GR:AW SP Scripting 8

[Wolfsong]

To get people goin on creating SP missions I figured a tutorial on how to override the original ones is in order.

It may look like alot of work, but it's really not that complicated. Took about a day before everything worked flawless the first time, when I had to figure it out, but after you've done it once and understand what you have done it's much easier. :wink:

How To Override An Original SP Mission

Intro and Preparations:
In this tutorial I'll use my own recently finished mission mod and show what I needed to do to get the override to work. Before starting this tutorial you should have completed your work in the world.xml and your scripted mission.xml which you placed in custom_levelswork"your mod"script folder. After that you should have exported it from the map editor, I used the OGR Coop exporter option. We need to do this to generate the new lightmaps, AI graph and some other files. You'll also need to have the quick.bundle extracted, and over that extract the patch.bundle (this so the patch replaces all files updated in it), this as we'll need to get some files from it and edit slightly and also use as reference. I'll refer to these file locations as if you extracted the bundles into localbundle, and removed the data folder step like said in other tutorials.

Override:
Ok, now you're ready to override. First you have to decide which mission to override. In my case it was simple, I used an original map to create my mission on so I override that map, in this case "mission05". But I could just as easily used any of the other missions as you can override all files anyhow.

Folders:
After that is decided we can create the folder structure. In the local folder I created my own sub-folder, which we can call "my_mod". In that we need as few different sub-folders depending on how the mission is built. But we'll always need the "levels", "strings" and "textures" folders. Inside the "levels" folder we need to create the folder for the mission to override, in this case "mission05", and inside that there should also be a folder called "xml". Inside the "textures" folder we need to create one called "lightmaps", and once again inside that one specfic for the mission we'll override, "mission05", and inside that and "atlas0" folder. Some missions also use and "atlas1" folder, in which case you'll need that as well.

We now have a folder structure that looks like this:
local -> my_mod -> levels -> mission05 -> xml
local -> my_mod -> strings
local -> my_mod -> textures -> lightmaps -> mission05 -> atlas0

Strings Files:
Now it's time to start placing/editing the files needed.

Into localmy_modstrings you should copy the menu.xml found in the localbundlestrings folder. This is only needed to edit the name of the mission in the selection menues. Open it in any text/xml editor, search for "campaign_mission" and you'll find the section that sets the name for all the missions. Replace the string inside the quotes with the name you want to use for your mission. I named mine "Titan Skull", which gives me this line efter the editing:


Levels Files:
Next we'll go into the localmy_modlevelsmission05 folder. Into this we'll have to pu thte new AI graph, mission xml and diesel, texture scope and materials files.

You'll find that when you exported you mission in the map editor, it created a new folder structure inside custom_levels. In this you'll find all the files it put into the bundle created in the export, but in folders. Great! Now lets look for what we need. First find custom_levelswork_temp1datalevelscustom_levels"your mod".
Inside you'll find the AI graph, texture scope, materials, as well as diesel and xml mission files. Copy all these into the localmy_modlevelsmission05 folder.

Now rename the diesel and mission xml files to that of the mission you want to override, in my case "mission05.diesel" and "mission05.xml". Then open the mission xml file in your text/xml editor. In the first lines you'll find a few "load_scene" tags. Those we'll have to edit a little. Opened the real mission05.xml file and copy all the "load_scene" tags with their contents and replce all "load_scene" tags in you exported file with that.