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Improvements Pack 1.3


aidenpons
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The idea of this mod is to make LRR less annoying to play whilst still keeping that vanilla feel, in addition to enabling various lost content - and ensuring stability.

 

I'm well aware that this is not the first of its kind to be completed. Nevertheless, my goal is slightly different from those two:

  • a couple of long-standing bugs can be fixed
  • the goal is full compatibility with literally anything, adding as little as is possible
  • making the game less rage-inducing to play

I'm also aware of my previous mod, Monster's Revenge: however that had a much grander scope than this, and as a result it has been rather slow to make progress on. I have not forgotten it!

 

So, what does this do?

 

Highlights:

  • Better priorities
  • Less annoying monsters
    • most notably slugs
  • Better quality-of-life (notifications no longer reset game speed)
  • Lava notification
  • Enabled lost content
    • Pilot idle animations
    • Spiders, Snakes, and Scorpions
  • Less annoying level design
    • Recharge Seams
    • No rubble all the way on the other side of the map (Water Works, Hot Stuff)
    • Random landslides are entirely disabled


Images in spoilers:

Spoiler

 

large.spidersnakesscorps.png.aadd41444ef632203cabb5ced4df0b0a.png

large.improve1.png.aab05624d40607e0f2d3e2c3c89a9f86.png

large.saxophone.png.882001da53d5e53f28f5e89036e8f565.png

 

 

 

A detailed list:

Spoiler

 

 

  • Maps have been tweaked or edited to be less annoying.
    • There is now a Recharge Seam in Back to Basics and many other levels
    • Crystals have been moved around in several maps (Hot Stuff had a bad case of crystal depletion)
    • Tiles of rubble on the other side of the map are no longer a thing (Hot Stuff and Water Works)
    • The lava cavern in Air Raiders has been removed
  • Monster parameters have been tweaked
    • This is solely to make the game a little more fun to play.
      • For instance, not only are monsters no longer OHKO'd but slugs take higher damage and can be frozen
      • Keep in mind that every DDI slug script has a check for slugs on level, and that includes frozen slugs: allowing you to halt the endless horde of Back to Basics
    • Bats no longer scare
  • Unused Pilot idle animations are enabled, including a saxophone
  • Spiders, Snakes, and Scorpions are functional and can be plonked via .ol or via your own maps
  • Notifications (eg a landslide has occured!) no longer reset game speed
    • A new notification for erosion with a sound clip taken from the objectives
  • Lasers are usable, but not overpowered, and drilling machines are still better
  • All levels start with a set of sensible priorities (with no replies to the contrary I could only go off what I thought!)
    • The Construction priority has been replaced with Build Path
  • The Small Digger no longer drives like a drunk, but the Hover Scout does
    • Both of these units no longer require the Support Station
  • Granite Grinder drills faster, Loader Dozer is cheaper and moves faster when upgraded

 

Bugfixes:

  • The Teleport Pad now uses the Teleport Pad icon
  • The Laser Beam will never delete all your crystals (a very rare bug)
  • The Support Station no longer has a somewhat transparent drill logo on top
  • All levels now use Surf.map , Dugg.map file naming conventions as opposed to Surf_01.map, Dugg_01.map . This will make it significantly easier to overwrite these levels. File naming for object li
  • All PTL files now point to Levels\NormalPTL,ptl
  • TextureUsage kicked up by 100x which may fix some issues

 

I do not want to add the Tunnel Transport on the grounds that it either deletes all your raiders or crashes the game: furthermore, it's almost entirely useless for most LRR levels. I will probably make a separate mod, which is thus less stable, that adds it.

 

  • this bulletpoint won't go away

 

 

Future Work:

  • Tweaking remaining levels:
    • Adding Recharge Seams
    • Writing own slug scripts
    • Synchronised monster invasion for levels that deserve it (eg Lava Laughter, Rocky Horror)
      • This will probably be a separate mod
    • Levels 1 -> 10 are mostly unmodified, although these are the least broken ones
    • Erosion parameters
  • More parameter tweaking
    • Crystal cost of various vehicles
    • Nerfing Small Digger overpoweredness
  • Camera values need tweaking but Cyrem already did that in CE

 

 

It is designed to be used alongside Community Edition ( @Cyrem and perhaps included by default? :P).

 

> Download! Put in your mods folder for Cafeteria and hit Enable.

Compatible with literally anything: that's its point.

 

Don't want Cafeteria or can't use it? I also made it for the Data Method (if you want to integrate it along your own mod) or the WAD method (if you just want to plug your WADs straight onto an installation and play). > Download!

(N.B. ^ was last updated for v1.0.)

 

 

This has not been entirely my own work, and several people contributed to this, even if they are unaware they did so:

  • @Slimy Slug explained the Build Power Path priority and also researched which other ones might be useful (=> none of them)
  • @Cirevam explained how to make monsters killable (in a thread long ago) and I also copied the erosion notification straight from Time Raiders
  • @Jessietail for getting me initially interested in Spiders, Snakes, and Scorpions long, long ago
  • @Cyrem for the fantastic forum, fantastic tools, and gobsmackingly amazing Community Edition
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  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...

