Editing Prophecy/Secret Ops

thp

thp

Rear Admiral
Hello!

I've recently had the Idea of creating some missions and messing around with the Secret Ops files. As I am familiar with the Pascal language and there's a WCP Pascal Mission Builder, that is ok. I just need some examples on how to make Missions and what's possible. I also need to write text on the screen somehow or play my own FMV files and comm vids, comm sounds and all that stuff. i'd also like to change the login screen of secret ops (with the names and the callsign input field). changing the secret ops logo, the launcher and the main menu would also be nice. and i want to play my own missions not in the simulator but in the main part (the right door) and i want to create my own briefings, and and and. what tools for changing bitmaps, rle files, xm sounds and all these cryptic filetypes for secret ops can you suggest me and what's the best way to change all this? i've already extracted all *.tre files, so i can easily edit them. how can i pack them back to tre files and which tre files does secret ops unpack when it is run?

all suggestions please reply here thanks
 
You can find tutorials at my wc site (as well as a link for Pedro wcppas lessons). And links to the tools (HCl and Thomas sites).
 
Secret Ops Editing

First, there's a mission editor available from CIC, but no instructions for it, any help? Second, your site, KillerWave, directs that some pilots cause crashes but dosen't include a list anywhere of which pilots do that, something, I think that would be helpful.

So, any help from anyone with either of those things?
 
Actually, I'm pretty sure everyone who edits Secret Ops (and that's not a lot of people :D) has either learned by reading the tutorial's at KW's site, or by experimenting with the editing tools (and then writing tutorials and sending them to Killerwave ;)). Get ready for a lot of trial-and-error work.

Pedro's tutorials, the documentation on Thomas' site, and inside the libraries that come with WCPPas are all we have as far as mission programming is concerned, I'm afraid.

Other programs you definitely need (all found on either HCl's or Thomas' sites):
- treman (for packing TREs)
- texture converter
- collision sphere editor
- hardpoint editor
- modelC
- audio & video tools
You can use a string editor if you want, but you can also make these strings in WCPPas. Everything else (ship stats, missions, sectors, cutscenes, menus) can be edited in WCPPas.

If there are no tutorials for what you want to edit, and you can't figure it out by decompiling a file of the same type from the original WCP/SO TREs, then chances are we don't know how to edit that (AIs and login menu, for example)... but you can always ask here and we'll try to help you. There are a lot of things which we already found out, but haven't yet been documented anywhere.

--Eder
 
Well at the CIC Site under the files section there is a mission editor that's pretty basic, and it's all I'm using (I don't need much more then that) but it came with no instructions and sometimes my missions work and sometimes they don't.

Lately, the Mission Builder locks up whenever it tries to write to the simulator level 0 file, and I can't figure out why, and my missions like to spontanously crash the game without explanation, even when everything looks perfect...the tutorials I found at KW's site include string editiing, which is a real pain in the ass ( no offense to anyone who uses it, but to someone new at this it's a bit daunting ) and it's much simplier to use the mission builder...but it dosen't always work.

Also, I don't have the skill or the talent to edit the ships or graphics at all, and this is only for me, so I'm not interested in putting a ship together, the only thing I really want to do is to edit the missions to make some of my own but I keep crashing my game, again, and again, and again...

=(

It's making me very sad. Any help would be nice.

Also, you listed those programs, which I plan to grab, and some people's site but didn't link the sites, which would be nice, could you post those links here for me?
 
Originally posted by Jason_Ryock
the tutorials I found at KW's site include string editiing, which is a real pain in the ass ( no offense to anyone who uses it, but to someone new at this it's a bit daunting ) and it's much simplier to use the mission builder...but it dosen't always work.
Click to expand...
Yes, well, I don't wish to be cold/discouraging, but it's your choice - you can go through the process of learning more complex arts like string editing (which, actually, is dead simple once you figure it out) and eventually do great things, or you can stick with one of those simple mission building tools.

If it makes you feel better, we all go through this learning process :p. I'm sure it would all be a lot easier if you had access to a whole bunch of tutorials, but most of us are too busy with other stuff to write tutorials. As it is, we're still here if you have any specific questions...

Oh, and as for the pilots - I've never bothered making a list, because I just couldn't see any use for it. Since WCPPas includes a unit with constant declarations for most pilots that work in SO, such a list was kinda worthless :p.
 
Right well, you guys are the experts on this, if there are such things for programs like these, so I'll follow your directions since you MUST know what your talking about (no sarcasm intended).

I'm going to be gone for three weeks but I'm taking my laptop, so expect a flood of questions when I get back.
 
The most useful tool is WCPPas, so if you have to learn only one, that's your thing. It can do missions, ship files, string files, menus, animated textures, etc, etc, etc.
 
Okay...

Okay Eder, thanks again and again for all your help...but uh...I need to WCPPas (since it does everything) and a tutorial to use it....where can I find both of these things?

I know all that information is probably already in this thread somewhere, but I lack the ability to find exactly what I'm looking for...
 
WCP Pascal can be found on Thomas Bruckner's website. He also has some useful documentation on there.... that probably won't help you if you aren't particularly familiar with any programming languages, however, as it's a rather basic listing of functions, objects and the like. For something aimed more towards a beginner, look at Killerwave's tutorials or wander through old postings in this forum where people have asked for help. If you have problems understanding what's going on after reading through all the pertinent documentation you can find, and fiddling with it by yourself for a while (in other words, after making a decent effort at trying to work things out for yourself), feel free to ask here.
 
The mission files are compiled, so you can't edit it in WCPPas. The only way you could edit an existing mission is to hex edit it.

I remember Thomas Bruckner once worked on a mission de-compiler and time time I saw it, it wasn't working well enough yet. I believe he dropped it in favor on enhancing WCPPas.
 
#include wcp, consts, pilots;

Well what is this? Nine months later?

Hell, I'm finally getting somewhere, even if it's just basics.

I managed to extract all the files from the data.tre and edit the callsigns list (That was pretty damn cool, seeing other peoples callsigns under their names in the game).

And now I'm working on Strings Editing (and it's going slowly). I had a question though, a really specific question, like you told me to ask...

The tutorials from Killerwaves site links to the UE site tutorial. So I started reading and working and came up with the following line:

#include wcp, consts, pilots;

What is this line, what does it do, why is it here, and why do the Secret Ops sample mission texts still use "wcp"?

Any help with this?
 
You know, posting the same question in two threads in the same forum is kinda overkill :p.

#include wcp, consts, pilots;

This line has nothing to do with the game. It's a WCPPas command, which tells it to include the files wcp.pas, consts.pas and pilots.pas when compiling the mission. You can find these files in the \lib folder. They contain various declarations - consts and pilots declares a bunch of constants, while wcp.pas includes declarations for all known WCP mission functions (everything, from AI_WaitSeconds to SYS_PlaySFX). These are the functions that the game will understand, and they are identical for both WCP and Secret Ops (although one or two functions from WCP do not work with SO, while some other functions only work with SO because that's when they were introduced).

I'm surprised to see you asking this, however. The #include command is, IIRC, covered in the documentation on Thomas Bruckner's site, from where you got WCPPas in the first place. If you haven't read this documentation, you really need to.
 
Yeah...I posted here before I got the other error with WCPPascal, and just decided to start a new thread, but alas I had no way to delete my own post. Probably shouldn't have bothered, but well...to late now.

I forgot about that list of commands/strings/functions at Thomas's site, thanks for pointing me back at that, its answering most of my questions.
 
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