[MERGED] Soldier Diaries 1.0

[Shoes]

Just an update to let the mod creator know that his legacy mod is working with 1.0 for me as well AND a working nicely alongside some other mods. Excellent work on the mod!

Quick question regarding the commendations; how exactly can I find out the requirements for each commendation or create any of my own?

Thanks! To create your own commendatinos, find your OpenXcom location (Probably C:\Program Files\OpenXcom), go into the Data folder, into the Ruleset folder. Open Commendations.rul in either Notepad++ or Notepad. If you don't know how to mod rulesets in general : https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Rulesets_(OpenXcom)

There are 3 chunks of text in the ruleset: extraSprites, extraStrings and then commendations. There is also a huge comment block before commendations where I try to explain how to create your own commendations.

Take a look at that and the commendations below it; I have no idea how clear it is because I wrote the code and the explanation, so it's obvious to me!

edit: and if you have a great idea but "can't" create it through modding, share it and I will see if I can create it via source code changes.

[Souljah1214]

i was a bit away, and now i see this mod is 1.0ready.... so hopefully my campaing against the invasion can begin... thanks for your work! and hopefully this mod will be implemented in future releases, since it gives such a new taste to the good old flavour:)

[ibanix]

Unfortunately this crashes for me immediately on run, using 1.0. Sadface.

[Shoes]

The game won't launch? Make sure you replaced the DLLs as well. They are found in the folder named "DLLs"; this seems to be the most common problem.

[ibanix]

Yup, was using the new DLLs.

[Shoes]

That's odd. If you're using the 1.0 Legacy version of the mod with the 1.0 release (not the nightly) of the game, and you replaced the .exe and the .dlls, then I am not sure what is going wrong here.

Are you able to provide more details?

[Hobbes]

Hello just tried this and it's simply great

Thanks for the work

[wsmithjr]

Yup, was using the new DLLs.

I don't mean any offense by this, but did you overwrite the DLLs in the main OXC folder with the DLLs from the DLL sub-folder in the mod pack?  If you ask me, the install instructions are a little unclear and I had similar problems to you until I figured out that the DLLs don't go in a DLL subfolder, but need to overwrite the original DLLs in the same folder as the .exe.

FWIW

[ibanix]

I was able to get this to work on a second try. I had to add the Commendations.rul manually in options.cfg. Without that it would just crash at startup.

Works so far! I'll report back on any other issues.

[ibanix]

I had a soldier win the 'Swiftness Citation' via a kill from a proximity grenade. I'm guessing that's not what was intended.

[Shoes]

I had a soldier win the 'Swiftness Citation' via a kill from a proximity grenade. I'm guessing that's not what was intended.

Totally correct; all I did was track to see if he killed an enemy during the enemy turn. I will split the commendation into Swiftness, for killing an alien using the weapon in your hand, and perhaps a Trap laying commendation for killing an enemy with an explosive on their turn. Thanks!

Also, if you feel some commendations are "too easy" to get or something let me know too, I haven't play tested this extensively for 'fun', only for functionality.

[Hobbes]

Also, if you feel some commendations are "too easy" to get or something let me know too, I haven't play tested this extensively for 'fun', only for functionality.

I was thinking about this - sometimes it feels that the squad is showered with medals after a mission. For instance, the Service Medal says it is received after serving many months but it seems to be awarded after a single month has passed. Overall you may want to increase the criteria so that most medals are distinctions of exceptional service and not the norm. Otherwise medals become boring after you receive tons of them after a mission.

And another suggestion is to display the full criteria for receiving the medal on the description ('awarded after serving for 3 months', 'given by killing at least 10 Sectoids', etc.) so that it's easier to figure what a soldier still needs to do to receive that medal.

[the_third_curry]

I was thinking about this - sometimes it feels that the squad is showered with medals after a mission. For instance, the Service Medal says it is received after serving many months but it seems to be awarded after a single month has passed. Overall you may want to increase the criteria so that most medals are distinctions of exceptional service and not the norm. Otherwise medals become boring after you receive tons of them after a mission.

And another suggestion is to display the full criteria for receiving the medal on the description ('awarded after serving for 3 months', 'given by killing at least 10 Sectoids', etc.) so that it's easier to figure what a soldier still needs to do to receive that medal.

Are you sure about the Service Medal? All of my soldiers get the Military Cross after the first month (as they're supposed to), but I've never seen anyone get the Service Medal after their first month.

Also, I believe one reason that some of the medals are a bit easy is that there are 9 Decoration Levels. I'm in December of my current playthrough and I don't think I've seen any of my soldiers go higher than a Third Bronze Pin. Getting medals isn't too hard, but having people live long enough to see any meaningful decoration level is a bit of rarity for me.

[Hobbes]

Are you sure about the Service Medal? All of my soldiers get the Military Cross after the first month (as they're supposed to), but I've never seen anyone get the Service Medal after their first month.

Also, I believe one reason that some of the medals are a bit easy is that there are 9 Decoration Levels. I'm in December of my current playthrough and I don't think I've seen any of my soldiers go higher than a Third Bronze Pin. Getting medals isn't too hard, but having people live long enough to see any meaningful decoration level is a bit of rarity for me.

I might be confusing the medal, but it is the one that says that a soldier has served many months.

[ibanix]

I might be confusing the medal, but it is the one that says that a soldier has served many months.

I got the same thing - it seems to be triggered after 3 missions? 5 missions seems better.

Also, I can't figure out the criteria for the Order of Earth.

Personally I'd also remove the Honor Cross (or whichever) that everyone gets; it feels cheap.