Quite a while ago, in the ToT forums, someone brought up Stranded II. Last night, I was playing GTA: Vice City Stories on my PSP when I started to think about that game again. I remembered how easy it was to modify the game, and if I were to teach someone how to program I would show them that game and let them play around in it's files.

So if you want to learn how to program but know as much on the subject as a squirrel, I would highly suggest looking at this game.

Stranded II

This game was originally in German, and it's translation is not always grammaticly correct.

The creator, Peter Schauß, made it so it would be easy to modify the game. Most of the programming is in a notepad format so most people should be able to access it. It's set up so it's pretty easy to understand what your about to modify.

Plus it's simply a fun game.

Any questions are welcome.

Stranded II's offical site: http://www.stranded.unrealsoftware.de/s2_infos.php



P.S. Don't forget to backup your work!

Okay, here's a little tutorial.

*Before you start you will, obviously, need to download the game. After you download it unzip the program with WinRAR make yourself a file and name it 'Stranded II' and put the files from the unzipped WinRAR file in it ('core', 'mods', 'Changlog', 'StrandedII', 'StrandedII -win', & 'StrandedII -win -debug').*

In the game, there's a light-cycle for the time of day. In the game world the time of day, of course, if defined by a 24 hour clock. Each hour is given a different color light to give the effect of night, sun rise, middle day, and sunset. If you haven't guessed, this is what I'm going to explain how to modify and play around with.



This is the default file for the in game clock called 'lightcycle', which you can find in C:\Documents and Settings\(Your Account Name)\Desktop\Stranded II\mods\Stranded II\sys.

Code:

0=23,23,55 1=23,23,55 2=23,23,55 3=23,23,55 4=23,23,55 5=40,40,70 6=70,70,120 7=255,100,50 8=255,255,255 9=255,255,255 10=255,255,255 11=255,255,255 12=255,255,255 13=255,255,255 14=255,255,255 15=255,255,255 16=255,255,255 17=255,255,255 18=255,255,255 19=255,255,255 20=255,100,50 21=100,100,150 22=40,40,70 23=40,40,70

Those three different numbers are RGB values for different colors. (255,255,255 is white, and 0,0,0 equals black.)

Try changing the RGB values. For example, if you changed every one of the RBGs to 40, 40, 70, it would always be night in the game. If you changed all the RBGs to 255,250,250, it would always be day.

After your done, save the notepad and open the game to see how your editting effected the light.

If anything needs to be explained better, just tell me.