To co-incide with Community Edition being released, I tidied up my next batch of changes and present to you v1.2! (I don't know where v1.1 went :P)

 

Changes:

  • More level changes. You shouldn't notice any of these, that's the point of this :P Stuff like:
    • Erosion tweaks
    • Recharge Seam on all non-earlygame levels
    • Changes to Fall.map where walls were begging to be landslided (eg: Explosive Action)
    • major changes to Water Lot of Fun as I felt that map was exceedingly poorly done. You now actually have to build on the other side of the river. See Water Lot of Fun II for an even more challenging variant.
  • New lava notification! (see below). Comes with sound too, taken from one of the briefings.
  • Some levels (eg: A Breath of Fresh Air) now use the InitalOxygen property from CE. That's a lovely addition Cyrem :star:
  • Sounds for Small Ice Monsters & Small Rock Monsters, made by putting the "Small" from "Small Spider" next to the "Rock Monster." Sounds kinda bad but hey it's a sound and it always annoyed me that there wasn't one
  • minor adjustments to various parameters (landslides, oxygen rate, weapon damage)

Pretty pictures:

 

Spoiler

large.AirDrainStart.png.3598a345a91de76c1907431fe2e7475e.png

 

^ notice how oxygen doesn't start at full

 

large.LavaNotif.png.006c33d029a32de1b4ef711c8451e459.png

 

 

Download!

 

 

 

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  • 6 months later...

v1.3! Very minor changes on the front end - a couple of air parameters tweaked, and the Small Digger no longer takes 3 minutes to drill hard Rock - but I got around to updating it to use Cafeteria's new CMP system which essentially allows loops.

What this means is that you can now run it alongside resolutions without stupid things happening. Your level names will now also be in whatever language they were, and not English. :)

 

Additionally, it now serves as a fine example showing a lot of fun stuff that can be done in Cafeteria, and if you want to make your own patches, it's worth looking at this just as an example.

 

Not totally tested, so if a level crashes, please let me know.

 

... no pretty pictures as not much shiny has changed.

 

Download in the same spot as before.

 

Spoiler

large.improve2.png.ca4ec505342d05187d79d9bac838dfd7.png

 

(there are now rubble tiles at the start of this level, felt really weird opening the cavern and it's pristine, then starts landsliding all over the place)

 

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  • 3 months later...
The_Wanderer_HTL

I love the improvements; bats are no longer annoying and I can fire a laser beam without losing 20 energy crystals on a map with no recharge seam. However, after seeing that the mod worked, I went to replay "Rocky Horror" and four times in a row the game crashed. Never at the same place, but always early on in the level. After I had my electric fence up but before I was able to call in large vehicles. I thought it might have been the improved skins I was also using, but I removed that mod and the crashes still happened. Love the features though, keep up the good work!

 

P.S. I have had to restart levels before when Rock Monsters eat too many crystals and the use of pusher beams means that the Rock Raiders stop attacking and let them retreat when their health gets low. That problem persists with this mod since the laser beams no longer KO in one shot and so when the monsters start to retreat the Rock Raiders let them go, along with any crystals they have eaten. Not a huge deal on most levels, but I wonder if the change was on purpose, or a by product of the fix.

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The_Wanderer_HTL

Sorry about double posting, but after some more poking around with this improvement pack I have yet to actually complete a single level without the game crashing. I can play the game fine without the improvement pack, but when running the improvement pack every single level I try crashes at some point. Perhaps I will go through the game and try every level at least once. Note which ones crash and which ones do not. Still, I have yet to complete a level, though I do like what I see before the game crashes.

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On 8/26/2020 at 2:59 AM, The_Wanderer_HTL said:

Sorry about double posting, but after some more poking around with this improvement pack I have yet to actually complete a single level without the game crashing. I can play the game fine without the improvement pack, but when running the improvement pack every single level I try crashes at some point. Perhaps I will go through the game and try every level at least once. Note which ones crash and which ones do not. Still, I have yet to complete a level, though I do like what I see before the game crashes.

 

I have absolutely no clue why this happens. Actually, I have two clues. One is that that some of the weird Cafeteria stuff I did possibly left a missing entry somewhere as a ticking timebomb (... but missing entries usually just cause a crash on level load). The second clue is that for whatever reason I noticed if I toggle Improvements Pack the lighting in the level changes from "functional" to "busted and all walls act like the spotlight's on them," so maybe that's something.

 

I am curious if you load up v1.0 of the Improvements Pack: which lacks some things compared to 1.2 (lava notification, some minor level tweaks: can fit them in if you'd like) using the WAD download (just swap out your existing WADs with the ones given there and ignore the other folder, which is a manual install) whether you still get the same crash rate. Maybe it's a Cafeteria thing and try running this without Cafeteria? I honestly don't know.

 

 

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The_Wanderer_HTL
17 hours ago, aidenpons said:

 

I am curious if you load up v1.0 of the Improvements Pack: which lacks some things compared to 1.2 (lava notification, some minor level tweaks: can fit them in if you'd like) using the WAD download (just swap out your existing WADs with the ones given there and ignore the other folder, which is a manual install) whether you still get the same crash rate. Maybe it's a Cafeteria thing and try running this without Cafeteria? I honestly don't know.

 

 

I do not have v1.0, only 1.3. I can try v1.0 and see what happens. I will try it both with and without Cafeteria. Assuming I can figure out how to do it without Cafeteria. Honestly, I like the "drag and drop" install with Cafeteria. :D

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