Fixed / Improved Logics

This page describes all ingame logics that are fixed or improved in Phobos without adding anything significant.

Bugfixes and miscellaneous

• Fixed the bug that GameModeOptions are not correctly saved. For example, BuildOffAlly is corrupted after load a save.

• Fixed the bug that light tint created by buildings can never be removed (light tint persists even if the building is destroyed/sold) after loading a game

• Fixed the bug when reading a map which puts Preview(Pack) after Map lead to the game fail to draw the preview

• Fixed the bug when retinting map lighting with a map action corrupted light sources.

• Fixed the bug when deploying mindcontrolled vehicle into a building permanently transferred the control to the house which mindcontrolled it.

• Fixed the bug when capturing a mind-controlled building with an engineer fail to break the mind-control link.

• Removed the EVA_BuildingCaptured event when capturing a building considered as a vehicle.

• Fixed the bug when units are already dead but still in map (for sinking, crashing, dying animation, etc.), they could die again.

• Fixed the bug when cloaked Desolator was unable to fire his deploy weapon.

• Fixed the bug that temporaryed unit cannot be erased correctly and no longer raise an error.

• Fixed DebrisMaximums (spawned debris type amounts cannot go beyond specified maximums anymore). Only applied when DebrisMaximums values amount is more than 1 for compatibility reasons.

• Fixed building and defense tab hotkeys not enabling the placement mode after Cannot build here. triggered and the placement mode cancelled.

• Fixed buildings with UndeployInto playing EVA_NewRallypointEstablished on undeploying.

• Fixed buildings with Naval=yes ignoring WaterBound=no to be forced to place onto water.

• Fixed AI Aircraft docks bug when Ares tag [GlobalControls] -> AllowParallelAIQueues=no is set.

• Fixed laser drawing code to allow for thicker lasers in house color draw mode.

• Fixed DeathWeapon not detonating properly.

  • Some settings are still ignored like PreImpactAnim (Ares feature), this might change in future.

• Fixed the bug when occupied building’s MuzzleFlashX is drawn on the center of the building when X goes past 10.

• Fixed the bug where jumpjet units that are Crashable do not crashing to ground properly if destroyed while being pulled by a Locomotor warhead.

• Fixed the bug that prevents jumpjet units from turn to the target when firing from a different direction.

• Fixed the bug allowing jumpjet units to continue firing at enemy target when crashing.

Jumpjet turning to target applied in Robot Storm X

• Fixed the bug when turreted jumpjet units always facing bottom-right direction when motion stops.

• Fixed the bug when jumpjet objects are unable to use Sensors.

• Allowed usage of AlternateFLH of vehicles in OpenTopped transport.

• Improved the statistic distribution of the spawned crates over the visible area of the map so that they will no longer have a higher chance to show up near the edges.

• Allowed usage of TileSet of 255 and above without making NE-SW broken bridges unrepairable.

• Added a “Load Game” button to the retry dialog on mission failure.

Side offset voxel turret in Breaking Blue project

• TurretOffset tag for voxel turreted TechnoTypes now accepts FLH (forward, lateral, height) values like TurretOffset=F,L or TurretOffset=F,L,H, which means turret location can be adjusted in all three axes.

• TurretOffset is now supported for SHP vehicles.

• InfiniteMindControl with Damage=1 can now control more than 1 unit.

• Aircraft with Fighter set to false or those using strafing pattern (weapon projectile ROT is below 2) now take weapon’s Burst into accord for all shots instead of just the first one.

• Vehicles using DeployFire will now use DeployFireWeapon for firing the deploy weapon if explicitly set, if not it behaves like previously (Primary if can fire, Secondary if not) and respect FireOnce setting on weapon and any stop commands issued during firing. If FireOnce is set to true the unit won’t accept further deploy commands for number of frames that is equal to whichever is smaller between weapon ROF and [Unload] -> Rate times 900.

• Infantry with DeployFireWeapon=-1 can now fire both weapons (decided by its target), regardless of deployed or not.

Nod arty keeping target on attack order in C&C: Reloaded

• Vehicle to building deployers now keep their target when deploying with DeployToFire.

• Effects like lasers are no longer drawn from wrong firing offset on weapons that use Burst.

• Animations can now be offset on the X axis with XDrawOffset.

• IsSimpleDeployer units now only play DeploySound and UndeploySound once, when done with (un)deploying instead of repeating it over duration of turning and/or DeployingAnim.

• AITrigger can now recognize Building Upgrades as legal condition.

• EWGates and NSGates now will link walls like xxGateOne and xxGateTwo do.

• Fixed interaction of UnitAbsorb & InfantryAbsorb with Grinding buildings. The keys will now make the building only accept appropriate types of objects.

• Fixed missing No Enter cursor for VehicleTypes being unable to enter a Grinding building.

• Fixed Engineers being able to enter Grinding buildings even when they shouldn’t (such as ally building at full HP).

• Aircraft & jumpjet units are now affected by speed modifiers such as Speed(Aircraft/Infantry/Units)Mult on Countries, VeteranSpeed and Crates / AttachEffect (Ares feature).

• Both voxel and SHP vehicle units should now correctly respect custom palette set through Palette.

• Setting RadarInvisible to true on TerrainTypes now hides them from minimap display.

• Mind control indicator animations will now correctly restore on mind controlled objects when uncloaked.

• Animations from Warhead AnimList & SplashList etc. as well as animations created through map trigger 41 Play Anim At now have the appropriate house set as owner of the animation by default.

• Nuke carrier & payload weapons now respect Bright setting on the weapons always when appropriate (previously only payload did and only if Superweapon had Nuke.SiloLaunch=false (Ares feature)).

• Self-healing pips from InfantryGainSelfHeal & UnitsGainSelfHeal now respect unit’s PixelSelectionBracketDelta like health bar pips do.

• Fixed the bug where the health bar of a unit being attacked by temporal weapons would not disappear after mouse hover, causing it to remain visible even when the mouse moved away.

• Buildings using SelfHealing will now correctly revert to undamaged graphics if their health is restored back by self-healing.

• Allow use of Foundation=0x0 on TerrainTypes without crashing for similar results as for buildings.

• Projectiles now remember the house of the firer even if the firer is destroyed before the projectile detonates. Does not currently apply to some Ares-introduced Warhead effects like EMP.

• OpenTopped transports now take OpenTransportWeapon setting of passengers into consideration when determining weapon range used for threat scanning and approaching targets.

• Trailer animations now inherit the owner of the object (animation, projectile or aircraft) they are attached to.

• Buildings now correctly use laser parameters set for Secondary weapons instead of reading them from Primary weapon.

• Fixed an issue that caused vehicles killed by damage dealt by a known house but without a known source TechnoType (f.ex animation warhead damage) to not be recorded as killed correctly and thus not spring map trigger events etc.

• Fixed transports recursively put into each other not having a correct killer set after second transport when being killed by something.

Example gradient SHP drawing with 75% translucency, before and after

• Translucent RLE SHPs will now be drawn using a more precise and performant algorithm that has no green tint and banding. Can be disabled with rulesmd.ini -> [General] -> FixTransparencyBlitters=no.

  • Only applies to Z-aware drawing mode for now.

• Fixed projectiles with Inviso=true suffering from potential inaccuracy problems if combined with Airburst=yes or Warhead with EMEffect=true.

• Fixed the bug when MakeInfantry logic on BombClass resulted in Neutral side infantry.

• Fixed railgun particles being drawn to wrong coordinate against buildings with non-default TargetCoordOffset or when force-firing on bridges.

• Fixed building TargetCoordOffset not being taken into accord for several things like fire angle calculations and target lines.

• In singleplayer missions, the player can now see cloaked objects owned by allied houses.

• IvanBomb images now display and the bombs detonate at center of buildings instead of in top-leftmost cell of the building foundation.

• Fixed BibShape drawing for a couple of frames during buildup for buildings with long buildup animations.

• Animation with Tiled=yes now supports CustomPalette.

• Attempted to avoid units from retaining previous orders (attack,grind,garrison,etc) after changing ownership (mind-control,abduction,etc).

• Fixed buildings’ NaturalParticleSystem being created for in-map pre-placed structures.

• Fixed jumpjet units being unable to visually tilt or be flipped if TiltCrashJumpjet=no.

• Unlimited (more than 5) AlternateFLH entries for units.

• Warheads spawning debris now use MaxDebris as an actual cap for number of debris to spawn instead of MaxDebris - 1.

• If both Primary and Secondary weapons can fire at air targets (projectile has AA=true), Primary can now be picked instead of always forcing Secondary. Also applies to IsGattling=true, with odd-numbered and even-numbered WeaponX slots instead of Primary and Secondary, respectively.

• IsGattling=true can now fall back to secondary weapon slot (even-numbered WeaponX slots) if primary one (odd-numbered) cannot fire at current target (armor type, CanTarget(Houses), shield etc).

• Fixed LandTargeting=1 not preventing from targeting TerrainTypes (trees etc.) on land.

• Fixed NavalTargeting=6 not preventing from targeting empty water cells or TerrainTypes (trees etc.) on water.

• Fixed NavalTargeting=7 and/or LandTargeting=2 resulting in still targeting TerrainTypes (trees etc.) on land with Primary weapon.

• Fixed infantry without C4=true being killed in water if paradropped, chronoshifted etc. even if they can normally enter water.

• Allowed MCV to redeploy in campaigns using a new toggle different from [MultiplayerDialogSettings] -> MCVRedeploys.

• Fixed buildings with UndeploysInto but Unsellable=no & ConstructionYard=no unable to be sold normally. Restored EVA_StructureSold for buildings with UndeploysInto when being selled.

• Fixed WaterBound=true buildings with UndeploysInto not correctly setting the location for the vehicle to move into when undeployed.

• Buildings with CanC4=false used to take 1 point of damage if hit by damage below 1 (calculated after Verses are applied but before veterancy, crate and AttachEffect modifiers). This no longer applies to negative damage under any conditions and can be disabled for zero damage by setting CanC4.AllowZeroDamage to true.

• Buildings with primary weapon that has AG=false projectile now have attack cursor when selected.

• Weapons with AA=true projectiles can now be set to fire exclusively at air targets by setting AAOnly=true, regardless of other conditions. This is useful because AG=false only prevents targeting ground cells (and cannot be changed without breaking existing behaviour) and for cases where LandTargeting cannot be used.

• Transports with OpenTopped=true and weapon that has Burst above 1 and passengers firing out no longer have the passenger firing offset shift lateral position based on burst index.

• Fixed disguised infantry not using custom palette for drawing the disguise when needed.

• Disguised infantry now show appropriate insignia when disguise is visible, based on the disguise type and house. Original unit’s insignia is always shown to observers and if disguise blinking is enabled for the current player by [General] -> DisguiseBlinkingVisibility.

• Buildings with superweapons no longer display SuperAnimThree at beginning of match if pre-placed on the map.

• SpySat=yes can now be applied using building upgrades.

• AI players can now build Naval=true and Naval=false vehicles concurrently like human players do.

• Fixed the bug when jumpjets were snapping into facing bottom-right when starting movement (observable when the starting unit is a jumpjet and is ordered to move).

• Objects with Palette set now have their color tint adjusted accordingly by superweapons, map retint actions etc. if they belong to a house using any color scheme instead of only those from the first half of [Colors] list.

• Animations using AltPalette are now remapped to their owner’s color scheme instead of first listed color scheme and no longer draw over shroud. Color scheme from [AudioVisual] -> AnimRemapDefaultColorScheme is used if anim has no owner, which defaults to first listed color scheme from [Colors] still.

  • They can also have map lighting apply on them if AltPalette.ApplyLighting is set to true.

• Fixed DeployToFire not considering building placement rules for DeploysInto buildings and as a result not working properly with WaterBound buildings.

• Fixed DeployToFire not recalculating firer’s position on land if it cannot currently deploy.

• Arcing=true projectile elevation inaccuracy can now be fixed by setting Arcing.AllowElevationInaccuracy=false.

• Wall overlays are now drawn with the custom palette defined in Palette in artmd.ini if possible.

• If [CombatDamage] -> AllowWeaponSelectAgainstWalls is set to true, Secondary will now be used against walls if Primary weapon Warhead has Wall=false, Secondary has Wall=true and the firer does not have NoSecondaryWeaponFallback set to true.

• Setting ReloadInTransport to true on units with Ammo will allow the ammo to be reloaded according to Reload or EmptyReload timers even while the unit is inside a transport.

• It is now possible to enable Verses and PercentAtMax to be applied on negative damage by setting ApplyModifiersOnNegativeDamage to true on the Warhead.

• Attached animations on flying units now have their layer updated immediately after the parent unit, if on same layer they always draw above the parent.

• Fixed the issue where the powered anims of Powered / PoweredSpecial buildings cease to update when being captured by enemies.

• Fix a glitch related to incorrect target setting for missiles.

• Fix EIP 00529A14 when attempting to read [Header] section of campaign maps.

• Units will no longer rotate its turret under EMP.

• Jumpjets will no longer wobble under EMP.

• Removed jumpjet units’ deceleration when crashing onto buildings.

• Fixed AmbientDamage when used with IsRailgun=yes being cut off by elevation changes.

• Fixed railgun and fire particles being cut off by elevation changes.

• Fixed teleport units’ (for example [CLEG]) frozen-still timer being cleared after load game.

• Fixed teleport units being unable to visually tilt on slopes.

• Fixed rockets’ shadow location.

• Fixed units with Teleport, Tunnel or Fly locomotor being unable to be visually flipped like other locomotors do.

• Aircraft docking on buildings now respect [AudioVisual] -> PoseDir as the default setting and do not always land facing north or in case of pre-placed buildings, the building’s direction.

