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Nomads

This project is about bringing Nomads back as playable faction via featured mod and make a serious attempt to integrate them into the main game.

We can use all the help we can get :

  • coding
  • modelling
  • texturing
  • effects improving
  • testing
  • mission making
  • giving feedback
  • and much more!

To play the coop campaign see the coop missions repository here.

Be sure to visit our discord server here where you can help out, comment or simply keep up with progress on the mod. Everyone is welcome!

How do I play Nomads?

Nomads is designed to be run as a featured mod on the Forged Alliance Forever client.

To play Nomads online, simply go to the Find games tab on the client, and select the mod from the featured mod list, then host a game!

  • You don't need to enable any ingame version of Nomads mods, and the Nomads mod won't show up in the mod list. Running Nomads in a different manner to the one described may produce unexpected results, or not work at all.
  • The mod is always up to date thanks to the patching mechanism, so you don't need to worry about updating the mod or making sure your friends have the same version as you do!

To play Nomads offline, a little more setup is required.

  1. Make sure you have downloaded the mod through the FAForever client. To do this, simply host a game of Nomads as described above. You can close the game once you get to the ingame lobby without starting.
  2. Go to C:\ProgramData\FAForever\bin\ (note: not program files) and find ForgedAlliance.exe
  3. Right click on it and create a shortcut. Place this shortcut wherever is convenient for you.
  4. Go into its properties (right click) and change the target:
C:\ProgramData\FAForever\bin\ForgedAlliance.exe /init init_nomads.lua /log C:\ProgramData\FAForever\logs\offlineNomads.log
  1. Click on the shortcut to launch the game. Select Skirmish from the menu (Multiplayer LAN works too) and enjoy!
    • To update the mod simply follow step 1

How do I start contributing?

Nomads uses Github for development, which makes it easy to update and collaborate on the code. To make it easy to contribute, you need to set up the code on your computer first.

Setting up the repositories on your computer

You need to get local copies of the FAF and Nomads code, as well as a way to look through them easily and make changes. This section will get you everything you need to be able to edit nomads code, and even upload your changes to github.

  1. Download the github desktop legacy client here and install it. If you have a github account log in, if not register.
    • You can use any github client you want, but we recommend using this one which we find is easy for beginners, and is the easiest to set up. This client is old but we feel its better than the new github desktop.
  2. Download the FA repositry by clicking this link. The desktop client should recognize it and let you pick where to save it to your computer. github-windows://openRepo/https://github.com/FAForever/fa
  3. Download the Nomads repositry by clicking this link. The desktop client should recognize it and let you pick where to save it to your computer. (Put it next to the FA repository) github-windows://openRepo/https://github.com/FAForever/nomads
    • These links are for being opened with the github desktop client from above. If you want to use a different client you will need to either click the green Clone or Download button at the top of this page, and choose Open in desktop, or if you are using a completely different client then work it out on your own.

Congratulations, you now have everything you need to start contributing! Do check the sections below on how to set up your game to run automatically with your changes, and how to get them to the Nomads team so they can be integrated.

  • Here is an explanation of what git does and the important concepts behind it, after you understand that, you can move onto the practical tutorials on how to use it.
  • Here is a tutorial on how to use the github website to make code changes. You can propose changes to Nomads right now! Doing this from the desktop allows you to make more complex changes, as well as running the game with them.

Docs

View our Technical docs inside the docs directory of this repo.

Run the game from the Nomads lua code

You should have a local copy of the code - both FAForever/fa and Nomads-Project/nomads - on your computer. Now you'll want to set up your test environment, i.e. running the game based on your local copies.

  1. Inside of the nomads repository is an init_devnomads.lua file that you need to copy inside C:\ProgramData\FAForever\bin\

  2. You will need to open the file and edit the file paths to match the locations of where you put the local copies of the code. The lines are at the start of the file, so you can't miss them.

    • ( Make sure you don't edit the original file, to avoid problems later )
    • Make sure you pay attention to the double slashes in the file paths, and put them into the paths or they will not work!
    • dev_path = 'E:\\GITS\\fa' corresponds to the path to the FA repository
    • dev_pathnomads = 'E:\\GITS\\nomads' corresponds to the path to the Nomads repository

  3. Inside the same folder, C:\ProgramData\FAForever\bin\, you'll find ForgedAlliance.exe

  4. Make a shortcut for it either by right clicking on the file and putting it in an easily accessable place or right clicking in the folder you want the shortcut to be in and making a new shortcut there. (For example your desktop)

  5. Go into its properties (right click) and change the target:

C:\ProgramData\FAForever\bin\ForgedAlliance.exe /init init_devnomads.lua /EnableDiskWatch /showlog /log C:\ProgramData\FAForever\logs\dev.log
  • You need to be running the game in windowed mode for the log window to work properly.
  • By adding /showlog then the log window will automaticaly appear. There is an ingame keybind to summon the log window as well. So it depends on your own prefence if you want it from the start or not. /EnableDiskWatch will ask FA to reload your changes whenever the file is changed - skipping the need to reload your game. /log C:\ProgramData\FAForever\logs\dev.log will save the log in the specified location. Usefull for sharing logs incase of issues.

