A wandering updater appears! Works with B8166 (lazy b8212 update in comments)

Game Talk The Lab
1

Download Modpack Here.

So…it’s been awhile. I recently reentered the electronic age and have been playing cataclysm again. As usual, I find the Lab rife with under maintained and conflicting mods, but I gotta have em all! I’ve completed the first pass on several mods, which I’ve listed below. This was mainly to get rid of those annoying error messages on startup (hopefully fixing the underlying issue and not just masking it, though that’s been done as well) that sometimes stop us in our tracks.

I then do what I enjoy, play the game, and make note of the various f*d up things and fix them where possible. I’ve tried to stay in tune with the original mod to the best of my abilities. I will always prefer to have an updated version of the mod rather than my shoddy fixes. <–So expect me to phase out my version if a mod is being actively worked on.

I couldn’t possibly detail every change, some stick out, like the recent size ->weight & volume change, which was a pain in the ass in several mods, particularly cata++. I’ve kept the original modinfo, with the addition of my name and a name change for mods that are mainlined but not exactly maintained. I’ve also sorta coopted the noctPK combined monstergroup mod and added the monstergroups from every mod that adds monstergroups in my mod folder. I’ve labeled each group for (somewhat) ease of editing. I’m calling it the Monstergroups Combo Patch. MGCP can only be run as is with the mods it has as dependencies. It’s fairly easy to modify to suit your desires, just don’t forget to remove the mods dependency in modinfo.json if you remove it’s monsters from the patch.

The rest of the mods in the pack were broken, so I made them work for myself and now I’m sharing them with you.

If I’ve messed up and taken credit for someone’s work, let me know so I can fix it, all I can take credit for is kludging it all together and fixing the most outrageous errors. I’m hoping you all can let me know what’s broken under the hood, what’s gamebreaking without intending to be and what’s redundant. I’ll continue taking notes and doing what I do. Hail grepWin!!

I think all of this can be run standalone, except for mods with previously existing dependecies (Salvaged Robots needs modular turrets, etc). Let me know what happens.

Works In Progress (Functional at release with the version specified)

  • Airdrops and Alchemy - A successor to Duros’ Doings without the OP zero point items. I’ll be updating the airdrops and making the current “Everything → Chemical → Everything” system a bit more involved.
  • Vehicle Addition Additions - Requires Vehicle Additions(Blazemod) Deprecated Blazemod Diamond weapons and parts. I wanted crystal paths. The rest just kinda came along for the ride. I fixed the recipe, I think. None of it’s cheap or made of common materials. I’ve attempted to only bring unique items into this mod, nothing that is in mainline blazemod. If you find something I’ve duplicated, let me know, please.
  • Monstergroups Combo Patch - Originated as the noctPK combo patch from PK_Rebalance, now with many more mods. This brings all the mods with conflicting monstergroup entries together in one place for ease of editing. Has dependencies for all encompassed mods. This will override all conflicting monstergroup entries of mods loaded BEFORE it. Did you ever wonder why you can only see the dinosaurs if you put the mod on the bottom of the list or all alone?
    • Default Dependencies: Cataclysm++, DinoMod, Draco’s Dog Mod, Agent Bandits, Jury Rigged Robots, Nechronica, PK’s Rebalance, Pora’s Compilation, Salvaged Robots, Vampiric Stuff

Mods Modified (Many of these have edited monster size entries, nearly all have had the monstergroups truncated to avoid duplicating the entire vanilla list over and over. The goal is for each mod to be able to function alone, though I haven’t done a lot of testing on that yet. They all work together just fine.) If it’s not clear, links in this section are to the unmodified version, modified version is in the download.

The Modpack consists of all the mods in the WIP and Mods Modified sections above. The mods below are not included in the download.

  • Tested and working in it’s entirety on BUILD 8166 (As seen in the launcher).

Optional Mods - These should be optional and you’ll have to track them down yourself( I found them all here, after all. ) I’ll be adding links as it occurs to me and is convenient.

