessary to go into more detail here. Just change it to what you feel it should say. I wrote this: “A 105 mm Howitzer Gun”.

The following steps are optional and are only present if you want it to have better FX for when it is hit, plus hitpoints if you want to edit that.


7) This step will make the hit fx for the building display as being metal and not a sandbag, this is purely for aesthetics. Find hit_object_ext and then hit_material (red). Then change the value (green) to hit_material\metal.lua

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/1103/howitzerhitmaterial1fj1.jpg


8) No we will edit the cost of the howitzer. Locate cost_ext, then time_cost and finally cost (green). Then edit the different values (red) to suit your needs. I chose 200 manpower and 50 fuel.

http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/5664/howitzercost1ui3.jpg





This concludes my first CoH tutorial (or my first one ever for that matter). Hope it serves its purpose well.

Below you will find this tutorial in a .doc format, along with a sample version of the howitzer.
If this by some strange accident of fate shouldn't work, please let me know and I'll get right on to fixing it.

This post will also be posted in the Tutorial sub-forum.

The file goes into \yourmodname\dataattrib\attrib\ebps\races\allies\buildings\

[Tankkiller99]

Thx it actually worked it showed up in the build menu and everything only problem was when i built it instead of showing the Howitzer model it gave me a big yellow squared box saying its missing the lua file consult the warning.log etc.. on it.

[darkelf]

fixed.