• Spawned aircraft now align with the spawner’s facing when landing.

• Fixed the bug that waypointing unarmed infantries with agent/engineer/occupier to a spyable/capturable/occupiable building triggers EnteredBy event by executing capture mission.

• PowerUpN building animations can now use Powered & PoweredLight/Effect/Special keys.

• Fixed a desync potentially caused by displaying of cursor over selected DeploysInto units.

• Skipped drawing rally point line when undeploying a factory.

• Tint effects are now correctly applied to SHP vehicles and all types of aircraft as well as building animations regardless of their position.

• Iron Curtained / Force Shielded objects now always use the correct tint color.

• Objects in invalid map coordinates are no longer used for starting view and AI base center calculations.

• Units & buildings with DecloakToFire=false weapons now cloak while targeting & reloading.

• Units with Sensors=true will no longer reveal ally buildings.

• Air units are now reliably included by target scan with large range and Warhead detonation by large CellSpread.

• OverlayTypes now read and use ZAdjust if specified in their artmd.ini entry.

• Setting [AudioVisual] -> ColorAddUse8BitRGB to true makes game treat values from [ColorAdd] as 8-bit RGB (0-255) instead of RGB565 (0-31 for red & blue, 0-63 for green). This works for LaserTargetColor, IronCurtainColor, BerserkColor and ForceShieldColor.

• Weapons with AA=true Projectile can now correctly fire at air units when both firer and target are over a bridge.

• Fixed disguised units not using the correct palette if target has custom palette.

• Building upgrades now consistently use building’s PowerUpN animation settings corresponding to the upgrade’s PowersUpToLevel where possible.

• Subterranean units are no longer allowed to perform deploy functions like firing weapons or IsSimpleDeployer while burrowed or burrowing, they will instead emerge first like they do for transport unloading.

• The otherwise unused setting [AI] -> PowerSurplus (defaults to 50) which determines how much surplus power AI players will strive to have can be restored by setting [AI] -> EnablePowerSurplus to true.

• Planning paths are now shown for all units under player control or when [GlobalControls] -> DebugPlanningPaths=yes in singleplayer game modes.

• Fixed Temporal=true Warheads potentially crashing game if used to attack Slaved=true infantry.

• Fixed some locomotors (Tunnel, Walk, Mech) getting stuck when moving too fast.

• Animations with MakeInfantry and UseNormalLight=false that are drawn in unit palette will now have cell lighting changes applied on them.

• Removed 0 damage effect on jumpjet infantries from InfDeath=9 warhead.

• Fixed Nuke & Dominator Level lighting not applying to AircraftTypes.

• Projectiles created from AirburstWeapon now remember the WeaponType and can apply radiation etc.

• Fixed damaged aircraft not repairing on UnitReload=true docks unless they land on the dock first.

• Certain global tileset indices (ShorePieces, WaterSet, CliffSet, WaterCliffs, WaterBridge, BridgeSet and WoodBridgeSet) can now be toggled to be parsed for lunar theater by setting [General] -> ApplyLunarFixes to true in lunarmd.ini. Do note that enabling this without fixing f.ex WoodBridgeTileSet pointing to a tileset with TilesInSet=0 will cause issues in-game.

• Fixed infantry SecondaryFire / SecondaryProne sequences being displayed in water instead of WetAttack.

• Fixed objects with ally target and AttackFriendlies=true having their target reset every frame, particularly AI-owned buildings.

• <Player @ X> can now be used as owner for pre-placed objects on skirmish and multiplayer maps.

• Follower vehicle index for preplaced vehicles in maps is now explicitly constrained to [Units] list in map files and is no longer thrown off by vehicles that could not be created or created vehicles having other vehicles as initial passengers.

• Drive/Jumpjet/Ship/Teleport locomotor did not power on when it is un-piggybacked bugfix

• Stop command ([S] by default) behavior is now more correct:

  • Jumpjets no longer fall into a state of standing by idly.

  • Technos are no longer unable to stop the attack move mission.

  • Technos are no longer unable to stop the area guard mission.

  • Aircraft no longer find airport twice and overlap.

  • Aircraft no longer briefly pause in the air before returning.

  • Aircraft with AirportBound=no no longer continue moving forward.

  • Technos are no longer unable to stop when it is above the elevated bridge.

  • Technos are still not allowed to stop moving under the elevated bridge, but can stop other missions.

• Now in air team members will use the 2D distance instead of the 3D distance to judge whether have reached the mission destination, so as to prevent the problem that the mission is stuck and cannot continue in some cases (such as when the jumpjet stops on the building).

• Unit Speed setting now accepts floating-point values. Internally parsed values are clamped down to maximum of 100, multiplied by 256 and divided by 100, the result (which at this point is converted to an integer) then clamped down to maximum of 255 giving effective internal speed value range of 0 to 255, e.g leptons traveled per game frame.

• AirburstWeapon now supports IsLaser, IsElectricBolt, IsRadBeam, and AttachedParticleSystem.

• Subterranean movement now benefits from speed multipliers from all sources such as veterancy, AttachEffect etc.

• Aircraft will now behave as expected according to it’s MovementZone and SpeedType when moving onto different surfaces. In particular, this fixes erratic behavior when vanilla aircraft is ordered to move onto water surface and instead the movement order changes to a shore nearby.

• Allowed AuxBuilding to count building upgrades.

• Fixed the bug that parasite will vanish if it missed its target when its previous cell is occupied.

• Prevent the units with locomotors that cause problems from entering the tank bunker.

• Fixed an issue where a unit will leave an impassable invisible barrier in its original position when it is teleported by ChronoSphere onto an uncrushable unit and self destruct.

• Fixed the bug that destroyed unit may leaves sensors.

• FreeUnit uses the unit’s own SpeedType to find the spawn location.

• The bug where naval ships as StartUnit might spawn on land has been fixed.

• When a building is transformed into a vehicle via UndeploysInto, the SpeedType and MovementZone of the target VehicleType will determine whether it can move into the target cell.

• Fixed an issue that harvesters with amphibious movement zone can not automatically return to refineries with WaterBound on water surface. Units with Teleporter=true are not affected, as they can be used as long as set the refinery’s Naval to false.

• Units are now unable to kick out from a factory that is in construction process, and will not always stuck in the factory.

• Fixed issues caused by incorrect reference removal (f.ex. If the unit cloaks/enters transport, it cannot gain experience from previously launched spawners/C4/projectiles).

• Fixed an issue that caused IsSonic=true wave drawing to crash the game if the wave traveled over a certain distance.

• Buildings with foundation bigger than 1x1 can now recycle spawner correctly.

• Electric bolts that are supposed to update their position based on units current firing coords (by default, those fired by vehicles) now do so correctly for more than one concurrent electric bolt.

• Fixed an issue where FireAngle would not work properly under certain circumstances.

• Fixed an issue that MovementZone=AmphibiousDestroyer and MovementZone=AmphibiousCrusher technos being unable to enter on water structures.

• Fixed an issue that aircraft carriers can not find suitable locations for attacks when under elevated bridges on their own.

• Fixed an issue that in air aircraft carriers being unable to attack when it is near by elevated bridges.

• Fixed an issue that aircraft carriers cannot retract its spawned aircraft when on the bridge.

• Fixed an issue where the shadow of jumpjet remained on the ground when it was above the elevated bridge.

• Fixed an issue that laser, electric bolt and rad beam not support Inviso=true projectiles with FlakScatter=true to scatter.

• Fixed the bug that healing weapons could not automatically acquire aerial targets.

• Allow voxel projectiles to use AnimPalette and FirersPalette.

• Fixed an issue where AI would select unreachable buildings and get stuck when looking for buildings like tank bunkers, bio reactors, etc.

• Fixed an issue that the first passenger who call the transport ship no longer board the transport ship when the land units call for boarding.

• Fixed the bug that EnterBioReactorSound, LeaveBioReactorSound, EnterGrinderSound on technotype does not used.

• Fixed the bug that harvester dont stop unloading and cannot unload cargos anymore when lifting by IsLocomotor=yes warhead.

• Fixed an issue that units on the slope tilted at an excessive angle.

• Fixed an issue that impassable invisible barrier generated by the behavior of infantry continuously entering vehicles.

• Fixed an issue that teleport units board transport vehicles on the bridge will create an impassable invisible barrier, which may cause the game to freeze or even crash.

• Fixed an issue that moving MCV with Teleport locomotion will cause reconnection error.

• Fixed wrong shadow when a vehicle has hover locomotor and is being lifted by IsLocomotor=yes warhead.

• Fixed the bug that a unit can overlap with Teleport units after it’s been damaged by a fallen unit lifted by IsLocomotor=yes warheads.

• Fixed an issue that game crashes (EIP:7FB178) when infantry are about to enter an occupiable building that has been removed and is not real dead.

• Fixed an issue that game crashes when spawnee has been removed and is not real dead.

• Separated the AirstrikeClass pointer between the attacker/aircraft and the target to avoid erroneous overwriting issues.

• Fixed the bug that buildings will always be tinted as airstrike owner.

• Fixed the bug that AllowAirstrike=no cannot completely prevent air strikes from being launched against it.

• Fixed the issue where computer players did not search for new enemies after defeating them or forming alliances with them.

• Fixed the bug that infantry ignored Passengers and SizeLimit when entering buildings.

• Fixed VoiceDeploy not played, when deployed through hot-key/command bar.

• Fixed the bug that ships can travel on elevated bridges.

• Dehardcoded 255 limit of OverlayType.

Fixes / interactions with other extensions

• Weapons fired by EMPulse superweapons (Ares feature) now fully respect the firing building’s FLH.

• Weapons fired by EMPulse superweapons (Ares feature) without EMPulse.TargetSelf=true can now create radiation.

• Weapons fired by EMPulse superweapons (Ares feature) now respect Floater and Phobos-added Gravity setting.

• IsSimpleDeployer units with Hover locomotor and DeployToLand no longer get stuck after deploying or play their move sound indefinitely.

• All forms of type conversion (including Ares’) now correctly update the warp-in delay if unit with teleport Locomotor was converted while the delay was active.

• All forms of type conversion (including Ares’) now correctly update MoveSound if a moving unit has their type changed.

• All forms of type conversion (including Ares’) now correctly update OpenTopped state of passengers in transport that is converted.

• Fixed an issue introduced by Ares that caused building ActiveAnim to be incorrectly restored while SpecialAnim was playing and the building was sold, erased or destroyed.

• Fixed Ares’ Abductor weapon leaves permanent placement stats when abducting moving vehicles.

• Suppressed Ares’ swizzle warning when parsing Tags and TaskForces (typically begin with [Developer fatal]Pointer 00000000 declared change to both).

• Fixed Academy (Ares feature) not working on the initial payloads (Ares feature) of vehicles built from a war factory.

• Fixed Ares’ InitialPayload not being created for vehicles spawned by trigger actions.

• Allowed Ares’ SW.AuxBuildings and SW.NegBuildings to count building upgrades.

• Taking over Ares’ AlphaImage respawn logic to make it not recreate in every frame for buildings, static techno and techno without turret, in order to reduce lags from it.

Aircraft

Carryall pickup voice

• It is now possible to override VoiceMove for Carryall=true aircraft for when commanding it to pick up vehicles by setting VoicePickup.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEAIRCRAFT]  ; AircraftType
VoicePickup=    ; Sound entry

Extended Aircraft Missions

• Aircraft will now be able to use waypoints.

• Aircraft can fly at a certain speed as much as possible, when the distance to the destination is less than half of SlowdownDistance or 8 cell distances divided by ROT, it will return to the airport. And now aircraft not have to fly directly above the airport before starting to descend.

• When a guard command ([G] by default) is issued, the aircraft will search for targets around the current location and return immediately when target is not found, target is destroyed or ammos are depleted.

  • If the target is destroyed but ammos are not depleted yet, it will also return because the aircraft’s command is one-time.

• When an attack move command ([Ctrl]+[Shift]) is issued, the aircraft will move towards the destination and search for nearby targets on the route for attack. Once ammo is depleted or the destination is reached, it will return.

  • If the automatically selected target is destroyed but ammo is not depleted yet during the process, the aircraft will continue flying to the destination.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
ExtendedAircraftMissions=false  ; boolean

Fixed spawn distance & spawn height for airstrike / SpyPlane aircraft

• It is now possible to have aircraft spawned from (Elite)AirstrikeTeamType or Type=SpyPlane superweapons to be created at fixed distance from their intended target/destination instead of from edge of the map by setting SpawnDistanceFromTarget.

• SpawnHeight can also be used to override the initial height of the aircraft, which defaults to FlightLevel, or if not set then [General] -> FlightLevel.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEAIRCRAFT]            ; AircraftType
SpawnDistanceFromTarget=  ; floating point value, distance in cells
SpawnHeight=              ; integer, height in leptons

Landing direction

• By default aircraft land facing the direction specified by [AudioVisual] -> PoseDir. This can now be customized per AircraftType via LandingDir, defaults to [AudioVisual] -> PoseDir. If the building the aircraft is docking to has aircraft docking direction set, that setting takes priority over this.

  • Negative values are allowed as a special case for AirportBound=false aircraft which makes them land facing their current direction.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEAIRCRAFT]  ; AircraftType
LandingDir=     ; Direction type (integers from 0-255). Accepts negative values as a special case.

Animations

Animation weapon and damage settings

• Weapon can be set to a WeaponType, to create a projectile and immediately detonate it instead of simply dealing Damage by Warhead. This allows weapon effects to be applied.

• Damage.Delay determines delay between two applications of Damage. Requires Damage to be set to 1.0 or above. Value of 0 disables the delay. Keep in mind that this is measured in animation frames, not game frames. Depending on Rate, animation may or may not advance animation frames on every game frame.

