Skirmish, or multiplayer? Mods not working in multiplayer is a consequence of the game design, because the server is the only one really running the game. So to support mods, the official EA servers would need to run fan created 3rd party software. Huge security concern, so that's not possible.

When I activate this mod, the online skirmish options host & join no longer work. Am I doing something wrong?

A buddy and I play Lan battles vs Ai with this mod a lot

Love this mod! Is there any way I can adjust your mod to increase tiberium replenishment past the normal rate? Using this mod with other standalone mods breaks this one sadly

Thanks! I still want to get back to this mod at some point. Probably some of the AI variables could be bound into a basic ini file and adjusted from there.

Minor AI adjustments is quite the minor understatement. :D First tests against GDI I promptly got my butt handed to me on hard. Makes the AI actually interesting to fight, love it.
Only thing I don't like is that the AI doesn't build infantry after what you call midgame. Is there a way to disable that, so that the AI mixes vehicles and infantry beyond midgame?

Thanks for posting the the video, I know what I've done.... when I fixed the bug where two engineers run into the one building, I've introduced this. I'll see if I can have a look at it in the SDK later this week.

I found a bug on NOD mission 13. With the mod enabled I can't capture the helicopter with engineer. Instead the engineer just positions himself beneath the helicopter. See this thread: https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/app/1213210/discussions/0/6960928795826206741/

Glad to hear it's working. One day I'll get back to this and add in those last few ideas I had to give the AI a further leg up.

Well I can't claim the skirmish AI is brain dead anymore. Good lord this ramped it up far harder than I was expecting.

Oh, I know about the effects of the difficulties; in fact I documented them all on The Cutting Room Floor article of C&C. I was just wondering if your repair thresholds logic was all new, and if it was, if you added that same difficulty level tweak to it that other similar things in the game engine already have.

It's been a while since I looked at that chunk of code, but I don't recall seeing anything like that at the time. Pretty sure it's just based on the campaign mission number, where 1-6 is the easiest. Skirmish and Custom missions are separated out to get their own threshold.

That said if you're looking into that kind of thing, I once noticed what looked like build-time variations in Techno.Time_To_Build() determined by AI IQ. I made a note of it at the time to go back and have a look at how that worked, but never really did so.

On the repair thresholds... a similar logic that gradually ups the difficulty throughout the campaign, namely tank crushing behaviour, is also linked to difficulty mode; on Normal mode, the AI starts crushing at level 8, but in Easy mode it never crushes, and in Hard mode it does it from the start. Is that applied to the building repair thresholds logic as well?

nevermind just figured it out sorry to bug ya whith it

how do i activate the mod ?
cuz i don,t know if i,m doing something wrong or the mod doesn,t work

Good mod but i've noticed that the AI tends to not build an airstrip at all, and they tend to sell their construction yard if it gets to half hp.

@Thel 'Vadam (Flippy) lol MAGAmap

thanks for fixing the bug with the magamap in the map editor that allowed me to finish my mission that need this the CFEPatch Redux
the Mission https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2561429650

@Chthon @screaming_chicken

Thank you guys for lookIng in to this issue this is really gomna help people that want to make missions larger than 64x64 map for TD

bacon is god

Also, thank you for the awesome work of making a map editor for TD megamaps!

The original code should be fine with it so long as the lines in the ini file are not more than 128 bytes each and the numerical values can be represented by an unsigned long. I believe vanilla-conquer has replaced some of the ini stuff with code from RA (and I did not port those commits), so that 128-byte line limit might be different.

To convert coords to cells, it's reading the first and third (big endian) bytes of the coord as unsigned chars, casting to something bigger, left shifting the Y component, XORing, and casting to cell (which is a *signed* short). This is slightly wrong because the high bit of the unsigned y component ends up in the sign bit of the signed short. But it should never be an issue since the map editor literally can't output a 1 in that bit (since you don't have y values above 127, and, even if you did, you're masking by 127).

Hi Chthon, I put the same fix in last night and tested it but didn't get around to uploading it. I've just hardcoded mine to 0x7f as that works for both 64x64 maps and 128x128. Do you know if the Vanilla-conquer megamap code is ok to read in the larger values from these coordinates from the INI?

