[MERGED] Soldier Diaries 1.0

[new_civilian]

Nice mod and it really adds to the game! AND unlike other exe-mods this one has no performance problems. Excellent work! 

[Shoes]

Nice mod and it really adds to the game! AND unlike other exe-mods this one has no performance problems. Excellent work! 

Thanks! Soon I'll have to share credit between even more people!

[ivandogovich]

ivandogovich, have you noticed if it's the _same_ awards that keep getting awarded erroneously? For some reason I have in my mind it's "random" awards that get awarded incorrectly.

So far, I have found this to be true.  The most common erroneous awards, are :
Bolts Cross
Order of the Hammer
Nike Cross
(I'm not sure if there are any others)

Bolt's Cross and Order of the Hammer seem to be awarded for Knife Kills.  I don't think your code takes melee kills into account very well, and these are triggering some code value.
Then Nike Cross... yeah, that I don't understand.  I don't know your code well enough to figure it out.  From looking at the .ccp and .h files on git, I couldn't find anything glaring to my non-programmer eye.   Are there other things in the modified .dll files that would have an impact on how the reward criteria work as well?  I haven't looked in those.

The only other issue with the mod, as I have mentioned before, is that of Goomba stomping.  I haven't encountered that in my current playthrough, but I haven't been in condusive situations.  I am now playing with "Sneaky AI" too, so that may make E.T. more reluctant to "run to the guns" thereby jump off the buildings onto my unsuspecting troops.

Working on the UfoPedia has been a ton of fun!  I've been working on more medals, and will probably have some more mockups ready this weekend.
Cheers, Ivan

[ivandogovich]

Order of Restraint opinions needed:

This award is for soldiers who have captured may aliens alive.  I have two medallion concepts.  Which is better?

Thanks!

[xracer]

Personally and like the first better

[Arthanor]

I like the second one better! But I also thing that you should shrink the stun rod so it fits on the medallion and apply the same colours to it so it looks engraved. Make it kind of a "Oh, that's a stun rod? Clever!" instead of super obvious.

Barring that, I like the 1st one better

[moriarty]

Why not shrink the stun rod and change the shape of the medallion itself to match the hit animation sprite?

[Shoes]

Why not shrink the stun rod and change the shape of the medallion itself to match the hit animation sprite?

I like that idea ;p I feel like it's just the right amount of cliché

[ivandogovich]

Best of both worlds?

"the shape of the hit animation sprite" ... I completely missed that the first time around.  XD

I actually tried that, but had problems with the absolute chunkiness of the sprite.  It really looked pretty bad.

[ivandogovich]

Okay, cliches delivered.   

[Arthanor]

Pretty nice! Now for some reason the first thing I thought was: "Wouldn't it look better with a diagonal stun rod?" From top right to bottom left? But if you think you've worked enough on that one, feel free to ignore me

[Random Commander]

Hey, if for some reason the hit animation shaped medal seems to be too hard to work with, I have a good idea for the Hexagon-shaped one:

Engrave the hit animation like you did with the first sketch, and then put a stun rod (Diagonal or across, whatever) in front of that hit animation. That should work almost perfectly.

[moriarty]

While the hit-animation-shaped medal looks good, it also looks very pointy (as well as a bit flimsy... those points might break off)... maybe just engrave it full-size on a pentagonal or circular medal? And move the stun rod down a bit so it doesn't obscure the points?

[ivandogovich]

@Shoes..  a bit more analysis here....

I was checking out the awards abit more.   I found one more problem  https://youtu.be/-lY3C6G8nFY?t=28m44s

I had a soldier get the Man of Steel (Rosie) for being shot sixtimes in quick succession.  The criteria is five so all is good here.  What is the problem is that after the next mission, in which they didn't get hit at all, they received "first award" at end of mission screen, and then a bronze pin on their record.

It looks like the code isn't cleaning up the hit5times flag. (or maybe some other function)

Code: [Select]

        diary:
          missionIdList:
            - 10
            - 11
          commendations:
            - decorationLevel: 1
              commendationName: STR_MEDAL_MAN_OF_STEEL_NAME
          regionTotal:
            STR_NORTH_AMERICA: 2
          killList:
            - rank: STR_LIVE_ENGINEER
              race: STR_SECTOID
              weapon: STR_FLASHBANG_GRENADE
              weaponAmmo: STR_FLASHBANG_GRENADE
              faction: 1
              mission: 11
              turn: 3321
              status: 7
          countryTotal:
            STR_USA: 2
          typeTotal:
            STR_UFO_CRASH_RECOVERY_LC: 2
          UFOTotal:
            STR_LARGE_SCOUT: 1
            STR_MEDIUM_SCOUT: 1
          scoreTotal: 453
          winTotal: 2
          stunTotal: 1
          hitCounterTotal: 6
          importantMissionTotal: 2
          hitCounter5in1Mission: 1
          shotAtCounterTotal: 7
Cheers, Ivan

[ivandogovich]

Final Order of Restraint.  I'm pretty happy with it.  hit shape just didn't really look good in the background no matter how I parsed it.