• Damage.DealtByInvoker, if set to true, makes any Damage dealt to be considered as coming from the animation’s invoker (f.ex, firer of the weapon if it is Warhead AnimList/SplashList animation, the destroyed vehicle if it is DestroyAnim animation or the object the animation is attached to). If invoker has died or does not exist, the house the invoker belonged to is still used to deal damage and apply Phobos-introduced Warhead effects. Does not affect which house the Damage dealt by Warhead is dealt by.

• Damage.ApplyOncePerLoop, if set to true, makes Damage be dealt only once per animation loop (on single loop animations, only once, period) instead of on every frame or intervals defined by Damage.Delay. The frame on which it is dealt is determined by Damage.Delay, defaulting to after the first animation frame.

In artmd.ini:

[SOMEANIM]                     ; AnimationType
Weapon=                        ; WeaponType
Damage.Delay=0                 ; integer, animation frames
Damage.DealtByInvoker=false    ; boolean
Damage.ApplyOncePerLoop=false  ; boolean

Note

Weapon and Damage.Delay, beyond the other additions, should function similarly to the equivalent features introduced by Ares and take precedence over them if Phobos is used together with Ares.

Attached animation position customization

• You can now customize whether or not animations attached to objects are centered at the object’s actual center rather than the bottom of their top-leftmost cell (cell #0).

In artmd.ini:

[SOMEANIM]                       ; AnimationType
UseCenterCoordsIfAttached=false  ; boolean

Customizable debris & meteor impact and warhead detonation behaviour

• ExplodeOnWater can be set to true to make the animation explode on impact with water. ExpireAnim will be played and Warhead is detonated or used to deal damage / generate light flash.

• Warhead.Detonate, if set to true, makes the Warhead fully detonate instead of simply being used to deal damage and generate light flash if it has Bright=true.

• WakeAnim contains a wake animation to play if ExplodeOnWater is not set and the animation impacts with water. Defaults to [General] -> Wake if IsMeteor is not set to true, otherwise no animation.

• SplashAnims contains list of splash animations used if ExplodeOnWater is not set and the animation impacts with water. Defaults to [CombatDamage] -> SplashList.

  • If SplashAnims.PickRandom is set to true, picks a random animation from SplashAnims to use on each impact with water. Otherwise last listed animation from SplashAnims is used.

• ExtraShadow can be set to false to disable the display of shadows on the ground.

In artmd.ini:

[SOMEANIM]                    ; AnimationType
ExplodeOnWater=false          ; boolean
Warhead.Detonate=false        ; boolean
WakeAnim=                     ; AnimationType
SplashAnims=                  ; List of AnimationTypes
SplashAnims.PickRandom=false  ; boolean
ExtraShadow=true              ; boolean

Fire animations spawned by Scorch & Flamer

• Tiberian Sun allowed Scorch=true and Flamer=true animations to spawn fire animations from [AudioVisual] -> SmallFire & LargeFire. This behaviour has been reimplemented and is fully customizable.

  • ConstrainFireAnimsToCellSpots controls whether or not spawned animations are locked to cell spots (e.g the subcell positions infantry are also constrained to).

  • FireAnimDisallowedLandTypes controls which landtypes the fire animations are not allowed to spawn on. Defaults to water,rock,beach,ice for Scorch=true, none otherwise.

  • AttachFireAnimsToParent controls if the spawned animations are attached to the owner of the parent animation if it is also attached. Defaults to true for Scorch=true, otherwise false.

  • SmallFireCount determines number of small fire animations to spawn by both Scorch=true and Flamer=true animations. Defaults to 2 for Flamer=true, otherwise 1.

    • SmallFireAnims can be used to set the animation types, defaults to [AudioVisual] -> SmallFire (single animation).

    • SmallFireChances is a list of probabilities for the animations to spawn, up to SmallFireCount amount of items are read. Last item listed is used if count exceeds the number of listed probabilities. Defaults to 1.0,0.5 for Flamer=true, 1.0 otherwise.

    • SmallFireDistances is a list of distances in cells for the animations to spawn at from the parent animation’s coordinates, up to SmallFireCount amount of items are read. Last item listed is used if count exceeds the number of listed probabilities. Defaults to 0.25,0.625 for Flamer=true, 0.0 otherwise.

  • LargeFireCount determines number of large fire animations to spawn by Flamer=true animations only.

    • LargeFireAnims can be used to set the animation types, defaults to [AudioVisual] -> LargeFire (single animation).

    • LargeFireChances is a list of probabilities for the animations to spawn, up to LargeFireCount amount of items are read. Last item listed is used if count exceeds the number of listed probabilities.

    • LargeFireDistances is a list of distances in cells for the animations to spawn at from the parent animation’s coordinates, up to LargeFireCount amount of items are read. Last item listed is used if count exceeds the number of listed probabilities.

In artmd.ini:

[SOMEANIM]                          ; AnimationType
ConstrainFireAnimsToCellSpots=true  ; boolean
FireAnimDisallowedLandTypes=        ; List of LandTypes (none | clear | road | water | rock | wall | tiberium | beach | rough | ice | railroad | tunnel | weeds)
AttachFireAnimsToParent=            ; boolean
SmallFireCount=                     ; integer
SmallFireAnims=                     ; List of AnimationTypes
SmallFireChances=                   ; List of floating point values (percent or absolute)
SmallFireDistances=                 ; List of floating point values, distance in cells
LargeFireCount=1                    ; integer
LargeFireAnims=                     ; List of AnimationTypes
LargeFireChances=0.5                ; List of floating point values (percent or absolute)
LargeFireDistances=0.4375           ; List of floating point values, distance in cells

Note

Save for the change that Flamer does not spawn animations if the parent animation is in air, the default settings should provide identical results to similar feature from Ares.

Layer on animations attached to objects

• You can now customize whether or not animations attached to objects follow the object’s layer or respect their own Layer setting. If this is unset, attached animations use ground layer.

In artmd.ini:

[SOMEANIM]             ; AnimationType
Layer.UseObjectLayer=  ; boolean

Ore stage threshold for HideIfNoOre

• You can now customize which growth stage should an ore/tiberium cell have to have animation with HideIfNoOre displayed. Cells with growth stage less than specified value won’t allow the anim to display.

In artmd.ini:

[SOMEANIM]               ; AnimationType
HideIfNoOre.Threshold=0  ; integer, minimal ore growth stage

Buildings

Aircraft docking direction

• It is now possible to customize the landing direction for docking aircraft via AircraftDockingDir(N) (N optionally replaced by 0-based index for each DockingOffset separately, AircraftDockingDir and AircraftDockingDir0 are synonymous and will be used if direction is not set for a specific offset) on the dock building. This overrides the aircraft’s own landing direction setting and defaults to [AudioVisual] -> PoseDir.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEBUILDING]          ; BuildingType
AircraftDockingDir(N)=  ; Direction type (integers from 0-255)

Allowed / disallowed types for FactoryPlant

• It is now possible to customize which TechnoTypes benefit from bonuses of a FactoryPlant=true building by listing them on FactoryPlant.AllowTypes and/or FactoryPlant.DisallowTypes.

  • FactoryPlant.Multiplier (Ares feature) is still applied on the bonuses if they are in effect.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEBUILDING]               ; BuildingType
FactoryPlant.AllowTypes=     ; List of TechnoTypes
FactoryPlant.DisallowTypes=  ; List of TechnoTypes

Apply ZShapePointMove during buildups

• By default buildings do not apply ZShapePointMove (which offsets the ‘z shape’ applied on buildings which is used to adjust them in depth buffer and is used to fix issues related to that such as corners of buildings getting cut off when drawn) when buildup is being displayed. This behaviour can now be toggled by setting ZShapePointMove.OnBuildup.

In artmd.ini:

[SOMEBUILDING]                   ; BuildingType
ZShapePointMove.OnBuildup=false  ; boolean

Buildings considered as vehicles

• By default game considers buildings with both UndeploysInto set and Foundation equaling 1x1 as vehicles, in a manner of speaking. This behaviour can now be toggled individually of these conditions by setting ConsideredVehicle. These buildings are counted as vehicles for unit count tracking, are not considered as base under attack when damaged and can be mass selected by default, for an example.

• When capturing such “buildings”, the player won’t be notified by EVA capture event.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEBUILDING]      ; BuildingType
ConsideredVehicle=  ; boolean

Custom exit cell for infantry factory

• By default Factory=InfantryType buildings use exit cell for the created infantry based on hardcoded settings if any of GDIBarracks, NODBarracks or YuriBarracks are set to true. It is now possible to define arbitrary exit cell for such building via BarracksExitCell. Below is a reference of the cell offsets for the hardcoded values.

Key	Cell Offset
GDIBarracks	1,2
NODBarracks	2,2
YuriBarracks	2,1

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEBUILDING]     ; BuildingType
BarracksExitCell=  ; X,Y - cell offset

Customizable selling buildup sequence length for buildings that can undeploy

• By default buildings with UndeploysInto will only play 23 frames of their buildup sequence (in reverse starting from last frame) when being sold as opposed to being undeployed. This can now be customized via SellBuildupLength.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEBUILDING]        ; BuildingType
SellBuildupLength=23  ; integer, number of buildup frames to play

Customizable & new grinder properties

Using ally grinder, restricting to vehicles only and refund display (Project Phantom)

• You can now customize which types of objects a building with Grinding set can grind as well as the grinding sound.

  • Grinding.AllowAllies changes whether or not to allow units to enter allies’ buildings.

  • Grinding.AllowOwner changes whether or not to allow units to enter your own buildings.

  • Grinding.AllowTypes can be used to define InfantryTypes and VehicleTypes that can be grinded by the building. Listing any will disable grinding for all types except those listed.

  • Grinding.DisallowTypes can be used to exclude InfantryTypes or VehicleTypes from being able to enter the grinder building.

  • Grinding.PlayDieSound controls if the units’ DieSound and VoiceDie are played when entering the grinder. Default to yes.

  • Grinding.Sound is a sound played by when object is grinded by the building. If not set, defaults to [AudioVisual] -> EnterGrinderSound.

  • Grinding.Weapon is a weapon fired at the building & by the building when it grinds an object. Will only be fired if at least weapon’s ROF amount of frames have passed since it was last fired.

    • Grinding.Weapon.RequiredCredits can be set to have the weapon require accumulated credits from grinding to fire. Accumulated credits for this purpose are reset every time when the weapon fires.

• For money string indication upon grinding, please refer to DisplayIncome.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEBUILDING]                     ; BuildingType
Grinding.AllowAllies=false         ; boolean
Grinding.AllowOwner=true           ; boolean
Grinding.AllowTypes=               ; List of InfantryTypes / VehicleTypes
Grinding.DisallowTypes=            ; List of InfantryTypes / VehicleTypes
Grinding.PlayDieSound=true         ; boolean
Grinding.Sound=                    ; Sound entry
Grinding.Weapon=                   ; WeaponType
Grinding.Weapon.RequiredCredits=0  ; integer

Customize overpower logic

• Now you can specific how building can be overpowerd.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWARHEAD]
ElectricAssaultLevel=1    ; integer

[SOMEBUILDING]
Overpower.KeepOnline=2    ; integer, negative values mean that cannot keep online
Overpower.ChargeWeapon=1  ; integer, negative values mean that weapons can never be switched

Note

Ares’ Battery Super Weapon won’t be affected by this.

Exclude Factory from providing multiple factory bonus

• It is now possible to exclude a building with Factory from counting towards MultipleFactory bonus.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEBUILDING]                         ; BuildingType
ExcludeFromMultipleFactoryBonus=false  ; boolean

Skip anim delay for burst fire

• In Red Alert 1, the tesla coil will attack multiple times after charging animation. This is not possible in Red Alert 2, where the building must play the charge animation every time it fires.

• Now you can implement the above logic using the following flag.

In artmd.ini:

[SOMEBUILDING]                     ; BuildingType
IsAnimDelayedBurst=true            ; boolean

Note

The prism towers’ fire is hardcoded to be delayed. Their fire will ignore this flag, just as they ignore IsAnimDelayedFire.

Unit repair customization

• It is now possible to customize the repairing of units by UnitRepair=true, UnitReload=true and Hospital=true buildings.

  • Units.RepairRate customizes the rate at which the units are repaired. This defaults to [General] -> ReloadRate if UnitReload=true and if overridden per AircraftType (Ares feature) can tick at different time for each docked aircraft. Setting this overrides that behaviour. For UnitRepair=true buildings this defaults to [General] -> URepairRate.

    • On UnitReload=true building setting this to negative value will fully disable the repair functionality.

  • Units.RepairStep how much Strength is restored per repair tick. Defaults to [General] -> RepairStep.

  • Units.RepairPercent is a multiplier to cost of repairing (cost / (maximum health / repair step)). Defaults to [General] -> RepairPercent. Note that the final cost is set to 1 if it is less than that.

    • Units.UseRepairCost can be used to customize if repair cost is applied at all. Defaults to false for infantry, true for everything else.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEBUILDING]        ; BuildingType
Units.RepairRate=     ; floating point value, ingame minutes
Units.RepairStep=     ; integer
Units.RepairPercent=  ; floating point value, percents or absolute
Units.UseRepairCost=  ; boolean

Waypoints for buildings

• In vanilla, buildings are forbidden to use waypoints. Now you can allow that using the following flag.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
BuildingWaypoints=false  ; boolean

Infantry

Prone speed customization

• In vanilla, infantry has hardcoded prone speed. Now you can customize it.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
ProneSpeed.Crawls=0.67        ; floating point value, multiplier
ProneSpeed.NoCrawls=1.5       ; floating point value, multiplier

[SOMEINFANTRY]                ; InfantryType
ProneSpeed=                   ; floating point value, multiplier, by default, use the corresponding global value according to Crawls

Particle systems

Fire particle target coordinate adjustment when firer rotates

• By default particle systems with BehavesLike=Fire shift their target coordinates if the object that created the particle system (e.g firer of a weapon) is rotating. This behavior can now be disabled per particle system type.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEPARTICLESYSTEM]               ; ParticleSystemType
AdjustTargetCoordsOnRotation=true  ; boolean

Particles

Customizable gas particle speed

• Gas particles can now drift at a custom speed.

