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November 08, 2004 - 18:19
Correctly activating the Chameleon spy (with no bugs and FULL features)

This is NOT a tutorial for how to activate the chameleon spy
This IS a tutorial for things to consider when activating the chameleon spy and all the related issues.

Intro:
The Chameleon spy is an extremely cool unit which Westwood decided to cut from the game (for unknown reasons), the unit graphics feature in one mission (that i can think of offhand) and is called a "Scout"

Interesting facts:
Short and sweet, the Mutant Hijacker Cameo (Sidebar icon) is in fact the Chameleon Spies, the mutant Hijacker was originally on the mutants side, along with the mutant flamethrower (cut from game) and so on
"Mutant Commandos" (a special weapon [not really a weapon but reinforcements] for GDI that was cut from the game) and Mutants whereoriginally meant to play a much bigger part in TS

Spies abilities:
Infiltrates
Radar=Sees enemy map and what they explore See "Known Issues!"
Power plants=Sees how much power the enemy have and are using
Barracks/Warfactory/Helipad=Sees what enemy is building See "Known Issues"

Infiltrate any other buildings, and you have just wasted a spy matey, it does nothing

Known Issues:
Now to the base of this tutorial
1. Firstly, spies infiltrating Radars:
i would strongly suggest against this for multiplayer purposes, many bugs are attached e.g.

The effect is irreversable!
if player 'a' enters spy into player 'b's radar, not only does player 'a' get to see player 'b's radar and what they are exploring. But stupidly (even if they are your enemy) so do player 'c' 'd' 'e' 'f' and 'g' ......... and so on

Not many ppl know this (or didnt till recently, they may do now) I accidently stumbled upon these bugs, whilst testing pre 1.0 version of TSR (all those years ago)

2. Secondly infiltrating Factory type structures
Well you cant actually see what they heck the icon is, this is a pallete issue
It displays the icons in "Pallete.pal" and they are actually in "Cameo.pal"

Fixes:

1. My fix in TSR was to simply make NARADR and GARADR "Capturable=false"
The fact is, you either have Radars non capturable, or you have no Chameleon Spy (which is one of the most fun and unique units in the game

2. Ok alot of you guys out there starting or half way through a new mod aint gunna like this one, but as we all know TSR has new Hi-Res cameos...... these cameos all use a NEW Cameo.pal which is (yep you guessed it) exactly the same as the Pallete.pal (which is actually edited in TSR too so as to get more greens and so on)

And there you have it
I Chameleon spy fully working without any of those damn bugs
Remember Both
Cloaks= & Desguise= are both parsed in TS
You can use both of them too
The default desguise is (in good ol' RA1 fashion E1)

However using both those tags, makes the Spy just a litte TOO good (trust me i used to use both) and in mplay games its kinda dumb when you have explored all 3 of your opponents base 5 or so minets into the game, without them even seeing u!!

I would advise one or the other (although if u use Desguise=, the name "Spy" would make more sense than "Chameleon Spy" i think)


Thats all for now

-SMIFFGIG...