In Enraged Koala, we can attach a tech to a piece of equipment using the new "techModule" field, which takes a string containing the absolute path to the .tech file, like so: Code: "techModule" : "/tech/multijump/doublejump.tech" I know what you're thinking. "We can equip multiple items with techs to have multiple techs active at once! This is awesome!" This next part is where you feel disappointed. You can still only have one tech active at any time. You still select your one active tech from the 4 tech slots, but the slots are filled with techs from the following sources, in order: Equipped Techs (equipped at the Tech Station) Head Back Chest Legs Any techs added from equipment still show up as an empty slot (probably a bug), but you can select that slot to activate the tech. If you have no techs equipped, and a tech attached to every equipped item, the 4 seemingly-empty slots correspond to the tech on your head, back, chest, and legs, respectively. If you have any techs equipped, they'll "push" equipment tech slots back, potentially past the 4 selectable slots. With 4 techs equipped, you cannot access any equipment tech slots. The fact that we don't have 8 slots to pick from is probably also a bug. (Un)equipping something with a tech attached seems to "re-initialize" your techs, as if you just changed them at the Tech Station; this forces your tech selection back to the first tech slot, which means you'll need to re-select the tech you want to use. This also wipes out any tech-specific stored data, though I'm not sure many techs even take advantage of it. So, we don't get multiple techs yet, but at least we can sorta carry around extra techs, at the cost of a little inconvenience to carry, swap, and select them. For anyone curious, overriding techModule in a call to spawnItem does let you attach a tech to any existing piece of equipment. This at least lets us attach an arbitrary tech to arbitrary pieces of equipment without worrying about merging and conflicts, which is pretty handy. Still doesn't let us use multiple techs at once, though. To be honest, the whole techs-on-equipment system seems buggy and incomplete, and I'm not even sure if we're supposed to be able to use it yet. Maybe we will be able to have multiple active techs, once it's actually working properly. I guess we'll see if the devs have anything to say about it...
I don't think they are fully planning on implementing a multiple tech system. I do remember faintly their solution to the problem is some sort of "Tech heiarchy" system. Where you can put a "priorities" for tech use. Something along the lines. Though I don't see how that would work effectively. But thanks for the update information - as for "spawnitem call" do you mean through LUA to spawn a tech directly onto the armor?
They always intended to allow multiple techs to be used at the same time, but some techs use keys or affect players in ways that conflict with other techs, which means they needed to add some system to ensure conflicting techs would be disabled. We haven't gotten that system yet, but the ability to add techs to equipment sounded like a decent compromise: we could make equipment with techs that were unlikely to conflict, and players could still pick a single more sophisticated tech from the ones they have equipped. As it turns out, that is not what we got. At least, it isn't yet. Yes, spawnItem is a Lua function. You can spawn equipment items with techModule set to whatever tech you want them to provide.
Oh I was hoping you we finally had access to the inventory and we could spawn the Tech directly into the armor. Oh well. I will see if i can pull up the quote about the tech thing. I do remember one of the devs talking about it. Their solution wasn't all techs available at once. But techs being available but are fired one after another. Something strange along those lines You order them 1. Double jump 2. Dash 3. Bubble Then fires the tech in that order.
They could get around this by making techs granted by equippable items passive-only. There are plenty of badass passive tech possibilities.
But "all techs available at once" is exactly what that is - you just aren't using all of them simultaneously, because that would be ridiculous. The system you're thinking of is intended for solving conflicts with stuff like Double Jump and Bubble Boost - they're both activated by pressing the jump key while in the air, so you would want the first press to activate Double Jump, and then the second press to engage Bubble Boost. It will probably require changes to the way techs are coded, because they're currently designed around the idea of one active tech. There are techs that would cooperate just fine with the current design, however, and we want to be able to have multiple of those techs active at once... but they won't let us. There's currently no distinction for "passive" techs - every tech, regardless of how sophisticated it is, is just a lump of code that does stuff. Since there aren't any vanilla items that provide techs, though, they can simply rely on modders being smart enough to avoid doing things that would cause problems, like they always have.
I'm not claiming there is one. it's an idea for a way to have tech on armor that makes sense with the current tech GUI. If you have 4 techs equipped, and somebody doesn't explain the situation to you, techs granted by armor are effectively hidden. If they were passive, there'd be no need to select the tech at all, eliminating the current hassle.
Thanks for posting this. I've been too busy to delve into the details of the new functionality. I'm not surprised that it's incomplete and perhaps not even fully designed yet. I think what modders really want is tech abilities separated from the "tech" requirement so we can have the ability to move the player and so on without all the jibber jabber. Of course, with multiple mods fighting over player movement and key input, this could become a very muddy, buggy snafu, and this is probably why techs are kind of a mess at the moment.