In rulesmd.ini:

[GASPARTICLE]          ; Particle with BehavesLike=Gas
Gas.MaxDriftSpeed=2    ; integer (TS default is 5)

Projectiles

Airburst & Splits

• AirburstWeapon logic has been reimplemented and thus there are several additions & changes to it.

• Splits can be set to true to use projectile splitting logic from Firestorm, with the number of split projectiles defined by Cluster.

  • RetargetAccuracy defines the probability that the splitted projectiles head to the same target as the original projectile.

  • RetargetSelf determines if it is possible for the splitted projectiles to aim at the firer of the original projectile.

    • RetargetSelf.Probability is the probability that if the original firer is chosen as a target, it is kept as the target instead of rerolled to another.

  • Splits.TargetingDistance is the distance in cells that any potential target has to be within from the original target coordinates to be eligible for targeting by the splitted projectiles.

  • Splits.TargetCellRange is the distance in whole cells from the original target cell from which the splitted projectiles can pick new target cells if not enough TechnoType targets were found nearby.

  • Splits.UseWeaponTargeting, if set to true, enables weapon targeting filter for when checking targets for splitted projectiles. Target’s LegalTarget setting, Warhead Verses against Armor as well as AirburstWeapon weapon targeting filters & AttachEffect filters will be checked.

    • Do note that this overrides checking Warhead for AffectsAllies/Owner/Enemies for targeting. You can use CanTargetHouses on AirburstWeapon to achieve similar behaviour, however.

• Behaviour for if Airburst is set to true can also be customized.

  • AirburstSpread is the distance in cells that the effect covers, with each cell in range being targeted by AirburstWeapon by default.

  • Airburst.UseCluster, if set to true, makes it so that only number of cells in the affected area dictated by Cluster will be affected, instead of all of them.

    • If Airburst.RandomClusters is set to true, the cells affected will be picked by random. Otherwise they will be evenly spaced (counting from center to edges of affected area).

  • Airburst.TargetAsSource can be used to override source or ‘firing’ coordinate to match that of the intended target instead of projectile’s current position.

    • If Airburst.TargetAsSource.SkipHeight is also set, then projectile’s current height will be used instead of target’s height still.

• AroundTarget controls whether or not targets for projectiles created by Airburst or Splits are checked for in area around the original projectile’s intended target, or where the original projectile detonated. Defaults to value of Splits.

• AirburstWeapon.ApplyFirepowerMult determines whether or not firepower modifiers from the firer of the original projectile are applied on the projectiles created from AirburstWeapon.

• AirburstWeapon.SourceScatterMin and AirburstWeapon.SourceScatterMax can be used to scatter the source or ‘firing’ coordinate around the original coordinate.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEPROJECTILE]                          ; Projectile
Splits=                                   ; boolean
RetargetAccuracy=0.0                      ; floating point value, percents or absolute (0.0-1.0)
RetargetSelf=true                         ; boolean
RetargetSelf.Probability=0.5              ; floating point value, percents or absolute (0.0-1.0)
Splits.TargetingDistance=5.0              ; floating point value, distance in cells
Splits.TargetCellRange=3                  ; integer, cell offset
Splits.UseWeaponTargeting=false           ; boolean
AirburstSpread=1.5                        ; floating point value, distance in cells
Airburst.UseCluster=false                 ; boolean
Airburst.RandomClusters=false             ; boolean
Airburst.TargetAsSource=false             ; boolean
Airburst.TargetAsSource.SkipHeight=false  ; boolean
AroundTarget=                             ; boolean
AirburstWeapon.ApplyFirepowerMult=false   ; boolean
AirburstWeapon.SourceScatterMin=0.0       ; floating point value, distance in cells
AirburstWeapon.SourceScatterMax=0.0       ; floating point value, distance in cells

Note

Splits, AirburstSpread, RetargetAccuracy, RetargetSelf and AroundTarget, beyond the other additions, should function similarly to the equivalent features introduced by Ares and take precedence over them if Phobos is used together with Ares.

Bomb parachute anim deglobalization

• Now you can define BombParachute per projectile.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEPROJECTILE]        ; Projectile
BombParachute=          ; AnimationType, default to [General] -> BombParachute

Cluster scatter distance customization

• ClusterScatter.Min and ClusterScatter.Max can be used to set minimum and maximum distance, respectively, in cells from the original detonation coordinate any additional detonations if Cluster is set to value higher than 1 can appear at.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEPROJECTILE]        ; Projectile
ClusterScatter.Min=1.0  ; floating point value, distance in cells
ClusterScatter.Max=2.0  ; floating point value, distance in cells

Customizable projectile gravity

• You can now specify individual projectile gravity.

  • Setting Gravity=0 is not recommended as it will cause the projectile to fly backwards and be unable to hit the target which is not at the same height. We suggest to use Straight Trajectory instead. See here.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEPROJECTILE]        ; Projectile
Gravity=6.0             ; floating point value

FlakScatter distance customization

• By default FlakScatter=true makes Inviso=true projectiles scatter by random distance (in cells) from 0 to [CombatDamage] -> BallisticScatter. This distance range can now be customized by setting BallisticScatter.Min & BallisticScatter.Max on the projectile. If not set, the default values are used.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEPROJECTILE]      ; Projectile
BallisticScatter.Min= ; floating point value, distance in cells
BallisticScatter.Max= ; floating point value, distance in cells

Shrapnel enhancements

Shrapnel appearing against ground & buildings in Project Phantom

• ShrapnelWeapon can now be triggered against ground & buildings via Shrapnel.AffectsGround and Shrapnel.AffectsBuildings.

• Setting Shrapnel.UseWeaponTargeting now allows weapon target filtering to be enabled for ShrapnelWeapon. Target’s LegalTarget setting, Warhead Verses against Armor as well as ShrapnelWeapon weapon targeting filters & AttachEffect filters will be checked.

  • Do note that this overrides the normal check of only allowing shrapnels to hit non-allied objects. Use CanTargetHouses=enemies to manually enable this behaviour again.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEPROJECTILE]                   ; Projectile
Shrapnel.AffectsGround=false       ; boolean
Shrapnel.AffectsBuildings=false    ; boolean
Shrapnel.UseWeaponTargeting=false  ; boolean

Technos

Airstrike target eligibility

• By default whether or not a building can be targeted by airstrikes depends on value of CanC4, which also affects other things. This can now be changed independently by setting AllowAirstrike. If not set, defaults to value of CanC4.

• For non building situations, the default value is true.

• Now it is possible to designate air strikes against non building targets.

• The airstrike aircraft will now aim at the target itself rather than the cell beneath its feet.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMETECHNO]               ; TechnoType
AllowAirstrike=            ; boolean

[SOMEWARHEAD]              ; WarheadType
AirstrikeTargets=building  ; List of Affected Target Enumeration (none|infantry|units|buildings|all)

Alternate FLH customizations

• AlternateFLH.OnTurret can be used to customize whether or not AlternateFLHN used for OpenTopped transport firing coordinates, multiple mind control link offsets etc. is calculated relative to the unit’s turret if available or body.

In artmd.ini:

[SOMETECHNO]                ; TechnoType
AlternateFLH.OnTurret=true  ; boolean

Building-provided self-healing customization

• It is now possible to set a global cap for the effects of InfantryGainSelfHeal and UnitsGainSelfHeal by setting InfantryGainSelfHealCap & UnitsGainSelfHealCap under [General], respectively.

• Whether or not MultiplayPassive=true houses benefit from these effects can be controlled via GainSelfHealAllowMultiplayPassive.

• It is also possible to change the pip frames displayed from pips.shp individually for infantry, units and buildings by setting the frames for infantry & unit self-healing on Pips.SelfHeal.(Infantry/Units/Buildings) under [AudioVisual], respectively.

  • Pips.SelfHeal.(Infantry/Units/Buildings).Offset can be used to customize the pixel offsets for the displayed pips, individually for infantry, units and buildings.

• Whether or not a TechnoType benefits from effects of InfantryGainSelfHeal or UnitsGainSelfHeal buildings or neither can now be controlled by setting SelfHealGainType.

  • If SelfHealGainType is not set, InfantryTypes and VehicleTypes with Organic set to true gain self-healing from InfantryGainSelfHeal, other VehicleTypes from UnitsGainSelfHeal and AircraftTypes & BuildingTypes never gain self-healing.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
InfantryGainSelfHealCap=                ; integer, maximum amount of InfantryGainSelfHeal that can be in effect at once, must be 1 or higher
UnitsGainSelfHealCap=                   ; integer, maximum amount of UnitsGainSelfHeal that can be in effect at once, must be 1 or higher
GainSelfHealAllowMultiplayPassive=true  ; boolean

[AudioVisual]
Pips.SelfHeal.Infantry=13,20            ; integer, frames of pips.shp for infantry & unit-self healing pips, respectively
Pips.SelfHeal.Units=13,20               ; integer, frames of pips.shp for infantry & unit-self healing pips, respectively
Pips.SelfHeal.Buildings=13,20           ; integer, frames of pips.shp for infantry & unit-self healing pips, respectively
Pips.SelfHeal.Infantry.Offset=25,-35    ; X,Y, pixels relative to default
Pips.SelfHeal.Units.Offset=33,-32       ; X,Y, pixels relative to default
Pips.SelfHeal.Buildings.Offset=15,10    ; X,Y, pixels relative to default

[SOMETECHNO]                            ; TechnoType
SelfHealGainType=                       ; Self-Heal Gain Type Enumeration (noheal|infantry|units)

Chrono sparkle animation customization & improvements

• It is now possible to customize the frame delay between instances of [General] -> ChronoSparkle1 animations created on objects being warped by setting [General] -> ChronoSparkleDisplayDelay.

• By default on buildings with MaxNumberOccupants higher than 0, chrono sparkle animation would be shown at each of the MuzzleFlashX coordinates. This behaviour is now customizable, and supports MuzzleFlashX indices higher than 10.

  • [General] -> ChronoSparkleBuildingDisplayPositions can be set to show the sparkle animation on the building (building), muzzle flash coordinates of current occupants (occupants), muzzle flash coordinates of all occupant slots (occupantslots) or any combination of these.

    • If occupants or occupantslots is listed without building, a single chrono sparkle animation is still displayed on building if it doesn’t have any occupants or it has MaxNumberOccupants value less than 1, respectively.

• The chrono sparkle animation that is displayed on building itself is also now displayed at the center of it rather than at center of its topmost cell.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
ChronoSparkleDisplayDelay=24                         ; integer, game frames
ChronoSparkleBuildingDisplayPositions=occupantslots  ; List of chrono sparkle position enum (building | occupants | occupantslots | all)

Customizable ChronoSphere teleport delays for units

• It is now possible to customize (globally and per TechnoType) the warp-in delay for units teleporting through Type=ChronoSphere/Warp Superweapon, both before and after the jump.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
ChronoSphereDelay=60    ; integer, game frames
ChronoSpherePreDelay=0  ; integer, game frames

[SOMETECHNO]            ; TechnoType
ChronoSphereDelay=      ; integer, game frames
ChronoSpherePreDelay=   ; integer, game frames

Warning

Due to technical constraints, these settings do not apply to buildings teleported by Ares’ customizable ChronoSphere SW. They only have a pre-teleport delay equal to [General] -> ChronoDelay.

Customizable harvester ore gathering animation

Custom ore gathering anims in Project Phantom

• You can now specify which anim should be drawn when a harvester of specified type is gathering specified type of ore.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMETECHNO]                     ; TechnoType
OreGathering.Anims=              ; List of AnimationTypes
OreGathering.FramesPerDir=15     ; List of integers
OreGathering.Tiberiums=0         ; List of Tiberium IDs

Customizable target evaluation map zone check behaviour

• By default, any non-AircraftType units seeking targets via ScriptType team mission (action) 0 Attack Target Type or any attack team missions introduced in Phobos check if the potential target is in same map zone as the attacking unit to be able to pick it as a target. This can now be customized to allow objects from any map zone with no constraints (TargetZoneScanType=any) or only if they are within weapon range (TargetZoneScanType=inrange).

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMETECHNO]             ; TechnoType
TargetZoneScanType=same  ; target zone scan enumeration (same|any|inrange)

Customizable Teleport/Chrono Locomotor settings per TechnoType

Chrono Legionnaire and Ronco using different teleportation settings in YR: New War

• You can now specify Teleport/Chrono Locomotor settings per TechnoType to override default rules values. Unfilled values default to values in [General].

• Only applicable to Techno that have Teleport/Chrono Locomotor attached.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMETECHNO]            ; TechnoType
WarpOut=                ; Anim (played when Techno warping out), default to [General] WarpOut
WarpIn=                 ; Anim (played when Techno warping in), default to [General] WarpIn
WarpAway=               ; Anim (played when Techno chronowarped by chronosphere), default to [General] WarpOut
ChronoTrigger=          ; boolean, if yes then delay varies by distance, if no it is a constant
ChronoDistanceFactor=   ; integer, amount to divide the distance to destination by to get the warped out delay
ChronoMinimumDelay=     ; integer, the minimum delay for teleporting, no matter how short the distance
ChronoRangeMinimum=     ; integer, can be used to set a small range within which the delay is constant
ChronoDelay=            ; integer, delay after teleport for chronosphere

Customizable unit image in art

• Image tag in art INI is no longer limited to AnimationTypes and BuildingTypes, and can be applied to all TechnoTypes (InfantryTypes, VehicleTypes, AircraftTypes, BuildingTypes).

