A Guide to Race Letters (Existing and Reserved)

[MrTwosheds]

It would seem introducing new assets sometimes causes bz2 to complain about vspilo not being there, even when there are no v* units. No idea why, seen it, couldn't stop it, gave it a vspilo to shut it up.

[General BlackDragon]

o.o

The only way it might could do it is if it passed in a blank race letter somewhere, and then tried to build a ship " vblah" ...

[jaydenbz2]

Change the list please, I decided what the Aeneans and Helians' letters were as of when I created them, no offence meant, but the Aeneans are "R" and the helians are "3" but will be changed to J.

[Ded10c]

Change the list please, I decided what the Aeneans and Helians' letters were as of when I created them, no offence meant, but the Aeneans are "R" and the helians are "3" but will be changed to J.

The list is meant to be changed. I was working on the letters Nielk1 informed me you were using, not trying to tell you which letters to use.

[jaydenbz2]

Ok, thanks.

[Red Spot]

Just remember that if your mod works through a config file, which it should, you can always decide that its a standalone package and you 'could' completelly ignore this list.

[Ded10c]

Just remember that if your mod works through a config file, which it should, you can always decide that its a standalone package and you 'could' completelly ignore this list.

Cross-compatibility is a good thing in case other modders want to use two races, then discover they use the same letter. Always best to use one that's unoccupied before using one somebody else has used already.

This being the reason Nielk1 chalked the Aeneans up to A rather than R.

[Red Spot]

Thats why I said 'could'.
In the end there can only be 24 custom races with an actual proper race letter, and I doubt every modder has a full race that might even be remotelly interested to include in a combined mod. Than there is the realistic point of view where you might not be in a position you will ever release anything, should that deserve any reservation for a letter?

Either way, it was mostly a 'just saying' statement to express there are no hard rules in this area.

[Ded10c]

Numbers and some special characters work for races as well, though both have drawbacks.

[Zero Angel]

special characters are needed if you want to implement new races as a stock 1.3 compatible recy variant and want to use that race's *suser_m.odf (respawned pilot) file w/o causing bad assets in all stock games you join.

The drawbacks that I could see is that by doing so, some of the race specific 'support' files will not work properly. This means that the race will be displayed as 'other', the player-to-player voice files will not work at all for that race (ie: 'attack my target', 'on your six'), and some starting game lag will be introduced while using that race in multiplayer (it typically lasts for 10 to 20 seconds and then disappears).

Using a special character for your race name is not a recommended course of action if you have a mod which is not needed to be asset compatible with stock 1.3.

[Red Spot]

Numbers and some special characters work for races as well, though both have drawbacks.

Why I didnt mention them to begin with

[MrTwosheds]

special characters are needed if you want to implement new races as a stock 1.3 compatible recy variant and want to use that race's *suser_m.odf (respawned pilot) file w/o causing bad assets in all stock games you join.

It just causes bad assets for all those those trying to join who don't have it. I utterly fail to see the usefulness of this approach, it would be far better to make it a "Mod" that requires people to click a different desktop icon, can be identified as such by other players and works without the bugs.

[Zero Angel]

special characters are needed if you want to implement new races as a stock 1.3 compatible recy variant and want to use that race's *suser_m.odf (respawned pilot) file w/o causing bad assets in all stock games you join.

It just causes bad assets for all those those trying to join who don't have it. I utterly fail to see the usefulness of this approach, it would be far better to make it a "Mod" that requires people to click a different desktop icon, can be identified as such by other players and works without the bugs.

Because most players cant be arsed to juggle shortcuts all day. The separate shortcut thing hurt FE's popularity. In fact i'm sure that FE maps and modes would've been played exclusively if it did not require switching 'in and out' of -- FE was already more advanced and feature packed than 1.2 ZST but ZST was played more because of 'inertia' -- most players played ZST because it was integrated into regular BZ2 and because most players played ZST, even more players played ZST.

The same thing happened with VSR to a degree which is why it was necessary to make it able to be launched with the same shortcut as stock 1.3 -- it doesnt need to develop its own inertia, people can simply join the game and they're ready to go.

[Zax]

When are you planning on submitting VSR?

[TheJamsh]

Don't know if it matters, but these are the letters I was planning to use for Serenesis. Not sure how much will actually make it into the mini-mod.

A - AAN
C - Black Cerberi
S - Scion
H - Hadean
R - Raiders
P - Pathan Clan/Athenian
Y - Serenese

Not that this would end up compatible with anything else anyway.