Thanks for looking at this all the same, I'll upload the compiled release now.

I filed a pull request on the map editor's github page that should resolve the bug found by Thel 'Vadam (Flippy). The root cause is that the cell x & y values are still getting masked by 63 when converting to/from the coordinate values in the [BASE] section of the .ini file.

comment if you like bacon 🥓

I did some tests my zelf if the enemy buildings are more up and left it works fine if the buildings are lower even if the whole map is playable it still breaks afther saving

It is indeed on the lower side of the overal map

Hi Flippy
If I have this right, you've set that lower cluster of buildings to be the "base" (i.e. for the AI to rebuild when lost) and after saving the map, the red buildings have appeared? I'll have a look and see if I can replicate it this evening.

@screaming_chicken

i dont know if this bug is known to you i am making a mission with the recently added megamap support with the CFEPatch Redux but i found a bug in your'e modified map edior with the megamap support when i was working in my mission i noticed strange buildings out side of the map playable map area those are the buildings that the enemy uses to replace lost buildings it happens every time then i save the map causes the enemy no to rebuild any lost buildings i have a screenshot here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w8wn4qY1o5LWqEl2D3uVQ6RIG8bDwJss/view

Odd that it doesn't already rebuild them without 'interference' from you. At least not how I remember things from old campaign playthroughs - maybe it's a skirmish thing? As for custom missions, the situation just didn't occur to me, so I don't know. Anyway, good luck.

Hey, congrats. I had a look at your modpage the other day. I'm still trying to teach the AI how to rebuild harvesters if it loses them all.

Tacos are nice... but pizza here, too :)

screaming_chicken, just a friendly FYI, version 1.0 of my mod, 'TD Mission-Making Toolkit', is ready and uploaded. If you haven't yet, check out the mod page if you'd like to. I hope things have been going well for you too!

tacos are as follows,shell,meat,cheese,onion,lettuce and hot sauce

Pizza :)

or...not answer me

Herr Pez, the Mission Ambush fix is mostly for any map-makers who might want to use this mod. Essentially "Ambush" means when a Unit gets revealed from the shroud it will immediately attack. But it never worked in the original game and was only ever used by one Unit in the campaign, possibly by accident.

Hunt mode is when the AI Unit is looking for a target anywhere on the map and will travel there to attack it. If it kills the target, it will look for the next best target anywhere on the map. The other AI modes like Guard and Area Guard stop the AI from travelling too far from the place they are guarding.

So the enemy turrets will only shoot on my turrets if iam attacking units or buildings nearby. The problem is i could build a wall of obelisk around the enemy turrets and was able to start the engagment in my favor number wise. Yeah i know about that behavior in the original game. Thought it is possible to create a threat attack system for the turret ai. So if a thing could fight back i will attack it or something like that.

guys,Tacos or Pizza

Would you mind explaining what exactly the "Mission Ambush" stuff is about in more detail? I don't quite understand just going by what you've written in the existing paragraph. Primarily, what is hunt mode? And what unit had that AI assigned to it, in which mission, and what was it meant to do? Thanks!

Hi Savemaster, that's how it's worked in the original game. I think your own Units also won't attack enemy buildings apart from enemy Turrets. It could be turned on so they would target automatically, but the downside would be when you use engineers to takeover an enemy building, you put turrets down to defend it, and you want to use more engineers to take over more buildings nearby (because another refinery or airstrip for $500 is cheap), but your own turrets would be shooting them up in the meantime. I'm guessing your turrets will target enemy turrets? I've never actually tested that.

Your mod is really great! But there are still some problems with the turret ai... When i expand my turrets into the enemy base the turrets won't shoot on the buildings. I can still give them a command to attack but the ai wont do it.

Just a short report on my little mod, to be thorough; I decided not to wait for the next version of Minor AI Improvements and go ahead and start working based on your mod's version 1.5. I actually already added cfehunter's A* pathing; it's not too difficult if you carefully follow the relevant history of CFE Patch Redux on GitHub. Tested it, too, and no conflicts or other issues found (so far, at least). I think you'll be just fine incorporating it yourself too.