• The tag specifies only the file name (without extension) of the asset that replaces TechnoType’s graphics. If the name in Image is also an entry in the art INI, no tags will be read from it.

• By default this feature is disabled to remain compatible with YR. To use this feature, enable it in rules with ArtImageSwap=true.

• This feature supports SHP images for InfantryTypes, SHP and VXL images for VehicleTypes and VXL images for AircraftTypes.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
ArtImageSwap=false  ; disabled by default

In artmd.ini:

[SOMETECHNO]        ; TechnoType
Image=              ; name of the file that will be used as image, without extension

Customizable veterancy insignias

• You can now customize veterancy insignia of TechnoTypes.

  • Insignia.(Rookie|Veteran|Elite) can be used to set a custom insignia file, optionally for each veterancy stage. Like the original / default file, pips.shp, they are drawn using palette.pal as palette.

  • InsigniaFrame(.Rookie|Veteran|Elite) can be used to set (zero-based) frame index of the insignia to display, optionally for each veterancy stage. Using -1 uses the default setting. Default settings are -1 (none) for rookie, 14 for veteran and 15 for elite.

    • A shorthand InsigniaFrames can be used to list them in order from rookie, veteran and elite instead as well. InsigniaFrame(.Rookie|Veteran|Elite) takes priority over this.

    • These settings will be overriden by the properties set in InsigniaType, if InsigniaType is set.

  • Normal insignia can be overridden for specific weapon modes of Gunner=true units by setting Insignia(.Frame/.Frames).WeaponN where N stands for 1-based weapon mode index. If not set, defaults to non-mode specific insignia settings.

    • These settings will be overriden by the properties set in InsigniaType, if InsigniaType.WeaponN is set.

  • Normal insignia can be overridden when its current passenger size reaches a certain amount by setting Insignia(.Frame/.Frames).PassengersN where N stands for the current passenger size amount (from 0 to Passengers of the transport). If not set, defaults to non-passenger specific insignia settings. Will be overridden by weapon mode insignia settings, if set.

    • These settings will be overriden by the properties set in InsigniaType, if InsigniaType.PassengersN is set.

  • Insignia.ShowEnemy controls whether or not the insignia is shown to enemy players. Defaults to [General] -> EnemyInsignia, which in turn defaults to true.

  • You can make insignias appear only on selected units using DrawInsignia.OnlyOnSelected.

  • Position for insignias can be adjusted by setting DrawInsignia.AdjustPos.Infantry for infantry, DrawInsignia.AdjustPos.Buildings for buildings, and DrawInsignia.AdjustPos.Units for others.

  • DrawInsignia.AdjustPos.BuildingsAnchor can be set to an anchor point to anchor the insignia position relative to the building’s selection bracket. By default the insignia position is not anchored to the selection bracket.

  • DrawInsignia.UsePixelSelectionBracketDelta can be set to use techno’s PixelSelectionBracketDelta to additionally adjust insignias vertically.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
EnemyInsignia=true                                          ; boolean

[AudioVisual]
DrawInsignia.OnlyOnSelected=false                           ; boolean
DrawInsignia.UsePixelSelectionBracketDelta=false            ; boolean
DrawInsignia.AdjustPos.Infantry=5,2                         ; X,Y, position offset from default
DrawInsignia.AdjustPos.Units=10,6                           ; X,Y, position offset from default
DrawInsignia.AdjustPos.Buildings=10,6                       ; X,Y, position offset from default
DrawInsignia.AdjustPos.BuildingsAnchor=                     ; Hexagon vertex enumeration (top|lefttop|leftbottom|bottom|rightbottom|righttop)

[SOMETECHNO]                             ; TechnoType
Insignia=                                ; filename - excluding the .shp extension
Insignia.Rookie=                         ; filename - excluding the .shp extension
Insignia.Veteran=                        ; filename - excluding the .shp extension
Insignia.Elite=                          ; filename - excluding the .shp extension
InsigniaFrame=-1                         ; int, frame of insignia shp (zero-based) or -1 for default
InsigniaFrame.Rookie=-1                  ; int, frame of insignia shp (zero-based) or -1 for default
InsigniaFrame.Veteran=-1                 ; int, frame of insignia shp (zero-based) or -1 for default
InsigniaFrame.Elite=-1                   ; int, frame of insignia shp (zero-based) or -1 for default
InsigniaFrames=-1,-1,-1                  ; int, frames of insignia shp (zero-based) or -1 for default
Insignia.WeaponN=                        ; filename - excluding the .shp extension
Insignia.WeaponN.Rookie=                 ; filename - excluding the .shp extension
Insignia.WeaponN.Veteran=                ; filename - excluding the .shp extension
Insignia.WeaponN.Elite=                  ; filename - excluding the .shp extension
InsigniaFrame.WeaponN=-1                 ; int, frame of insignia shp (zero-based) or -1 for default
InsigniaFrame.WeaponN.Rookie=-1          ; int, frame of insignia shp (zero-based) or -1 for default
InsigniaFrame.WeaponN.Veteran=-1         ; int, frame of insignia shp (zero-based) or -1 for default
InsigniaFrame.WeaponN.Elite=-1           ; int, frame of insignia shp (zero-based) or -1 for default
InsigniaFrames.WeaponN=-1,-1,-1          ; int, frames of insignia shp (zero-based) or -1 for default
Insignia.PassengersN=                    ; filename - excluding the .shp extension
Insignia.PassengersN.Rookie=             ; filename - excluding the .shp extension
Insignia.PassengersN.Veteran=            ; filename - excluding the .shp extension
Insignia.PassengersN.Elite=              ; filename - excluding the .shp extension
InsigniaFrame.PassengersN=-1             ; int, frame of insignia shp (zero-based) or -1 for default
InsigniaFrame.PassengersN.Rookie=-1      ; int, frame of insignia shp (zero-based) or -1 for default
InsigniaFrame.PassengersN.Veteran=-1     ; int, frame of insignia shp (zero-based) or -1 for default
InsigniaFrame.PassengersN.Elite=-1       ; int, frame of insignia shp (zero-based) or -1 for default
InsigniaFrames.PassengersN=-1,-1,-1      ; int, frames of insignia shp (zero-based) or -1 for default
Insignia.ShowEnemy=                      ; boolean

Note

Insignia customization besides the InsigniaFrames shorthand should function similarly to the equivalent feature introduced by Ares and takes precedence over it if Phobos is used together with Ares.

Customizable wake anim

• You can now specify the Wake anim per TechnoType to override default rules value.

  • Wake.Grapple and Wake.Sinking can be used to further customize wake anim when the techno is being parasited or sunken.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMETECHNO]         ; TechnoType
Wake=                ; Anim (played when Techno moving on the water), default to [General] -> Wake
Wake.Grapple=        ; Anim (played when Techno being parasited on the water), defaults to [TechnoType] -> Wake
Wake.Sinking=        ; Anim (played when Techno sinking), defaults to [TechnoType] -> Wake

Customize bridge falling down damage

• Now you can customize the damage a unit receives when it falls from a bridge.

• FallingDownDamage customizes the damage a unit receives at the end of a fall. It can be a percentage or an integer.

• FallingDownDamage.Water customizes the damage a unit receives when it falls onto the water. Defaults to FallingDownDamage.

• If it is a negative percentage, corresponding damage will be dealt based on the current health of the unit.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMETECHNO]                    ; TechnoType
FallingDownDamage=              ; integer / percentage
FallingDownDamage.Water=        ; integer / percentage

Customize resource storage

• Now Ares Storage feature can set which Tiberium type from [Tiberiums] list should be used for storing resources in structures with Refinery.UseStorage=yes and Storage > 0.

• This tag can not be used without Ares.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
Storage.TiberiumIndex=-1  ; integer, [Tiberiums] list index

Customizing effect of level lighting on air units

• It is now possible to customize how air units are affected by level lighting, separately for AircraftTypes and infantry/vehicles with Jumpjet Locomotor.

  • AircraftLevelLightMultiplier & JumpjetLevelLightMultiplier are direct multipliers to level lighting applied on the units, for height levels above the cell they are on.

In rulesmd.ini:

[AudioVisual]
AircraftLevelLightMultiplier=1.0  ; floating point value, percents or absolute
JumpjetLevelLightMultiplier=0.0   ; floating point value, percents or absolute

Damaged speed customization

• In vanilla, units using drive/ship loco will has hardcoded speed multiplier when damaged. Now you can customize it.

• The max valuebale value is 1.0, you cannot make unit get faster on yellow condition by it.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
DamagedSpeed=0.75        ; floating point value, multiplier

[SOMETECHNO]             ; TechnoType
DamagedSpeed=            ; floating point value, multiplier

Exploding object customizations

• By default Explodes=true TechnoTypes have all of their passengers killed when they are destroyed. This behaviour can now be disabled by setting Explodes.KillPassengers=false.

• BuildingTypes with Explodes=true can by default explode even when they are still being built or sold. This can be disabled by setting Explodes.DuringBuildup to false. This causes them to behave as if Explodes was set to false while being built up or sold.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMETECHNO]                 ; TechnoType
Explodes.KillPassengers=true ; boolean

[SOMEBUILDING]               ; BuildingType
Explodes.DuringBuildup=true  ; boolean

Forbid parallel AI queues

• You can now set if specific types of factories do not have AI production cloning issue instead of Ares’ indiscriminate behavior of AllowParallelAIQueues=no.

  • If AllowParallelAIQueues=no (Ares feature) is set, the tags have no effect.

• You can also exclude specific TechnoTypes from being built in parallel by AI by setting ForbidParallelAIQueues to true on a TechnoType.

In rulesmd.ini:

[GlobalControls]
AllowParallelAIQueues=yes           ; must be set yes/true unless you don't use Ares
ForbidParallelAIQueues.Infantry=no  ; boolean
ForbidParallelAIQueues.Vehicle=no   ; boolean
ForbidParallelAIQueues.Navy=no      ; boolean
ForbidParallelAIQueues.Aircraft=no  ; boolean
ForbidParallelAIQueues.Building=no  ; boolean

[SOMETECHNO]                        ; TechnoType
ForbidParallelAIQueues=false        ; boolean

Iron Curtain & Force Shield effects on organics customization

• In vanilla game, when Iron Curtain is applied on Organic=true units like squids or infantry, they could only get killed instantly by C4Warhead. This behavior is now unhardcoded and can be set with IronCurtain.EffectOnOrganics globally and on per-TechnoType basis with IronCurtain.Effect. Following values are respected:

  • kill : Iron Curtain kills the organic object with a specifc warhead. This is the default value for Organic=true units and infantry if not otherwise specified.

  • invulnerable : Iron Curtain makes the organic object invulnerable like buildings and vehicles.

  • ignore : Iron Curtain doesn’t give any effect on the organic object.

• IronCurtain.KillOrganicsWarhead and IronCurtain.KillWarhead can be used to customize the Warhead used to kill units, globally or per TechnoType-basis respectively, with latter defaulting to former and former defaulting to [CombatDamage] -> C4Warhead.

• Identical controls are available for Force Shield as well.

In rulesmd.ini:

[CombatDamage]
IronCurtain.EffectOnOrganics=kill  ; Iron Curtain effect Enumeration (kill | invulnerable | ignore)
IronCurtain.KillOrganicsWarhead=   ; WarheadType
ForceShield.EffectOnOrganics=kill  ; Iron Curtain effect Enumeration (kill | invulnerable | ignore)
ForceShield.KillOrganicsWarhead=   ; WarheadType

[SOMETECHNO]                       ; InfantryType or Organic=true TechnoType
IronCurtain.Effect=                ; IronCurtain effect Enumeration (kill | invulnerable | ignore)
IronCurtain.KillWarhead=           ; WarheadType
ForceShield.Effect=                ; IronCurtain effect Enumeration (kill | invulnerable | ignore)
ForceShield.KillWarhead=           ; WarheadType

Iron Curtain & Force Shield extra tint intensity

• It is now possible to specify additional tint intensity applied to Iron Curtained and Force Shielded units.

In rulesmd.ini:

[AudioVisual]
IronCurtain.ExtraTintIntensity=0.0  ; floating point value
ForceShield.ExtraTintIntensity=0.0  ; floating point value

Jumpjet rotating on crashing toggle

• Jumpjet that is going to crash starts to change its facing uncontrollably, this can now be turned off.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMETECHNO]               ; TechnoType
JumpjetRotateOnCrash=true  ; boolean

Warning

This may subject to further changes.

Kill spawns on low power

• Powered=yes structures that spawns aircraft like Aircrafts Carriers will stop targeting the enemy if low power.

• Spawned aircrafts self-destruct if they are flying.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMESTRUCTURE]          ; BuildingType
Powered.KillSpawns=false ; boolean

PipScale pip customizations

• It is now possible to change the size of pips (or more accurately the pixel increment to the next pip drawn) displayed on PipScale.

  • Pips.Generic.(Buildings.)Size is for non-ammo pips on non-building TechnoTypes / buildings, accordingly, and Pips.Ammo.(Buildings.)Size is in turn for ammo pips, split similarly between non-building technos and buildings.

  • Ammo pip size can also be overridden on per TechnoType-basis using AmmoPipSize.

• Ammo pip frames can now also be customized.