My current mods.json <-As of 11/28/18

To recap, I run with everything enabled, cause I enjoy the chaos and fixing the inevitable failures makes me happy, so ymmv if you pick and choose. I really really tried to make things easy for the launcher to upate with minimal headaches and micromanagement. I also tried not to introduce any new dependencies between mods, so let me know if you find something like that.

Download Modpack Here.

  • Tested and working in it’s entirety on BUILD 8166 (As seen in the launcher).

    • Updated 11/09/2018
      Update 11/13/2018 - Minor enhancements, added some optional mods to the OP. LINKS. Added forgotten Mutation Changes mod.
      Updated 11/17/2018 - Moar Links, thx to Kadian for reminding me to add Artyom’s, it’s been there since day one.

Edit: Holidays are making updating a bit problematic. I do have updates for most of these mods on my github repository. Please check there for updates first. Sorry, github kinda sucks for large numbers of repo’s, I’ve got about 50 now.

21 Likes
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Can always appreciate some stuff working better than before. Welcome back.

Any chance you wanna make up some new crap too?

Got a few ideas as usual.

One as of late I been mulling over:

Hiding ATM cash card denominations and requiring a HackPro as a card reader to “unlock” said card for using it there after.

Plus requiring unlocked cards to be used at ATMs in order to shift the amount around; such as consolidating them all into one card or depositing them etc.

1 Like
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The Duro’s Doings multitools’ new descriptions and abilities are an example of my creativity, I’m really taken with that mod. I want to figure out radios and make that the source of recipes for and a requirement for the air drops. Like you make contact with some group that still has planes and negotiate to purchase their services. Maybe add a skyhook kind of item to the recipe, to facilitate you making a ‘trade’. I want to bring the mod back to sanity and update the air drops.

I can see several uses for your idea with the ATM cards, including expanding the ATM functionality a bit, maybe integrating it with factions to allow you to ‘buy’ favor from a faction of your choice, as an alternative to running missions. Then there could be ‘courier’ npc’s that spawn with a shipment of secure cards. Killing them would have a big effect on your standing with the faction and their enemies/allies.

How to go about obfuscating the cards and making them ‘hackable’…that sounds like actual coding and I’m still allergic…I’m just gonna avoid that rabbit hole of frustration this go 'round.

I’ve still got an old copy of Forgotten Races floating around, and I think my frustration with monstergroups has been patched away. I’ll poke at it and see what I can come up with, but I’m enjoying playing my ridiculous cataclysm at the moment. I just made a character for a test a bit ago, and the starting NPC had an infected wound, wanted antibiotics, blah blah blah…as I do, I asked him to trade, only to find he’s already carrying antibiotics!
I sell him all my splintered wood and 2x4’s for his antibiotics, talk to him again and voila, instant grateful teacher of dodge. I love this game.

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Cool. I dig expanding on ideas. I had not thought about secret information being stored on them between factions. Really nice idea.

As for airdrops. You mean like radio out to get one…assuming the faction is friendly with player toon?

5

Something like that. Or make gaining the recipe for the airdrop a quest reward somehow, probably tie it to a book and spawn it in on completion…I think that’s a thing that can be done, never really messed with quests.
I like the flare part of it, ‘popping smoke’ so to speak. Oooo…smoke grenades could get another purpose, the flare only makes sense at night. Something really tricky would be making the recipe only work outdoors.

The ‘courier’ npc could also carry USB’s with software, rare books, medicines…it’d be like a loot pinata that generated angst. I don’t know what happens when you get really bad rep with a faction, but it’d be cool if they sent hit squads or arsonists after you. I’m imagining waking up as your roof burns down upon you the day after you decided it’d be a good idea to mug that courier.

This is all just imagination atm, I’m still relearning the data structures and haven’t even looked at radio’s or quests or npcs. It’s gonna be great!