Wishing good results in your endeavors. :) Bye!

Thanks pal. I'll let you know how it goes when there's been progress; right now I'm in no hurry (and, truth be told, I'd rather you were the one to do the A* pathing work here first - I trust you more with it).

Btw, I knew about the map editor, having visited the PPM forums, and you've done great work; I've also been keeping an eye on that Vanilla Conquer project which has done the rest of the megamap work so far. Since you're saying you want to clean up the editor, I'd like to tell you in tests with it I've been facing a bug: trying to access the overlay tab in temperate or winter theater (where besides crates there's the farming fields) fails with a "crash" - window with info popping up etc; exiting being an option, not automatic. As far as I recall the window's info had to do with size somewhere, but I'm not sure. Machine is a modern one with Windows 10.

Thanks again; bye for now.

Hi John
Sure, go for it. Let me know how you get on. I'd been thinking about Megamap support further down the line also. There is a copy of the Map Editor code in my github which supports saving TD maps in megamap size using the Sole-Survivor map binary format, although I've been wanting to clean that up a bit.

Hi screaming_chicken,

I thought I’d add a TD mod of my own on Steam in time, partly for personal reasons concerning mission design and partly just to share. Unlike most mods, it will be aimed at being a toolkit for mission designers, and a prerequisite for playing missions made with it, rather than something to play “anything” (and skirmish will not be an option). There will be elements of my own such as a slightly adjusted arsenal and related stats, but also gameplay features from other mods (for quality of life, improved AI, etc) with credit where it is due. I’ll probably add support for megamaps, at least eventually.

SO, besides appreciating your opinion, I want to ask, since all of the features of your mod except skirmish AI would fit into my mod, and your work is too complicated for me to practically do otherwise, would you mind if I used the entire code as modified for your mod as the base to further work with? I know the GPL says OK, but I’d like your permission.

Thanks John, I see both of those problems. I've updated the incorrect hex code and also where custom SP missions weren't repairing at 90% health. The problem there was that it seems the "Scenario" value on custom SP maps is 0 or 1 or something. I had expected it to be equal to the BuildLevel set in the map.

Should have a new version with those fixes out soon, currently I'm work on some SAM building logic.

I just tested a custom mission of mine with the latest version of the mod, and the repair threshold the AI used for building repairs was still at 25%. Also, I took a look at the relevant code and it seemed to me there's another issue; the value you have for the ratio at scenarios >6 and >10 is actually the same.

Another thing; just in case you haven't noticed, in CFE Patch Redux Chthon added a bugfix of his own to cfehunter's A* pathing (I don't mean the infantry Tiberium aversion feature) - in the commit of October 6. Just thought you should include it and might have missed this.

And congrats on the fix for the walls! That must have been a tough one indeed.

Cool.

GDI rushes with medium tanks and humvees are really deadly.
NOD attack is lacking behind a bit, because it's missing the firepower of medium tanks (maybe if they build more light tanks instead of recon bikes and buggies?)

I don't know if difficulty is enabled, but sometimes easy AI plays better than hard :)

Otherwise really fun mod to play.

Hi Mike

I see what you mean about SAM defenses. Part of the problem is that the build-time on helipads is 300 (1500-1200) , but the build-time on SAM's is 750. So a player can throw down multiple helipads really quickly if they have the cash. I'm going to try to get the AI to respond quicker when the player goes heavy on aircraft. The AI currently doesn't know how to sell or pause building, which leads into the Harvester problem below also (it doesn't have cash reserves to build a new Harv).

Infantry and amount of Defences are kind of a balancing act. Infantry can get wasted by Adv GTs or Flametanks quickly as the AI doesn't micro them.

Hi.
Nice mod!

AI is much better now and its rushes are quite effective.

Some suggestions:
- AI builds sam sites very late in game. I was shooting his buildings with Orcas and it was defenceless
- it could also build some infantry to improve attack or defence
- or build more defence structures (AI's usually wipe eachother out, because they attack with much more vehicles than there are def structures)
- if you destroy all harvesters, AI doens't know how to build more harvesters. Even if it has 3 refineries, it won't sell one, to build harvester.