You're finally ready to make changes to the lua code and test them!

Working with issues and pull requests

The main way of communication on github is done with issues and pull requests.

  • Whenever you find a problem or have an interesting idea, then you can make an issue for that. If there already is an issue for it, then you should comment on the original one, instead of making a new issue.
  • Whenever you have something of value (bugfixes/improvements/etc) to add, you can make a pull request. Other contributors can review your changes and help improve them and/or confirm their validity. Afterwards your pull request will get merged into the master branch and will be a part of the future releases. So it is not only for sending your own changes, but also for reviewing others' pull requests. Reviewing can be quite laborous, so we'd like as many people as possible doing these so changes will be of a better quality and merged a lot faster.
Making an issue

To make an issue about a bug/possible improvement/new feature/etc, you should go to the original repositories webpage and create an issue there. Don't make issues in your own forked repository unless you don't want anyone to know about them.

When making an issue, you should follow these guidlines:

  • Make a seperate issue for each bug/feature. So we avoid cluttered issues and everything is clear.
  • Always add as much information as you can provide about the issue
    • Give a nice description of the issue (where/when/what/how)
    • Add the dev logs You can find them here: C:\ProgramData\FAForever\logs
    • Provide the replay too. Watch it first (after you copied the logs) to see if the same thing happens as during the game.
Making a pull request

To make a pull request with your changes for a bugfix/possible improvement/new feature/etc, you should go to the original repositories webpage and create a pull request there. Most of the time pull request will be related to an issue and merging it will solve the issue. You can close an issue manually but its a lot easier if it would automaticaly close when the pull request is merged. You can achieve this by adding a keyword and a reference to the issue inside the body of your pull request message.

When making a pull request, you should follow these guidelines:

  • Give a nice description of the changes (where/when/what/how)
  • Reference all issues related to this pull request

If something doesn't work: https://xkcd.com/1597/

Map Editor

To run the Map Editor with nomads units you need to do the following steps:

  1. Paste nomads_mesh.fx file into effects folder and rename it to mesh.fx
  2. Pack effects, env, textures, units folders from this repository into Z_nomad.scd using Winrar or similar (needs to be set as .zip NOT .rar)
  3. remove the mesh.fx file from the effects folder of the repository again
  4. Paste Z_nomad.scd into Supcom gamedata folder THQ\Gas Powered Games\Supreme Commander\gamedata
  5. Go to %USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Gas Powered Games\SupremeCommander\cache and delete the content of the folder

Some common issues and how to solve them

1. HostGame: expected 1 args, but got 2

If you encounter an error like this:

WARNING: Error running OnFrame script in CScriptObject at 10043640: void CLobby.HostGame(self)
        expected 1 args, but got 2
         stack traceback:
             [C]: in function `HostGame'
             "\documents\github\fa\lua\ui\lobby\lobby.lua(6310): in function `HostGame'
  • Make sure that inside the init_devnomads.lua you have changed the lines that correspond to the locations of your github repositories for both nomads and FA. Triple-check that you have put in double slashes instead of single slashes everywhere. This is the most common cause of the problem
  • Make sure you are using a copy of init_devnomads.lua from this repository and not init_nomads.lua

2. Unknown technique NomadsUnit

If you encounter an error like this:

WARNING: attempt to retrieve annotation from unknown technique NomadsUnit
WARNING: c:\work\rts\main\code\src\libs\gpggal\EffectD3D9.cpp(89) invalid effect technique requested: NomadsUnit

Try to run the shader_cleaner.bat file to fix it. You can find this file inside your local copy of Nomads-Project/nomads.

Implementing Nomads in FAF (update the current version)

  1. extract the nomads loading video from movies/ and put it in the FAForever/movies/ folder

  2. replace the init_nomads.lua file in the FAForever/bin/ folder with the version from this repository

  3. zip the rest of the repository (except the movie/ folder) and rename the zip to nomads.nmd

  4. place the nomads.nmd file in the FAForever/gamedata/ folder