2 Likes
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Plot elements to new quest lines seem novel. Glad we brainstormed =D

Hey a small caveat I just remembered. There exists a wrist watch for aviator pilots and other deep country environments. In short, the watch has a pin you can pull and it emits a special broadcast on emergency channels. Maybe there is something to this rare watch that would be up your alley in regard to radio for help or other possible applications?

7

Let’s see…that sounds like a radio beacon, like the military uses and lots of others I’m sure. There’s also laser and ir tagging of targets…is that the same thing or is it ir laser maybe? Anyway, lots of options for the signalling device. Unless recipes are smarter than I think, it’d be a lot of duplicating recipes with minor changes for little overall benefit to choose more than a couple options, maybe one that’s used as a tool and stays behind and another that gets consumed as in the current recipe. Flares or smoke grenades, radio beacon or laser tag? I don’t even know where to begin with the radio, or if it’s even possible. I think I’ll tackle this as much as possible with .json editing, until I can learn more about lua.

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Had to look it up again. Breitling wrist watches. I only remembered them due to watching Pawn Stars lol

edit:
I tend to like lots of options and toggles. People play VERY differently and I am certain with every forum dweller that exists. We have 10 that do not join in but still like to read what is discussed. If you think you can make any of it happen or package it nice enough to have a dev code it. Sounds good to me :wink:

9

Well…I could create a tool quality called beacon and assign it to multiple items. I think I understand the item code enough to add a quality to an existing item. Hopefully it works like monsters and I can use ‘copy-from’. I’ve just barely managed to comprehend monstergroups again, I don’t want to try creating new items and loot tables for them just yet.

10

Not a solution to doing it indoors, but you can limit the airdrops to somewhere you’ve put a lot of time into by requiring say… nine different unique tools that are provided one at a time by furniture that takes a long time to set up - call it ‘airdrop marker’ and require more of them for more advanced/fragile gear. Look at the anvil for how to set up fake tools as part of furniture. Or instead of that, maybe you could try experimenting with large numbers of the same fake tool needed, and each airdrop marker provides one, so you need to clear a larger area and pave it over with those. Not sure how well that will work as I have never tried it.

11

Hmm…I kinda like that idea. There could be a tier system, maybe once I learn more about the npc camp thingy it could tie into that. Maybe a new expansion with the tool part of the construction. I haven’t found anything that requires more time and energy than building up a camp, this would even fit the story of being part of a larger faction. As you get constructions, I think it puts markers on your character as well, wonder how to make that a requirement for the recipe…

  • I’ve added Bandits mod, with a few fixes and overhauled the monstergroups again for maximum variety with spawns from every mod on the list meshed together in one list. It doesn’t seem to be broken like the last version lol.
12

I wanted to thank you, as this has already proven amazing! However, I noticed an odd bug, in that gas pumps seem to be missing. They are instead replaced with “nothing” that has a ton of gas on the ground. While I have many other mods running besides your pack, they were all working just fine before with no issue.

13

Faction camps currently rely on a stupid amount of hardcoded functions. I want to move a lot more of it to JSON but I need to do some bugfixes on other projects before I go back to developing faction camps.

1 Like
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Hmm…I also have that issue, though gas stations are pretty rare due to the addons. I’ll see what I can figure out. I’ve already determined it’s not caused by the building addon mods. Anyone know how BrightNights manages to generate gas pumps without specifying t_pump_gas as the terrain in question…seems the name of the section has some power as well. Maps are confusing.

edit: It seems to be one of the ascension mods. I’ve got to get moving, I’ll look into this further later tonight.
edit2: It’s the fuel override in blazemod_A_M, the gasoline and diesel entries lack the terrain information from basegame, thus spawning on ‘nothing’. I’ll patch it and have a new version up later today.
Location blazemod_A_M/blaze_override.json
id “gasoline” replace “fuel” section with:

“fuel”: {
“energy”: 34.2,
“pump_terrain”: “t_gas_pump”,
“explosion_data”: { “chance_hot”: 2, “chance_cold”: 5, “factor”: 1.0, “fiery”: true, “size_factor”: 0.1 }
},
and for
id “diesel”

“fuel”: {
“energy”: 35.8,
“pump_terrain”: “t_diesel_pump”,
“explosion_data”: { “chance_hot”: 20, “chance_cold”: 1000, “factor”: 0.2, “fiery”: false, “size_factor”: 0.1 }
},

There are minor differences in effects, but I’m pretty sure this will fix the no spawning pumps issue. As I said, I’ll have a patched version up later.

