MultiMissile and Paradrop Questions

Remus

First of all, I am trying to make a working multimissile in RA and I know ther used to be a tutorial on numerous sites as to how to go about unlocking the multimissile in rules.ini. I can no longer find this tutorial anywhere and wondered if someone here could tell me how to unlock the multimissile.

Second, I am working on new paradrops. I know the only option is to alter the pre-existing paradrops which is no trouble at all except I am unsure about two aspects. First, when creating a parabomb, what should it be defined as in rules.ini? It's not an infantry type nor does it make sense to create it as a vehicle or a building. Should it simply be considered a projectile of some sort? This question is specifically aimed at where in rules.ini/art.ini to put the code that defines the bomb and its graphic.

Now the trickier question on parabombs. I realize there are two overall types of paradrops (American and standard) with standard having two subcategories (Allies and Soviet). I want to end up with three paradrops: an American troop paradrop, an Allied parabomb drop, and a Soviet parabomb drop where the two parabomb drops are completely different bomb types. I know that the two parabombs can easily be defined using the paradrop code at the beginning of rules.ini. But my question is: Can I, somehow using the paradrop code in the Superweapons code section, define the Soviet paradrop to have a different sidebar icon than the Allied sidebar icon (to accurately represent the two completely different types of bombs)? I know it can be done if I were altering the American vs. regular paradrops since they are basically independent but I wish to avoid that setup. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Tratos · General **Joined**: 01 Jan 2003

For the two different cameos, clone the generic paradrop and change the cameo it uses, this can be done safely as their is no animation that plays when the timer reaches 1 minute, it will use the same stats as the regular paradrop but have a different cameo. The same can be done for other superweapons too such as the psychic reveal and others that have no animations.

Remus · Posted: Mon May 05, 2003 7:30 pm Post subject:

Interesting. I've always been a bit hasty when it comes to alterations to superweapons, including the paradrop, or cloning superweapons. (I hope I am interpreting your explanation correctly. I think I know what you mean by cloning. Obviously, I'm completely new to modding.) I'll try it right away. Thanks so much!

Kravvitz · Commander **Joined**: 25 Mar 2003 **Location**: USA

check out deezire.net

there are several tutorials there, the mod, and a forum like this one.

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Remus · Posted: Mon May 05, 2003 8:35 pm Post subject:

Thanks for all the help. So far the paradrop works even better than I hoped. And thanks for that web address. That multimissile/clustermissile tutorial is exactly what I was looking for.

Kravvitz · Commander **Joined**: 25 Mar 2003 **Location**: USA

you're quite welcome, that may be the forum that I'm most active on.

if you want cameos click on the website button below each of my posts. ( to avoid confusion, you only have to click one ) Very Happy

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Community Links Page
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Remus · Posted: Mon May 05, 2003 9:25 pm Post subject:

Well, after further manipulation of the Paradrop, I found one major error which I think has occured for others who have altered paradrops or other superweapons in the past. The sidebar icon works, countdown and timer is perfect. When the weapon is charged, the firing icon appears but the weapon will not fire (At least for the human player. The weapon operates without error for the computer controlled players.) Probably when I tried to "clone" the paradrop, I did something I shouldn't have. I assumed cloning meant copy and paste the code for the ParaDropSpecial in the superweapons section at the bottom of rules.ini, alter the name (I gave it [ParaDropSpecial2]), leave everything else besides the icon the same, and made sure only the Soviets had this new paradrop while giving only the Allies the original. Of course I did remember to add ParaDropSpecial2 to the list of superweapons, though that is obvious since the icon and timer already work as I already said. Any suggestions?

Good thing I left the altering of superweapons for the end with my mod. This will take quite a bit of time. At least my emulated ion cannon works perfectly...

Edit:
I just looked at Deezire's tutorial on paradrops. I'll try to apply their method and see if it works. Although the downside is their method wil destroy my method of making the Amer. paradrop more powerful than the basic paradrop.

Tratos · General **Joined**: 01 Jan 2003

Oops, sorry, thats my fault, you need to change the action=??? tag to something that is unused, t will give you a different cursor but try changing action=paradrop to action=Airstrike that works quite well, especially for a parabomb superweapon.

Remus · Posted: Mon May 05, 2003 11:52 pm Post subject:

Thanks. Yeah, after looking at the tutorial at deezire, I noticed that after all the switching of paradrops around, all they really did that I noticed I needed was to alter the "Type=" and "Action=" lines. I Just tried it and it works fine. Now I just need to switch the infantry I was testing with for the two types of parabombs.