  • AmmoPipFrame and AmmoPipFrame are frames (zero-based) of pips2.shp used for ammo pip and empty ammo pip (this is not set by default) for when PipWrap=0 (this is the default).

  • AmmoPipWrapStartFrame is used as start frame (zero-based, from pips2.shp) for when PipWrap is above 0. The start frame is the empty frame and up to Ammo divided by PipWrap frames after it are used for the different reload stages.

  • AmmoPipOffset can be used to shift the starting position of ammo pips.

• Pips for TechnoTypes with Spawns can now also be customized.

  • ShowSpawnsPips determines whether or not these pips are shown at all, as they are independent from PipScale setting.

  • SpawnsPipFrame and EmptySpawnsPipFrame are frames (zero-based) of pips.shp (for buildings) or pips2.shp (for others) used for a spawnee pip and empty spawnee pip, respectively.

  • SpawnsPipSize determines the pixel increment to the next pip drawn. Defaults to [AudioVisual] -> Pips.Generic.(Buildings.)Size if not set.

  • SpawnsPipoffset can be used to shift the starting position of spawnee pips.

• Pips for Storage can now also be customized via new keys in [AudioVisual].

  • Pips.Tiberiums.Frames can be used to list frames (zero-based) of pips.shp (for buildings) or pips2.shp (for others) used for tiberium types, in the listed order corresponding to tiberium type index. Defaults to 5 for tiberium type index 1, otherwise 2.

    • Pips.Tiberiums.EmptyFrame can be used to set the frame for empty slots, defaults to 0.

  • Pips.Tiberiums.DisplayOrder controls in which order the tiberium type pips are displayed, takes a list of tiberium type indices. Any tiberium type not listed will be displayed in sequential order after the listed ones.

  • Pips.Tiberiums.WeedFrame controls which frame is displayed on Technos with Weeder=yes, takes a (zero-based) index of a frame in pips.shp (for buildings) or pips2.shp (for others). Defaults to 1.

    • Pips.Tiberiums.WeedEmptyFrame can be used to set the frame for empty weed slots, defaults to 0.

In rulesmd.ini:

[AudioVisual]
Pips.Generic.Size=4,0                ; X,Y, increment in pixels to next pip
Pips.Generic.Buildings.Size=4,2      ; X,Y, increment in pixels to next pip
Pips.Ammo.Size=4,0                   ; X,Y, increment in pixels to next pip
Pips.Ammo.Buildings.Size=4,2         ; X,Y, increment in pixels to next pip
Pips.Tiberiums.EmptyFrame=0          ; integer, frame of pips.shp (buildings) or pips2.shp (others) (zero-based)
Pips.Tiberiums.Frames=2,5,2,2        ; List of integers, frames of pips.shp (buildings) or pips2.shp (others) (zero-based)
Pips.Tiberiums.DisplayOrder=0,2,3,1  ; List of integers, tiberium type indices
Pips.Tiberiums.WeedEmptyFrame=0      ; integer, frame of pips.shp (buildings) or pips2.shp (others) (zero-based)
Pips.Tiberiums.WeedFrame=1           ; integer, frame of pips.shp (buildings) or pips2.shp (others) (zero-based)

[SOMETECHNO]                         ; TechnoType
AmmoPipFrame=13                      ; integer, frame of pips2.shp (zero-based)
EmptyAmmoPipFrame=-1                 ; integer, frame of pips2.shp (zero-based)
AmmoPipWrapStartFrame=14             ; integer, frame of pips2.shp (zero-based)
AmmoPipSize=                         ; X,Y, increment in pixels to next pip
AmmoPipOffset=0,0                    ; X,Y, position offset from default
ShowSpawnsPips=true                  ; boolean
SpawnsPipFrame=1                     ; integer, frame of pips.shp (buildings) or pips2.shp (others) (zero-based)
EmptySpawnsPipFrame=0                ; integer, frame of pips.shp (buildings) or pips2.shp (others) (zero-based)
SpawnsPipSize=                       ; X,Y, increment in pixels to next pip
SpawnsPipOffset=0,0                  ; X,Y, position offset from default

Power drain for units

• Infantry, vehicles and aircraft can now drain or provide Power if UnitPowerDrain=true is set.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
UnitPowerDrain=false  ; boolean

[SOMETECHNO]          ; TechnoType
Power=0               ; integer, positive means output, negative means drain

RadarInvisible for non-enemy house

• In vanilla, RadarInvisible is ignored if the techno is allied with the current player. Now you can change this behavior.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMETECHNO]                         ; TechnoType
RadarInvisibleToHouse=               ; Affected House Enumeration (none|owner/self|allies/ally|team|enemies/enemy|all), default to enemy if `RadarInvisible=true`, none otherwise

Re-enable obsolete [JumpjetControls]

• Re-enable obsolete [JumpjetControls], the keys in it will be as the default value of jumpjet units.

  • Moreover, added two tags for missing ones.

In rulesmd.ini:

[JumpjetControls]
Crash=5.0        ; floating point value
NoWobbles=false  ; boolean

Note

CruiseHeight is for JumpjetHeight, WobblesPerSecond is for JumpjetWobbles, WobbleDeviation is for JumpjetDeviation, and Acceleration is for JumpjetAccel. All other corresponding keys just simply have no Jumpjet prefix.

Skirmish AI behavior dehardcode

• In vanilla, there is a hardcoded behavior that when an skirmish AI player has no factory and has not taken damage for a while, it will sell its buildings and set its units to hunt. This can be customized now.

  • [General] -> AIFireSale and [General] -> AIAllToHunt control whether the AI will act selling and hunting respectively.

  • [General] -> AIFireSaleDelay defines a timer, it will only work if [General] -> AIFireSale is set to true. When the first time the AI reaches the trigger condition of vanilla behavior, the timer starts and prevents the selling behavior from happening until the timer is expired.

  • You can use these flags to make the AIs “all in” before they are defeated.

• Another hardcoded behavior is that, when the AI deploys a MCV, it will gather all of its forces to that place. This can be toggle off now.

  • [General] -> GatherWhenMCVDeploy controls this behavior.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
AIFireSale=true           ; boolean
AIFireSaleDelay=0         ; integer, number of frames
AIAllToHunt=true          ; boolean
GatherWhenMCVDeploy=true  ; boolean

Subterranean unit travel height and speed

• It is now possible to control the height at which units with subterranean (Tunnel) Locomotor travel, globally or per TechnoType.

• Subterranean movement speed is now also customizable, both globally and per TechnoType. If per-TechnoType value is negative, global value is used. This does not affect the speed at which the unit moves vertically when burrowing which is determined by Speed multiplied by [General] -> TunnelSpeed.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
SubterraneanHeight=-256  ; integer, height in leptons (1/256th of a cell)
SubterraneanSpeed=19     ; floating point value

[SOMETECHNO]             ; TechnoType
SubterraneanHeight=      ; integer, height in leptons (1/256th of a cell)
SubterraneanSpeed=-1     ; floating point value

Warning

SubterraneanHeight expects negative values to be used and may behave erratically if set to above -50.

Voxel body multi-section shadows

• It is also now possible for vehicles and aircraft to display shadows for multiple sections of the voxel body at once, instead of just one section specified by ShadowIndex, by specifying the section indices in ShadowIndices (which defaults to ShadowIndex) in unit’s artmd.ini entry.

  • ShadowIndex.Frame and ShadowIndices.Frame can be used to customize which frame of the HVA animation for the section from ShadowIndex and ShadowIndices is used to display the shadow, respectively. -1 is special value which means currently shown frame is used, and ShadowIndices.Frame defaults to this.

In artmd.ini:

[SOMETECHNO]          ; TechnoType
ShadowIndices=        ; List of integers (voxel section indices)
ShadowIndex.Frame=0   ; integer (HVA animation frame index)
ShadowIndices.Frame=  ; List of integers (HVA animation frame indices)

Voxel light source customization

• Vanilla game applies some weird unnecessary math which resulted in the voxel light source being “nudged” up by a bit and light being applied incorrectly on tilted voxels. It is now possible to fix that.

Note

Please note that enabling this will remove the vertical offset vanilla engine applies to the light source position. Assuming vanilla lighting this will make the light shine even more from below the ground than it was before, so it is recommended to turn the Z value up in value of VoxelLightSource.

Applying VoxelLightSource=0.02,-0.69,0.36 (assuming UseFixedVoxelLighting=false) vs default lighting, Prism Tank voxel by CCS_qkl

• It is now possible to change the position of the light relative to the voxels. This allows for better lighting to be set up.

  • Only the direction of the light is accounted, the distance to the voxel is not accounted.

  • Vanilla light (assuming UseFixedVoxelLighting=false) is located roughly at VoxelLightSource=0.201,-0.907,-0.362.

In rulesmd.ini:

[AudioVisual]
UseFixedVoxelLighting=false  ; boolean, whether to fix the lighting
VoxelLightSource=            ; X,Y,Z - position of the light in the world relative to each voxel, floating point values

Hint

In order to easily preview the light source settings use the VXL Viewer and VPL Generator tool by thomassneddon. To use the tool unpack it somewhere, then drag the main VXL file of a voxel that you will use to preview onto it (auxilliary VXL and HVA files must be in the same folder).

Keep in mind that the tool doesn’t account for UseFixedVoxelLighting=true as of yet, so the values shown in tool need to be offset when putting in the game with with fixed voxel lighting.

Voxel shadow scaling in air

• It is now possible to adjust how voxel air units (VehicleType & AircraftType) shadows scale in air. By default the shadows scale by AirShadowBaseScale (defaults to 0.5) amount if unit is ConsideredAircraft=true.

  • If HeightShadowScaling=true, the shadow is scaled by amount that is determined by following formula: Max(AirShadowBaseScale ^ (currentHeight / ShadowSizeCharacteristicHeight), HeightShadowScaling.MinScale), where currentHeight is unit’s current height in leptons, ShadowSizeCharacteristicHeight overrideable value that defaults to the maximum cruise height (JumpjetHeight, FlightLevel etc) and HeightShadowScaling.MinScale sets a floor for the scale.

In rulesmd.ini:

[AudioVisual]
AirShadowBaseScale=0.5            ; floating point value
HeightShadowScaling=false         ; boolean
HeightShadowScaling.MinScale=0.0  ; floating point value

[SOMETECHNO]                      ; TechnoType
ShadowSizeCharacteristicHeight=   ; integer, height in leptons

Terrains

Animated TerrainTypes

Animated trees used in Ion Shock

• By default IsAnimated, AnimationRate and AnimationProbability only work on TerrainTypes with SpawnsTiberium set to true. This restriction has now been lifted.

  • Length of the animation can now be customized by setting AnimationLength as well, defaulting to half (or quarter if damaged frames are enabled) the number of frames in TerrainType’s image.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMETERRAINTYPE]  ; TerrainType
AnimationLength=   ; integer, number of frames

Custom palette

• You can now specify custom palette for TerrainTypes in similar manner as TechnoTypes can.

  • Note that this palette behaves like an object palette and does not use tint etc. that have been applied to the tile the TerrainType resides on like a TerrainType using tile palette would.

In artmd.ini:

[SOMETERRAINTYPE]  ; TerrainType
Palette=           ; filename - excluding .pal extension and three-character theater-specific suffix

Customizable ore spawners

Different ore spawners in Rise of the East

• You can now specify which type of ore certain TerrainType would generate.

• It’s also now possible to specify a range value for an ore generation area different compared to standard 3x3 rectangle. Ore will be uniformly distributed across all affected cells in a spread range.

• You can specify which ore growth stage will be spawned and how many cells will be filled with ore per ore generation animation. Corresponding tags accept either a single integer value or two comma-separated values to allow randomized growth stages from the range (inclusive).

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMETERRAINTYPE]             ; TerrainType
SpawnsTiberium.Type=0         ; tiberium/ore type index
SpawnsTiberium.Range=1        ; integer, radius in cells
SpawnsTiberium.GrowthStage=3  ; integer - single or comma-sep. range
SpawnsTiberium.CellsPerAnim=1 ; integer - single or comma-sep. range

Damaged frames and crumbling animation

• By default game shows damage frame only for TerrainTypes alive at only 1 point of health left. Because none of the original game TerrainType assets were made with this in mind, the logic is now locked behind a new key HasDamagedFrames.

  • Instead of showing at 1 point of HP left, TerrainTypes switch to damaged frames once their health reaches [AudioVisual] -> ConditionYellow.Terrain percentage of their maximum health. Defaults to ConditionYellow if not set.

• In addition, TerrainTypes can now show ‘crumbling’ animation after their health has reached zero and before they are deleted from the map by setting HasCrumblingFrames to true.

  • Crumbling frames start from first frame after both regular & damaged frames and ends at halfway point of the frames in TerrainType’s image.

    • Note that the number of regular & damage frames considered for this depends on value of HasDamagedFrames and for IsAnimated TerrainTypes, AnimationLength (see Animated TerrainTypes). Exercise caution and ensure there are correct amount of frames to display.

  • Sound event from CrumblingSound (if set) is played when crumbling animation starts playing.

  • Destroy animation & sound only play after crumbling animation has finished.

In rulesmd.ini:

[AudioVisual]
ConditionYellow.Terrain=  ; floating-point value

[SOMETERRAINTYPE]         ; TerrainType
HasDamagedFrames=false    ; boolean
HasCrumblingFrames=false
CrumblingSound=           ; Sound entry

Minimap color customization

• TerrainTypes can now be made to display on minimap with different colors by setting MinimapColor.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMETERRAINTYPE]  ; TerrainType
MinimapColor=      ; integer - Red,Green,Blue

Passable & buildable-upon TerrainTypes

• TerrainTypes can now be made passable or buildable upon by setting IsPassable or CanBeBuiltOn, respectively.