1 Like
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Darn, I was afraid of that. So tacking on an expansion would be a bit of a project, then? That’s ok, I’ve still got to work on the items and recipes, the integration can come later.

16

Beautiful, thank you! That did it straight away.

17

You’re welcome. I’ve uploaded a fixed version, it has several updates alongside the fuelpumps fix. I should take the time and try to bring the ascension version up to par with the mainlined version…I’ve already stolen some of the cool toys out of mainline.

18

Is there any recommended load order?

19

This is what I use, I haven’t tested moving things around. Monstergroup Mod goes last, always.

“dda”,
“safeautodoc”,
“craftgp”,
“brightnights”,
“dda-lua”,
“dda-lua-fun”,
“dda-lua-items”,
“dda-lua-skills”,
“dda-lua-traits”,
“Tolerate_This”,
“add_ebook”,
“SD_Magcrafting”,
“realguns”,
“SD_Magcrafting_Realguns_Extension”,
“FIC_Weapons”,
“ew_pack”,
“makeshift”,
“Medieval_Stuff”,
“More_Survival_Tools”,
“nw_pack”,
“SD_Batcon”,
“DinoMod”,
“modular_turrets”,
“alt_map_key”,
“Cata++”,
“Mining_Mod”,
“npc_traits”,
“mutant_npcs”,
“boats”,
“deoxymod”,
“necromancy”,
“Arts’ Guns”,
“NM_wpns”,
“cddaxp_Malkeus”,
“more_classes_scenarios”,
“RL_Classes”,
“sleepdeprivation”,
“no_npc_food”,
“filthy_morale”,
“manualbionicinstall”,
“no_reviving_zombies”,
“StatsThroughSkillsThree”,
“SD_Winterclothes”,
“bio_mod_Malkeus”,
“Pix’s Shit”,
“duros_doings”,
“porawep”,
“BIGOLBUILDING”,
“SEEDYSPOT”,
“Urban_Development”,
“cityside”,
“oa_additional_buildings_mod”,
“BIGRIVER”,
“Dorf_Life”,
“nanites”,
“GOV_BANDITS”,
“jury_rigged_robots”,
“Salvaged_Robots”,
“vamp_stuff”,
“shardstuff”,
“adv_gear”,
“blazemod_A”,
“Tanks_Malkeus”,
“Arcana_A”,
“PK_REBALANCE_A”,
“winning_dda”,
“noctpk”

20

I have also noticed the following errors, though none seem to cause actual problems so far as I can tell:

DEBUG : invalid monster type id “mon_bandit_glock”

FUNCTION : const T& generic_factory::obj(const string_id&) const [with T = mtype]
FILE : src/generic_factory.h
LINE : 358

DEBUG : recharge_station is set to drain epower, but has epower == 0

FUNCTION : static void vpart_info::check()
FILE : src/veh_type.cpp
LINE : 519

DEBUG : monster group GROUP_CAVE contains unknown monster mon_bandit_glock

FUNCTION : static void MonsterGroupManager::check_group_definitions()
FILE : src/mongroup.cpp
LINE : 445

DEBUG : Duplicate entries in the professions array.

FUNCTION : void scenario::check_definition() const
FILE : src/scenario.cpp
LINE : 150

DEBUG : There are too many mandatory overmap specials (83 > 72). Some of them may not be placed.

FUNCTION : void overmap_specials::check_consistency()
FILE : src/overmap.cpp
LINE : 341