Removing enemy units from PDA map

[Decepticon]

Hi all, I'll start-off by saying I'm by no means an expert at modding so bear with me if I'm missing something obvious...

I'm trying to remove the enemy & neutral markers from the PDA map in CS but having no luck. I downloaded a mod which claimed to do the trick but didn't work at all for me - all it altered was the map_spots.xml file, but from my experiments with that file i can only get the labels (i.e. bandit, mutant etc.) not to show, but the markers still appear. Anyone else had any luck with this?

Great site btw, found loads of useful info already. I'm currently putting together a fairly simple mod to address some of the more annoying aspects of Clear Sky, so look forward to lots more questions from me

[Decepticon]

Ah, think i've got it, there's separate entries for when a squad is on the move, in it's base, or inside a smart territory. Almost got it working properly...

[Nightwatch]

Welcome to the forum, Decepticon and glad to hear that you like the forum. It seems you've managed to solve the problem yourselves, great. I myself have not worked on CS, or in fact have not played properly yet, so I would prefer not to offer unqualified opinion, but there are others who have been much more knowledgeable on CS, they can be more helpful than me.

It'd be nice, if you can post how you've approached the problem and solved, as some others may have the same problem and so they'll find your solution useful.

[Decepticon]

heh, seems there's a lot less people interested in modding CS than SHOC

It seems like it's a bit more difficult tbh, the faction wars system is pretty much a mod in itself as far as I can tell.

Anyway I've almost got this sorted, but still having problems with squads showing-up when they are attacking a target, I'll post exactly what needed to be done as soon as I've got it working properly...

[Decepticon]

Managed to get it working as I wanted, for anyone who's interested the file that controls all the pda map / minimap markers is configs/ui/map_spots.xml - if you want to change or remove any pda icons this is where to look.

To hide enemy/neutral squad markers you only need to change a couple of lines, for example:

<alife_presentation_squad_enemy_spot x="0" y="0" width="11" height="11" alignment="c" stretch="1" location_level="10" scale_min="3.0" scale_max="5.1" scale="0">
<texture r="237" g="28" b="36">ui_pda2_squad_leader</texture>
</alife_presentation_squad_enemy_spot>

is the marker shown on the pda map for enemy squads when they're at a smart terrain. alife_presentation_squad_enemy_spot_mini is for the minimap. To remove the marker just change the width and height to "0". The rgb values are obviously the colour of the marker.

When a squad is on it's way to attack another smart terrain it uses the "alife_presentation_enemy_squad_attack_point_spot" marker, so you'll need to change that too or they'll suddenly show-up when they're on the move. Repeat for neutral / mutant and you're done (mutants don't seem to have a seperate squad_attack_point marker).

There's also codes here that define the textures used for the markers of each faction (alife_presentation_faction_freedom_spot for example), so it should be fairly straight forward to add custom markers for each faction.

Always thought it was really dumb being able to see where all your ememies are, removing them from the map helps bring back some of the tension they lost in CS.

Hope this helps!