  • Movement cursor is displayed on IsPassable TerrainTypes unless force-firing.

  • CanBeBuiltOn=true terrain objects are removed when building is placed on them.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMETERRAINTYPE]   ; TerrainType
IsPassable=false    ; boolean
CanBeBuiltOn=false  ; boolean

Tiberiums (ores)

Minimap color customization

• Ore can now be made to display on minimap with different colors by setting MinimapColor on Tiberiums.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEORE]      ; Tiberium
MinimapColor=  ; integer - Red,Green,Blue

Vehicles

Allow miners do area guard

• In vanilla, when miners enter area guard mission, they immediately switch to harvest mission. Now you can make them perform area guard mission normally like other technos.

  • We made it work only for miners controlled by the player, because this will prevent AI’s miners from going work.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEVEHICLE]                      ; VehicleType
Harvester.CanGuardArea=no          ; boolean

Bunker entering check dehardcode

• In vanilla, vehicles entering tank bunkers are subject to a series of hardcoding restrictions, including having to have turrets, having to have weapons, and not having Hover speed types. Now you can skip these restrictions.

• This needs to be used with Bunkerable=yes.

• This flag only skips the static check, that is, the check on the unit type. The dynamic check (cannot be parasitized) remains unchanged.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEVEHICLE]              ; VehicleType
BunkerableAnyway=false     ; boolean

Warning

Skipping checks with this feature doesn’t mean that vehicles and tank bunkers will interact correctly. Following the simple checks performed by the provider of this feature, bunkerability is mainly determined by Locomotor. The details about locomotors’ bunkerability can be found on ModEnc.

Customizing crushing tilt and slowdown

• Vehicles with Crusher=true and OmniCrusher=true / MovementZone=CrusherAll were hardcoded to tilt when crushing vehicles / walls respectively. This now obeys TiltsWhenCrushes but can be customized individually for these two scenarios using TiltsWhenCrusher.Vehicles and TiltsWhenCrusher.Overlays, which both default to TiltsWhenCrushes.

• CrushForwardTiltPerFrame determines how much the forward tilt is adjusted per frame when crushing overlays or vehicles. Defaults to -0.02 for vehicles using Ship locomotor crushing overlays, -0.050000001 for all other cases.

• CrushOverlayExtraForwardTilt is additional forward tilt applied after an overlay has been crushed by the vehicle.

• It is possible to customize the movement speed slowdown when MovementZone=CrusherAll vehicle crushes walls by setting CrushSlowdownMultiplier.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEVEHICLE]                      ; VehicleType
TiltsWhenCrushes.Vehicles=         ; boolean
TiltsWhenCrushes.Overlays=         ; boolean
CrushForwardTiltPerFrame=          ; floating point value
CrushOverlayExtraForwardTilt=0.02  ; floating point value
CrushSlowdownMultiplier=0.2        ; floating point value

Destroy animations

• DestroyAnim has been extended to work with VehicleTypes, with option to pick random animation if DestroyAnim.Random is set to true. These animations store owner and facing information for use with CreateUnit logic.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEVEHICLE]                          ; VehicleType
DestroyAnim=                           ; List of AnimationTypes
DestroyAnim.Random=true                ; boolean

IsSimpleDeployer vehicle ammo change on deploy

• Ammo.AddOnDeploy determines the number of ammo added or substracted on unit deploy.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEVEHICLE]           ; VehicleType
Ammo.AddOnDeploy=0      ; integer

Warning

Due to technical constraints, units that use Convert.Deploy from Ares’ Type Conversion to change type with Ammo.AddOnDeploy will add or substract ammo despite of convertion success. This will also happen when unit exits tank bunker.

IsSimpleDeployer vehicle auto-deploy / deploy block on ammo change

• Vehicle deployment can now be affected by ammo count.

  • Ammo.AutoDeployMinimumAmount determines the minimal number of ammo at which a vehicle converts/deploys automatically.

  • Ammo.DeployUnlockMinimumAmount determines the minimal number of ammo that unlocks issuing vehicle converting/deploying command.

    • Ammo.AutoDeployMaximumAmount and Ammo.DeployUnlockMaximumAmount behave analogically.

    • Setting a negative number will disable ammo count check.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEVEHICLE]                        ; VehicleType
Ammo.AutoDeployMinimumAmount=-1      ; integer
Ammo.AutoDeployMaximumAmount=-1      ; integer
Ammo.DeployUnlockMinimumAmount=-1    ; integer
Ammo.DeployUnlockMaximumAmount=-1    ; integer

Warning

Auto-deploy feature requires Convert.Deploy from Ares’ Type Conversion to change type. Unit without it will constantly use deploy command on self until ammo is changed.

IsSimpleDeployer vehicle deploy animation / direction customization

• DeployingAnim.AllowAnyDirection if set, disables any direction constraints for deployers with DeployingAnim set. Only works for ground units.

• DeployingAnim.KeepUnitVisible determines if the unit is not hidden while the animation is playing.

• DeployingAnim.ReverseForUndeploy controls whether or not the animation is played in reverse for undeploying.

• DeployingAnim.UseUnitDrawer controls whether or not the animation is displayed in the unit’s palette and team colours or regular animation palette, including a potential custom palette.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEVEHICLE]                          ; VehicleType
DeployingAnim.AllowAnyDirection=false  ; boolean
DeployingAnim.KeepUnitVisible=false    ; boolean
DeployingAnim.ReverseForUndeploy=true  ; boolean
DeployingAnim.UseUnitDrawer=true       ; boolean

Make harvesters do addtional scan after unload

• In vanilla, miners will remember their current location when they reach full load and move to that location after unloading. This makes miners to gradually move deeper into the mine and ignore the closer minerals.

• Now you can have the miner search for the nearest mineral again after unloading. If a closer mineral is found, the miner will go to that location instead of the previously recorded location.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
HarvesterScanAfterUnload=false     ; boolean

[SOMEVEHICLE]
HarvesterScanAfterUnload=          ; boolean, default to [General] -> HarvesterScanAfterUnload

Preserve Iron Curtain / Force Shield status on type conversion

Bugfix in action

• Iron Curtain status is now preserved by default when converting between TechnoTypes via DeploysInto / UndeploysInto. Force Shield status preservation is turned off by default.

  • This behavior can be turned on/off per-TechnoType and on global basis.

  • IronCurtain.Modifier / ForceShield.Modifier (whichever is applicable) is re-applied upon type conversion.

In rulesmd.ini:

[CombatDamage]
IronCurtain.KeptOnDeploy=true   ; boolean
ForceShield.KeptOnDeploy=false  ; boolean

[SOMETECHNO]                    ; VehicleType with DeploysInto or BuildingType with UndeploysInto
IronCurtain.KeptOnDeploy=       ; boolean, default to [CombatDamage] -> IronCurtain.KeptOnDeploy
ForceShield.KeptOnDeploy=       ; boolean, default to [CombatDamage] -> ForceShield.KeptOnDeploy

Retain target on movement command

• It is now possible for vehicles to retain their target when issued movement command by setting KeepTargetOnMove to true.

  • Note that no check is done whether or not the vehicle or the weapon can actually fire while moving, this is on modder’s discretion.

  • The target is automatically reset if the vehicle moves beyond the weapon’s range from the target.

• KeepTargetOnMove.NoMorePursuit controls whether the unit will restart chasing the target for attack when it stops again, otherwise it will clear the target when it moves away.

• KeepTargetOnMove.ExtraDistance can be used to modify the distance considered ‘out of range’ from target (it is added to weapon range), negative values work to reduce the distance.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEVEHICLE]                        ; VehicleType
KeepTargetOnMove=false               ; boolean
KeepTargetOnMove.NoMorePursuit=true  ; boolean
KeepTargetOnMove.ExtraDistance=0     ; floating point value, distance in cells

Sinking behavior dehardcode

• In vanilla, whether a ship sinks when it dies on the water is determined by multiple settings of hardcoding. The speed of the sinking is hardcoded to 5 Leptons per frame.

• Now you can determine whether a ship sinks with a dedicated flag Sinkable, and use SinkSpeed to customize the speed at which the ship sinks.

• Sinkable.SquidGrab controls the behavior of a ship when it is killed by a squid. Set it to false to cause the ship to take a lethal damage instead of sinking directly at that time (and thus obey Sinkable settings).

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEVEHICLE]              ; VehicleType
Sinkable=                  ; boolean
SinkSpeed=5                ; integer, leptons per frame
Sinkable.SquidGrab=true    ; boolean

Stationary vehicles

• Setting VehicleType Speed to 0 now makes game treat them as stationary, behaving in very similar manner to deployed vehicles with IsSimpleDeployer set to true. Should not be used on buildable vehicles, as they won’t be able to exit factories.

Unit Without Turret Always Turn To Target

• Now vehicles (exclude jumpjets) without turret will attempt to turn to the target while the weapon is cooling down, rather than after the weapon has cooled down, by setting NoTurret.TrackTarget to true.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
NoTurret.TrackTarget=false   ; boolean

[SOMEVEHICLE]                ; VehicleType
NoTurret.TrackTarget=        ; boolean, defaults to [General] -> NoTurret.TrackTarget

Voxel turret shadow

• Vehicle voxel turrets can now draw shadows if [AudioVisual] -> DrawTurretShadow is set to true. This can be overridden per VehicleType by setting TurretShadow in the vehicle’s artmd.ini section.

In rulesmd.ini:

[AudioVisual]
DrawTurretShadow=false  ; boolean

In artmd.ini:

[SOMEVEHICLE]   ; VehicleType
TurretShadow=   ; boolean

Customize harvester dump amount

• Now you can limit how much ore the harvester can dump out per time, like it in Tiberium Sun.

• Less than or equal to 0 means no limit, it will always dump out all at one time.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
HarvesterDumpAmount=0.0               ; float point value

[SOMEVEHICLE]
HarvesterDumpAmount=                  ; float point value

Veinholes & Weeds

Veinholes

• Veinhole monsters now work like they used to in Tiberian Sun.

• Their core parameters are still loaded from [General].

• The Warhead used by veins is specified under [CombatDamage]. The warhead has to have Veinhole=yes set.

• Veinholes are hardcoded to use several overlay types.

• The vein attack animation specified under [AudioVisual] is what deals the damage. The animation has to be properly listed under [Animations] as well.

• Units can be made immune to veins the same way as in Tiberian Sun.

• The monster itself is represented by the VEINTREE TerrainType, which has IsVeinhole=true set. Its strength is what determines the strength of the Veinhole.

Note

Everything listed below functions identically to Tiberian Sun. Many of the tags from Tiberian Sun have been re-enabled. The values provided below are identical to those found in TS and YR rules. You can read more about them on ModENC: VeinholeGrowthRate, VeinholeShrinkRate, MaxVeinholeGrowth, VeinDamage, VeinholeTypeClass, VeinholeWarhead, Veinhole, VeinAttack, ImmuneToVeins, IsVeinhole

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
VeinholeGrowthRate=300        ; integer
VeinholeShrinkRate=100        ; integer
MaxVeinholeGrowth=2000        ; integer
VeinDamage=5                  ; integer
VeinholeTypeClass=VEINTREE    ; TerrainType

[CombatDamage]
VeinholeWarhead=VeinholeWH    ; WarheadType

[VeinholeWH]
Veinhole=yes

[AudioVisual]
VeinAttack=VEINATAC           ; AnimationType

[TechnoType]
EliteAbilities=VEIN_PROOF
ImmuneToVeins=yes

[VEINTREE]
IsVeinhole=true
Strength=1000                 ; integer - the strength of the Veinhole

Warning

The game expects certain overlays related to Veinholes to have certain indices, they are listed below. Please keep in mind that the indices in the OverlayTypes list are 0-based, formed internally by the game, and the identifiers left of “=” don’t matter. Vanilla rulesmd.ini already has the required overlays listed at the correct indices.

In rulesmd.ini:

[OverlayTypes]
126=VEINS                     ; The veins (weeds)
167=VEINHOLE                  ; The Veinhole itself
178=VEINHOLEDUMMY             ; A technical overlay

Weeds & Weed Eaters

• Vehicles with Weeder=yes can now collect weeds. The weeds can then be deposited into a building with Weeder=yes.

• Weeds are not stored in a building’s storage, but rather in a House’s storage. The weed capacity is listed under [General] -> WeedCapacity.

• Weeders now show the ore gathering animation. It can be customized the same way as for harvesters.

• Weeders can use the Teleport locomotor like chrono miners.

• Total amount of weeds in storage can be displayed on sidebar, see Weeds counter.

Weed-consuming superweapons

• Superweapons can consume weeds to recharge, like the Chemical Missile special in Tiberian Sun.

Note

As the code for the Chemical Missile had been removed, setting Type=ChemMissile will not work.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMESW]                                        ; SuperWeaponType
UseWeeds=no                                     ; boolean - should the SW use weeds to recharge?
UseWeeds.Amount=                                ; integer - how many? default is General->WeedCapacity
UseWeeds.StorageTimer=no                        ; boolean - should the counter on the sidebar display the % of weeds stored?
UseWeeds.ReadinessAnimationPercentage=0.9       ; double - when this many weeds % are stored, the SW will show it's ready on the building (open nuke/open chrono, etc.)

VoxelAnims

Customizable debris & meteor impact and warhead detonation behaviour

• The INI keys and behaviour is mostly identical to the equivalent behaviour available to regular animations. Main difference is that the keys must be listed in the VoxelAnim’s entry in rulesmd.ini, not artmd.ini.

Warheads

Allowing damage dealt to firer

• You can now allow warhead to deal damage (and apply damage-adjacent effects such as KillDriver and DisableWeapons/Sonar/Flash.Duration (Ares features)) on the object that is considered as the firer of the Warhead even if it does not have DamageSelf=true.

