Campaign editor abilities bugs

[Mechanical Man]

I was continuing the work on Godfall campaign by importing and updating old map in the campaign file and I discovered some annoying bugs regarding campaign editor, especially in abilities sections:

Definitions as they are colored in editor:
Default ability - black, unmodified ability from the game
Custom ability - purple, ability with fields modified in object editor
Campaign ability - blue, ability with fields modified in campaign editor - custom data

1. Custom abilities (map specific, not campaign specific) have all fields displayed, which is better explained in this thread http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/...8/object-editor-showing-too-much-data-217839/ No proof of any bugs sighted, but can be annoying because it's much harder to find proper fields. Of course fields not bound to that ability will have no effect.

2. Copying and pasting a campaign ability (to make similar abilities more easily) will result to a default ability the campaign ability is based to. So nothing is gained this way.

3. Probably related to previous bug, if you want to copy from campaign ability properties to custom ability property, it won't work as it will recognize it as default ability.

4. For some reason, when you are importing a map, if there are some custom abilities, or even worse, copies of default abilities it can happen that some of campaign abilities won't appear in the map at all when playing it. This is the most annoying bug I discovered as only way seems to be creating new ability in campaign editor if not deleted before importing it.

From this the best idea is to add all abilities in the campaign editor and avoid custom abilities totally or make each map with their own object data separately and leaving campaign data intact.

With units there were less problems, although certain units for example behaved as buildings in the map while in campaign data they weren't buildings.

Just report if you encountered any other campaign editor bugs and hints to avoid them.

 

[Soul Reaver]

I was continuing the work on Godfall campaign by importing and updating old map in the campaign file and I discovered some annoying bugs regarding campaign editor, especially in abilities sections:

Definitions as they are colored in editor:
Default ability - black, unmodified ability from the game
Custom ability - purple, ability with fields modified in object editor
Campaign ability - blue, ability with fields modified in campaign editor - custom data

1. Custom abilities (map specific, not campaign specific) have all fields displayed, which is better explained in this thread http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/...8/object-editor-showing-too-much-data-217839/ No proof of any bugs sighted, but can be annoying because it's much harder to find proper fields. Of course fields not bound to that ability will have no effect.

2. Copying and pasting a campaign ability (to make similar abilities more easily) will result to a default ability the campaign ability is based to. So nothing is gained this way.

3. Probably related to previous bug, if you want to copy from campaign ability properties to custom ability property, it won't work as it will recognize it as default ability.

4. For some reason, when you are importing a map, if there are some custom abilities, or even worse, copies of default abilities it can happen that some of campaign abilities won't appear in the map at all when playing it. This is the most annoying bug I discovered as only way seems to be creating new ability in campaign editor if not deleted before importing it.

From this the best idea is to add all abilities in the campaign editor and avoid custom abilities totally or make each map with their own object data separately and leaving campaign data intact.

With units there were less problems, although certain units for example behaved as buildings in the map while in campaign data they weren't buildings.

Just report if you encountered any other campaign editor bugs and hints to avoid them.

Hi Mechanical Man,

Yes, this is all kind of horrible. Here's my understanding of how custom abilities work...

Whenever you create a custom ability (either in the Campaign editor or in the map itself), the ability is given a unique identifier. This is a short string of numbers and letters. EVERY ability you make in a given map/given campaign main file will have a different unique identifier. In the ability editor, select View -> Display Values as Raw Data, and you'll see the identifier in front of the 'ability name string'. The first ability you create will probably be called A000, the next A001, the next A002 and so on. Each new ability you create will use the lowest unusued identifier in the progression. You can potentially end up with 'gaps' in this progression if you delete an ability (eg, you created A001, A002, and A003, then deleted A002), though they'll be 'filled in' again if you then create new abilities.

Now, I don't know for sure, but perhaps the problem you're having with (4) relates to a conflict between the unique identifier from the set of abilities stored in the CAMPAIGN file vs the ones stored in the MAP. My understanding is that whatever is in the map takes precedence - so if you have an ability in the map called A001, then whatever campaign ability has the same identifier will be ignored (the same thing will happen if you have, say, two different custom skins, both using the same path, in both the campaign file and the map file - the map file one will be the one that gets used). That's also why it works if you create a new ability in the campaign editor - creating a new ability results in it using the next available identifier, which might be one that doesn't overlap with one already in your map.

I haven't really run into problems (2) and (3), and here's why: may campaign contains the custom abilities IN EACH MAP (since I created them all as standalone maps to begin with), and doesn't use any such data from the campaign file.

That has created issues for me though, which only came to the fore later on. Because not all maps shared all the same abilities (new maps saw new abilities added, version changes saw new abilities created, old ones taken out, etc), my 'progression' got messed up. So 'Dharuk Battle Frenzy' might have the identifier ABA4 in map 3, but uses ACC2 in map 4. This becomes an issue when copy/pasting triggers - if the trigger in map 3 refers to ABA4, then it'll STILL refer to whatever ability has the identifier ABA4 in map 4.... which might be a different ability entirely! This would then require me to change that trigger manually so it points to the 'right' ability. What's more, saved game caches (such as when you're transferring characters from one map to another) have the same problem (they'll save the levels for the ability's unique identifier... which could be a different ability in the next map!). Once you've made as many maps in the campaign as me, fixing this up post-mortem becomes nightmarish.

The way I see it, you have 2 options:

1) Make ALL custom abilities in the campaign editor only. This is probably the most elegant solution and makes future changes easy... but might be a pain because of how it displays all fields when you create custom abilities. Since I didn't do this, I don't know if there's a solution to it.

2) Have ALL custom abilities in your maps only. The advantage of this is that it doesn't display all the unnecessary fields in the editor when you just edit the map files separately. However, if you do this, make sure your abilities all share the same unique identifiers between maps. Do this by finalizing all the abilities you need, add them all in one map, then make sure you import this exactly into all other maps. This will be a pain if you need to change anything later since you'll need to change it the same way on each individual map - eg if you add new abilities, you can't just copy/paste them in, you need to copy/paste them in in the same order they were created to keep the unique identifier progression the same!

Wish it was easier, but that's how it looks to me. Sorry I can't be of more help....

 

[Mechanical Man]

I checked the IDs for those default abilities before importing the map file if conflicts with the problematic ability in campaign and map editor, but they are different. However how could I say, they are used for same purpose, based on the same ability (channel). Furthermore I used this enhanced edtor which let me choose ID when pasting an object.

 

[Soul Reaver]

I checked the IDs for those default abilities before importing the map file if conflicts with the problematic ability in campaign and map editor, but they are different. However how could I say, they are used for same purpose, based on the same ability (channel). Furthermore I used this enhanced edtor which let me choose ID when pasting an object.

I don't know how the enhanced editor works, so I don't know if that's related to any of the issues you're experiencing.

However, giving a unit two (or more) abilities both created from the same base ability definitely doesn't work. I was under the impression that Channel was an exception to this (provided you gave each channel-based ability a different ID in the editor), but I still did my best to avoid using channel more than once on a given unit.