COMMANDOS: MISSIONS
General | Structure | Can/Can't | Notes | Final tips
Mission files are very important elements in the game. They are stored in Datos\Misiones together with macros. Every time you run Commandos, game first checks whether Misiones directory is empty and if it is, game extracts those files itself; if you have something in Misiones directory, game uses those files instead. It would be recommendable if you first extract mission files somewhere else for backup/editing (using util).
First things first: you need file called "misiones.dat". This file helps you understand which *.mis file goes by which mission. (they are not the same)
Mission file is written (thank god) in ASCII but in Spanish (damn). That represents the major problem to all nonspanish people.
Anyway first you see phase name like FASE0000. After that some kinda definitions follow. I will discuss those in Syntax part. Then come all sprites/macros definitions in current mission. All insertable sprites have a CLASS. People familiar with Object Oriented Programming know what it is. As far as I know there are three classes: BICHO, BICHOALIADO, MACRO. Class bicho used almost for everything except commandos themselves. Bichoaliado is reserved for Commandos. Macro is class that points that object is a macro and its definitions can be obtained from given *.mac file. TOKEN is usually just a name for an object. It can be later called from somethere else.
Finally there are also objectives for the current mission. Those can be edited too.
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What you can SIMPLY edit in a mission (in general terms), are: Things you can't SIMPLY edit, are: Things you can edit with a lot of effort, are: Things you can't edit even with a lot of effort, are:
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When editing make sure you closed all brackets, pay attention to spaces cos they are really important.
I'd like to mention that although you can change commandos or germans 'skins'/graphics that's not always fun. F.e. you have a driver who can fire machine gun. When he does that, you actually see him holding that machine gun and that's cool. You can add machine gun to GB's inventory so he can also fire machine gun and when he does, you just see him standing still while shooting and that's not cool. This happens simply because there is no animation of GB firing machine gun.
All definitions of animations of characters, objects, vehicles, explosions are stored in *.anm files. You can find them in Wargame.dir in Misiones directory. They contain events, amount of frames and names of images.
I think that actual bitmaps are stored somewhere in *.wad files.
Finally some practical tips.
I always use Wordpad to open/edit mis and mac files. Notepad can suit too but sometimes files are bigger than string value so it can't open them.
Save original files somewhere else for backup. You should also save (succeeded) edited files for backup. If you make error sometime later, you can still use backup. Debugging is almost impossible.
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Made by Roman G
email: rgstar@hotmail.com
web: http://members.tripod.com/~cyberrg