  • Note that effect of Psychedelic=true, despite being tied to damage will still fail to apply on the firer as it does not affect any objects belonging to same house as the firer, including itself.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWARHEAD]            ; WarheadType
AllowDamageOnSelf=false  ; boolean

Combat light customizations

• You can now set minimum detail level at which combat light effects are shown by setting [AudioVisual] -> CombatLightDetailLevel or CombatLightDetailLevel on Warhead, latter defaults to former.

• You can now set a percentage chance a combat light effect is shown on Warhead impact by setting CombatLightChance.

• Setting CLIsBlack to true on Warhead will now turn the flash black like on hitting an Iron Curtained object, irregardless of other color settings.

In rulesmd.ini:

[AudioVisual]
CombatLightDetailLevel=0  ; integer

[SOMEWARHEAD]             ; WarheadType
CombatLightDetailLevel=   ; integer
CombatLightChance=1.0     ; floating point value, percents or absolute (0.0-1.0)
CLIsBlack=false           ; boolean

Custom debris animations and additional debris spawn settings

• You can now use DebrisAnims to specify a list of debris animations to spawn instead of animations from [General] -> MetallicDebris when Warhead with MaxDebris > 0 and no DebrisTypes (VoxelAnims) listed is detonated.

• Debris.Conventional, if set to true, makes DebrisTypes or DebrisAnims only spawn if Warhead is fired on non-water cell.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWARHEAD]              ; WarheadType
DebrisAnims=               ; List of AnimationTypes
Debris.Conventional=false  ; boolean

Customizable rocker amplitude

• The rocker amplitude of warheads with Rocker=yes used to be determined by Damage value of the weapon. You can now override it with fixed value and add a multiplier to it.

  • When both multiplier and override values are set - both are used.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWARHEAD]                   ; WarheadType
Rocker.AmplitudeMultiplier=1.0  ; floating point value, multiplier
Rocker.AmplitudeOverride=       ; integer

Customizable Warhead animation behaviour

• It is possible to make game play random animation from AnimList by setting AnimList.PickRandom to true. The result is similar to what EMEffect=true produces, however it comes with no side-effects (EMEffect=true prevents Inviso=true projectiles from snapping on targets, making them miss moving targets).

• If AnimList.CreateAll is set to true, all animations from AnimList are created, instead of a single anim based on damage or random if AnimList.PickRandom is set to true.

• If AnimList.CreationInterval is set to a value higher than 0, there will be that number of detonations of the Warhead before animations from AnimList will be created again. If the Warhead had a TechnoType firing it, this number is remembered by the TechnoType across all Warheads fired by it, otherwise it is shared between all detonations of same WarheadType period. This can be useful for things like Airburst with large spread where one might want uniform distribution of animations to appear but not on every detonation.

• AnimList.ScatterMin & AnimList.ScatterMax can be used to set a range in cells around which any created animations will randomly scatter around from the impact point.

• SplashList can be used to override animations displayed if the Warhead has Conventional=true and it hits water, by default animations from [CombatDamage] -> SplashList are used.

  • SplashList.PickRandom, SplashList.CreateAll, SplashList.CreationInterval and SplashList.Scatter(Min/Max) apply to these animations in same manner as the AnimList equivalents.

• • CreateAnimsOnZeroDamage, if set to true, makes it so that AnimList or SplashList animations are created even if the weapon that fired the Warhead deals zero damage.

• Setting Conventional.IgnoreUnits to true on Warhead with Conventional=true will make the Warhead detonate on non-underwater VehicleTypes on water tiles as if they are water tiles, instead of treating it as land. This determines whether to use AnimList or SplashList when hitting surface ships.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWARHEAD]                   ; WarheadType
AnimList.PickRandom=false       ; boolean
AnimList.CreateAll=false        ; boolean
AnimList.CreationInterval=0     ; integer
AnimList.ScatterMin=0.0         ; floating point value, distance in cells
AnimList.ScatterMax=0.0         ; floating point value, distance in cells
SplashList=                     ; List of AnimationTypes
SplashList.PickRandom=false     ; boolean
SplashList.CreateAll=false      ; boolean
SplashList.CreationInterval=0   ; integer
SplashList.ScatterMin=0.0       ; floating point value, distance in cells
SplashList.ScatterMax=0.0       ; floating point value, distance in cells
CreateAnimsOnZeroDamage=false   ; boolean
Conventional.IgnoreUnits=false  ; boolean

Customizing decloak on damaging targets

• You can now specify whether or not the warhead decloaks objects that are damaged by the warhead.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWARHEAD]               ; WarheadType
DecloakDamagedTargets=true  ; boolean

Customizing parasite culling targets

• Now you can specify which targets the parasite will culling them.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWARHEAD]                     ; WarheadType
Parasite.CullingTarget=infantry   ; List of Affected Target Enumeration (none|aircraft|infantry|units|all)

Delay automatic attack on the controlled unit

• Now you can make the techno that has just been mind controlled not be automatically attacked by its original friendly forces for a period of time defined by MindControl.ThreatDelay on the mind control warhead, default to [General] -> MindControl.ThreatDelay.

  • This will not affect the manual selection of attacks and is useless with permanent mind control.

In rulesmd.ini:

[General]
MindControl.ThreatDelay=0     ; integer, game frames

[SOMEWARHEAD]                 ; WarheadType
MindControl.ThreatDelay=      ; integer, game frames

Nonprovocative Warheads

• You can now make Warheads behave in nonprovocative fashion. Warheads with Nonprovocative=true exhibit following behaviours:

  • They will not generate any EVA announcements upon hitting targets, be it for attacking ore miners, base buildings or ally base buildings.

  • They will not spring ‘attacked’ / ‘attacked by’ events. Note that if the Warhead deals actual damage, events that check for that can still be sprung.

  • They will not evoke defense response from AI players when used to attack base buildings, ToProtect=true TechnoTypes or members of TeamTypes with Whiner=true.

  • They will not evoke retaliation from TechnoTypes hit by the Warhead.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWARHEAD]         ; WarheadType
Nonprovocative=false  ; boolean

Note

Due to technical constraints, this does not suppress warnings from Ares’ EMP effect.

Restricting screen shaking to current view

• You can now specify whether or not the warhead can only shake screen (ShakeX/Ylo/hi) if it is detonated while visible on current screen view.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWARHEAD]       ; WarheadType
ShakeIsLocal=false  ; boolean

Weapons

AmbientDamage customizations

• You can now specify separate Warhead used for AmbientDamage via AmbientDamage.Warhead or make it never apply to weapon’s main target by setting AmbientDamage.IgnoreTarget to true.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWEAPON]                      ; WeaponType
AmbientDamage.Warhead=            ; WarheadType
AmbientDamage.IgnoreTarget=false  ; boolean

Charge turret delays

• It is now possible to customize the delay of IsChargeTurret=true unit turret animation per weapon, per Burst shot instead of defaulting to weapon’s rearm timer (ROF, Burst.Delays etc). Delay in the list corresponding to burst shot is used, or last delay listed if number of listed values is lower than the current burst index. Delay of 0 or less means previous delay, if applicable, is not restarted.

  • Note that unlike the default rearm timer that uses ROF, any modifiers are not applied to explicitly set charge turret delays.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWEAPON]          ; WeaponType
ChargeTurret.Delays=  ; List of integers - game frames

Customizable disk laser radius

• You can now set disk laser animation radius using a new tag.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWEAPON]          ; WeaponType
DiskLaser.Radius=240  ; floating point value
                      ; 240 is the default saucer disk radius

Customizable ROF random delay

• By default weapon ROF has a random delay of 0 to 2 frames added to it. This random delay is now customizable, globally and on per-WeaponType basis.

In rulesmd.ini:

[CombatDamage]
ROF.RandomDelay=0,2  ; integer - single or comma-sep. range (game frames)

[SOMEWEAPON]         ; WeaponType
ROF.RandomDelay=     ; integer - single or comma-sep. range (game frames)

Customizing whether passengers are kicked out when an aircraft fires

• You can now customize whether aircraft will forcefully eject passengers (vanilla behavior) or fire its weapon when attempting to fire.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWEAPON]            ; WeaponType
KickOutPassengers=true  ; boolean

Disable FireOnce resetting infantry sequence

• It is now possible to disable FireOnce=true weapon resetting infantry sequences after firing via FireOnce.ResetSequence. Target will be forgotten like before, the firing sequence will simply continue playing after firing if there are any frames left.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWEAPON]                 ; WeaponType
FireOnce.ResetSequence=true  ; boolean

Electric bolt customizations

EBolt customization utilized for different Tesla bolt weapon usage (RA2: Reboot)

• You can now specify individual bolts you want to disable for IsElectricBolt=true weapons. Note that this is only a visual change.

• By default IsElectricBolt=true effect draws a bolt with 8 arcs. This can now be customized per WeaponType with Bolt.Arcs. Value of 0 results in a straight line being drawn.

• Bolt.Duration can be specified to explicitly set the overall duration of the visual electric bolt effect. Only values in range of 1 to 31 are accepted, values outside this range are clamped into it.

• Bolt.FollowFLH can be used to override the default behaviour where the electric bolt source coordinates change to match the unit’s firing coord on every frame (making it follow unit’s movement, rotation etc). Defaults to true on vehicles, false for everything else.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWEAPON]           ; WeaponType
Bolt.Disable1=false    ; boolean
Bolt.Disable2=false    ; boolean
Bolt.Disable3=false    ; boolean
Bolt.Arcs=8            ; integer
Bolt.Duration=17       ; integer, game frames
Bolt.FollowFLH=        ; boolean

Note

Due to technical constraints, these features do not work with electric bolts created from support weapon of Ares’ Prism Forwarding or those from AirburstWeapon.

Single-color lasers

Comparison of IsSingleColor=yes lasers with higher thickness to regular ones (RA2: Reboot)

• You can now set laser to draw using only LaserInnerColor by setting IsSingleColor, in same manner as IsHouseColor lasers do using player’s team color. These lasers respect laser thickness. Note that this is not available on prism support weapons.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEWEAPON]         ; WeaponType
IsSingleColor=false  ; boolean

RadialIndicator visibility

In vanilla game, a structure’s radial indicator can be drawn only when it belongs to the player. Now it can also be visible to observer. On top of that, you can specify its visibility from other houses.

In rulesmd.ini:

[AudioVisual]
RadialIndicatorVisibility=allies  ; List of Affected House Enumeration (owner/self | allies/ally | enemies/enemy | all)

Crate improvements

There are some improvements on goodie crate logic:

• The statistic distribution of the randomly generated crates is now more uniform within the visible map region by using an optimized sampling procedure.

• You can now limit the crates’ spawn region to land only by setting [CrateRules] -> CreateOnlyOnLand to true.

• The limit of vehicles a player can own before unit crates start giving money instead can now be customized by setting UnitCrateVehicleCap. Negative numbers disable the cap entirely.

• FreeMCV setting is now actually respected and can be used to disable the forced unit selected from [General] -> BaseUnit that is given if player picks a crate and has enough credits but no existing buildings or BaseUnit vehicles.

  • The previously hardcoded credits threshold that must be passed can also now be customized via FreeMCV.CreditsThreshold.

• It is possible to influence weighting of units given from crates (CrateGoodie=true) via CrateGoodie.RerollChance, which determines the chance that if this type of unit is rolled, it will reroll again for another type of unit.

In rulesmd.ini:

[CrateRules]
CrateOnlyOnLand=false          ; boolean
UnitCrateVehicleCap=50         ; integer
FreeMCV=true                   ; boolean
FreeMCV.CreditsThreshold=1500  ; integer

[SOMEVEHICLE]                  ; VehicleType
CrateGoodie.RerollChance=0.0   ; floating point value, percents or absolute (0.0-1.0)

DropPod

DropPod properties can now be customized on a per-InfantryType basis.

• Note that the DropPod is actually the infantry itself with a different shp image.

• If you want to attach the trailer animation to the pod, set DropPod.Trailer.Attached to yes.

• By default LaserTrails that are attached to the infantry will not be drawn if it’s on DropPod.

  • If you really want to use it, set DropPodOnly on the LaserTrail’s type entry in art.

• If you want DropPod.Weapon to be fired only upon hard landing, set DropPod.Weapon.HitLandOnly to true.

• The landing speed is not smaller than it’s current height /10 + 2 for unknown reason. A small DropPod.Speed value therefore results in exponential deceleration.

In rulesmd.ini:

[SOMEINFANTRY]                ; InfantryType
DropPod.Angle=                ; double, default to [General] -> DropPodAngle, measured in radians
DropPod.AtmosphereEntry=      ; anim, default to [AudioVisual] -> AtmosphereEntry
DropPod.GroundAnim=           ; 2 anims, default to [General] -> DropPod
DropPod.AirImage=             ; SHP file, the pod's shape, default to POD
DropPod.Height=               ; int, default to [General] -> DropPodHeight
DropPod.Puff=                 ; anim, default to [AudioVisual] -> DropPodPuff
DropPod.Speed=                ; int, default to [General] -> DropPodSpeed
DropPod.Trailer=              ; anim, default to [General] -> DropPodTrailer, which by default is SMOKEY
DropPod.Trailer.Attached=     ; boolean, default to no
DropPod.Trailer.SpawnDelay=   ; int, number of frames between each spawn of DropPod.Trailer, default to 6
DropPod.Weapon=               ; weapon, default to [General] -> DropPodWeapon
DropPod.Weapon.HitLandOnly=   ; boolean, default to no

Note

[General] -> DropPodTrailer is Ares features.