Tribes 2 // Mod Development Handbook GitHub

63 · Metallic Construction 1.4 Beta

A Construction fork that pushed hardest on building features — warp gates, transport pads, manned and automated turrets, new vehicles — while beginning to pull RPG structure into a sandbox builder.

   
Base Construction 0.69a
Scripts 153 .cs — 42 identical to base (38 %), 52 changed, 59 new, 16 removed
Size 165 files, 3.3 MB
Installs as GameData/Construction/
Own version line 1.3.5 → 1.3.8 → 1.4 Beta

Lineage

Metallic states its base explicitly. Its inherited Version-history.txt carries Construction’s history with a line inserted at the top [mod-script]:

**********************0.70 Alpha**********************
Community release.


***Metallic based off 0.69, switch to Readme.txt for Metallic info. ***

That is a clean piece of fork hygiene worth copying: the inherited changelog says where the fork diverged and where its own history lives, so a reader is never confused about which project a given entry belongs to. Most of the other forks in this family do not do this.

Fingerprinting confirms it — 42 of 0.69a’s .cs files survive byte-identical, more than for 0.68a (34) or 0.70a (29).

What it added

Readme.txt is Metallic’s own changelog, running 1.3.5 → 1.4 [mod-script]. New files by area:

An Other/ helper tree

Metallic introduces a directory the base does not have [mod-script]:

Other/chatcommands.cs        Other/misc.cs
Other/ObjectiveFunctions.cs  Other/warpgatefuncitons.cs
Other/rpgCC.cs

Splitting helpers out of the shadowed base files is a sensible fork practice — it keeps your code identifiable against a 27-file shadowed surface. Note rpgCC.cs: RPG chat commands, the first sign of the role-play direction several of these forks took.

Warp gates and transport pads

packs/warpGate.cs      Other/warpgatefuncitons.cs
packs/transpad.cs      packs/transpadmod.cs

Construction 0.69a already had teleporters with 40 frequencies (Building systems). Metallic adds a second, distinct movement system alongside them.

Turret variety

turrets/mturret.cs          manned turret — "new manned turret" (v1.3.5) [mod-script]
turrets/repairturret.cs     automated repair
packs/projoturret.cs        projector turret

Vehicles

vehicles/vehicle_betsy.cs
vehicles/vehicle_SkyBase.cs
vehicles/vehicle_Scorpion.cs

vehicle_SkyBase.cs is the interesting one for a building mod — a flying platform is construction infrastructure, not transport.

Other additions

File Purpose
commanderMap.cs Restores the command map, which base Construction does not ship
weapons/GraveLauncher.cs New weapon
message.cs Message-system override — added by nearly every fork in this family
do_not_delete/Dfunctions.cs Inherited from base

Its own changelog, read closely

Metallic’s Readme.txt is unusually candid [mod-script]:

**********************Metallic v1.3.8*******************
-Bug fixes

-Objective pack currently not working (can't remove it with the tool either)

-Some vocabulary fixed

“can’t remove it with the tool either” is the $ReverseDeployItem registration gap described in Building systems — a deployable added without its reverse-deploy entry cannot be removed by the Construction Tool. The author shipped it knowing it was broken and documented the symptom precisely. It is the single most common Construction-fork bug and here it is in the wild.

Later entries show the feature direction [mod-script]:

-test door can now swap skin like normal pads
-vehicle switch added: same as a switch but will be toggled by vehicle
-new decorations: all vehicle shapes and some others
-decorations whit target can now scale
-decorations whit targets now have power modes
-new funcitons to change the owner of peices

Three themes: decoration as a first-class concern (vehicle shapes repurposed as scenery), power modes extended to decorative objects, and ownership transfer — the last being a direct response to the GUID-ownership system 0.68a introduced. On a persistent build server, “I built this but want to hand it over” is a real need that the base mod did not serve.

What it removed

16 base .cs files are gone. Combined with 52 changed, Metallic is a moderate-to-heavy fork — it reworked a substantial part of the base rather than layering on top. Merging Metallic features into another fork would be manual work.

For someone working on it

The extension checklist from Building systems applies unchanged. Metallic-specific notes:

  • Put new helpers in Other/. The convention already exists; use it rather than growing shadowed files.
  • Check $ReverseDeployItem first when a piece will not deconstruct — the objective pack shipped broken for exactly this reason.
  • Readme.txt is Metallic’s changelog; Version-history.txt is Construction’s. Do not mix them.