[WIP] Expansion: TweakMod - 0.3.1

[alphabit]

Dear community,

welcome to the official TweakMod thread, here on Greenheartgames’ community forum.

TweakMod will bring you a lot of gameplay related improvements and aims to tweak various aspects of the game.

The mod allows you to cheat “honestly”, focusing on improving some areas of the game and leaving on how to use the tweaks up to the user.

The complete functionality of the NoTypeWriterMod has been included in the new TweakMod (this is why NoTypeWriterMod development has been discontinued).

I had the idea of this expansion when I was working on my other mod InfoStatsMod, because it was very painful to replay the game many times while having to click on all those notifications, wait for the typewriter (and clicking like mad), for the conference dialog and the review screens. I needed a solution which would allow me to control various aspects of the game, so this idea was born.

I would recommend TweakMod also to mod writers, as it allows to dramatically increase smoothness and speed when playing the game for the n-th time.

###Recommended Mods###

• CheatMod by @kristof1104
• Camelot by @SirEverard
• InfoStatsMod by @alphabit

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###Latest release###
Version 0.3.1 (August, 11th 2014 18:00) (available through Steam Workshop)

Version 0.3.0 (February, 25th 2014 11:10)

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###Changelog 0.3.1###

• Changes related to Steam Workshop (for the rest it’s the same functionality as 0.3.0)

###Changelog 0.3.0###

• Week duration control allows to control how long (in seconds) a week should last

###Changelog 0.2.0###

• Requires UltimateLib 1.1.0 or higher
• Configurable gamespeed added to Game Settings (allows to play the game very fast - max = 1 year ~ 20 secs) - Thanks to @SirEverard for this fine piece of code
• Bubble speed control, allows to control how bubbles should behave
• Minor optimizations

###Changelog 0.1.1###

• Requires UltimateLib 1.0.2 or higher
• Fixed notification freeze on first game
• Fixed / optimized name generation for company names
• Name generation for player name

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###Changelog 0.1.0###

• UltimateLib Dependency (needs the UltimateLib)
• Custom game configuration tab in GDT settings UI
• Tweak configuration options included in the in-game settings screen (Esc - Settings)
• Notifications: Configurable typewriter delay (0 = Disabled, > 1 = Delay of the typewriter effect)
• Notifications: Speed up the following notifications by showing an overlay window instead of a modal dialog:
• PlatformReleaseNews
• News
• Game off the market
• Game Conference (summary notification)
• Lab report
• New Research
• Research complete
• Industry News
• Industry Report
• Game Report
• Market Analysis
• Engine complete
• Game review
• Sequel
• First week of sales
• Fans
• Sales Record
• Company’s Best Game (from the InfoStatsMod)
• Conferences: Different speed up modes for the conference / booth screen
• Default (no tweak)
• SpeedUp (immediately show the results)
• Skip (only the conference summary window will be shown)
• Optional company name generation at the beginning of the game

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####Scheduled for release features:
none

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####Planned features:

• Predefined settings profile(s)
• Create / Save custom tweak profiles
• Speed up game reviews screen (magazine scoring)
• Skip game reviews screen (magazine scoring)
• Show reviews as custom notification when skip or speedup (overlay, like the speedup feature)
• Speed up / skip tutorial notifications (only when tutorial screens are shown)
• Control the fadeout time of the custom notification overlay
• Allow a small pipeline for notifications that occur at the same time

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####Ideas:

• Define custom notification headers to tweak (possibly with an additional file that can be shipped by other mods for integration)
• Autoplay: automatically plays the game based on some basic rules that a user can defined
• Autoboost: automatically use boost while developing a game as soon as it has been recharged at configurable level (1,2 or 3)
• Custom sound for overlay notification when using notification speed up, so that different type of notifications can be recognized more easily
• Setting custom game screen resolution for windowed mode (currently this has to be done manually by resizing the window)
• Different styles for the notification replacement overlay windows
• Notification history
• Control how the the animated T/D bubbles appear (Default, None, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100) - thanks to @azertyman for this
• Automatically generate / propose names for games incl. a sequel name generator

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####Latest screenshots:

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[SirEverard]

I like the look of this. I assume it will accompany mods that add extra settings etc? or perhaps even allow us to conditionally hook in and create our own tabs. That would be cool.

Pm me if you have time we should talk about modding

[alphabit]

That will be one of those things I strive

One way would be:
You define your integration data in your mod and TweakMod would check the mods for the existence of that certain object and apply what’s necessary.

Another would be:
An integration .js library that you would include (from the mod folder or directly).

[SirEverard]

Yeah I would think the first way is the easiest and more fluid but it’ll be nice to see what you come up with

[alphabit]

So then… I’ll go for the first one, as it also makes more sense to me. I think it’ll be the next thing I’ll prepare in code

[Haxor]

Finally!

[kristof1104]

Lol, I actually created something similar for my competitorMod to speed up testing.
Good job mate! Keep up the good work!

[alphabit]

Thanks @kristof1104.

That’s how the idea to this mod has born… I had and have to play so many times, that I simply needed something to speed up the gameplay process

Thanks to @SirEverard, I’m implementing a modified gamespeed feature into TweakMod now
That means: you can play 1 year in abount 20 secs If combined with notification speedup, conference and review skipping you should be very quick when testing or hardcore playing

[alphabit]

I have updated the first post. There’s a new screenshot available (see the first screen) which shows how to change game speed. 0 = slow, 10 = normal speed, 100 = madness.

[Haxor]

100x Faster!? Wow

[alphabit]

Somehow around that
It took about 20 secs to complete a game year. I think that is fast!

[Haxor]

It will be really cool for debug.

[alphabit]

I’ll hope it I also use it for debug

That’s why I decided to work more intensively on this mod prior to resume the InfoStatsMod development.
I simply need something which makes playing a breeze

Other gamers can then tweak the game as they want (surely they don’t want 20 secs for a year, but maybe a lil bit faster or slower).

[kristof1104]

Hey @alphabit
I saw you made a setting for the gamespeed… Just to let you know the developers did make a keylistener.
So pressing 1 2 3 4 5 changes the game speed… You need to change the ghg6 property to make it work. but thats easy

[alphabit]

Didn’t know that! Thanks for pointing out. Is that an undocumented feature or did I simply miss it?
So, if I got you right, it has same effect as it is implemented now using the GameManager._oldTimeModifier?

[kristof1104]

Yeah it has the same effect, it’s undocumented. I’ve used it for a while
Changing the ghg6 var puts the game in a kind of debug mode.

The GameFlags var is frozen though so you can’t edit it directly.
You need to do this:

GameFlags = jQuery.extend({},GameFlags);
GameFlags.ghg6 = true;

And then you can use the buttons 1 2 3 4 5 It’s easier to change the speed that way.
It may be a nice addition to this mod.

[SirEverard]

Oh yeah I saw those.
However the flag also turns on other features for developing purposes which you don’t really want users to be triggering accidentally .

[kristof1104]

Yeah but this feature is for mod developers

[Haxor]

Wth is ghg6?

[alphabit]

Sounds like a hidden voodoo secret property

Thanks @kristof1104 for telling me that! I’ll take a closer look into it later on!
So you’re saying that as a mod developer we could rely on it without having to worry? No other implications?

I just want to be sure