Modmakers: Lessons Learned the Hard Way

Psientist · #1 July 19th, 2006, 07:09 PM

I'm grateful for what documentation there is for modmaking, but the absence of any kind of debugging tools and the fact there are gaping holes in the documentation require anything but the most simple modfications to require a lot of painful guesswork. I thought I'd share some of the things I figuree out after much effort, and maybe some of the other modmakers will do the same.

1. Make sure you have enough actual quest "events" to meet the "events" number in the distribution.ini file... or the mod will crash without a hint. E.g. if the "large" map calls for 5 events, make sure 5 event quests are available in the game.ini file!

2. Same for races - the distribution.ini file will designate a certain number of ALLYs and Enemies.

3. If your mod works on smaller map sizes but not larger, the problem might be #1 or #2. If the error is intermittent, it might also be a "STAR" or "planet" definition in one of your qeusts, which is only being called on larger maps because more such quests are trying to be randomly generated.

4. If your mod works on larger map sizes but not smaller, you might have too many "always" quests of certain types. I'm not certain of this, but it seemed to fix a problem for me.

Psientist · #2 July 19th, 2006, 07:11 PM

When defining custom missions, make certain there is a large enough range of JOBS scores to cover all difficulty levels. I found that if I set the IPAY value too high (above 1500), it can crash on some difficulty levels on startup.

I don't know why, but simply reducing the IPAY value seemed to fix it.

Psientist · #3 July 22nd, 2006, 02:23 PM

1. Devices can have PAGE commands in their DATA elements, including setting variables and other items from the quests guidelines such as setting variables available elsewhere in the mod. However, it does NOT support CONDITIONs but ignores them entirely.

2. Passengers can be created using the ITEM page command (see quest guidelines). However, they do NOT work with "haveitem" or "REMV" like other normal items. Sigh. Also, I think KEYS don't work with them.

Psientist · #4 July 26th, 2006, 01:58 PM

3. The "bitflags" in quests are VERY sensitive. If you repeat a PAGE 0, it will crash. If you skip from a REQ0 to a REQ3 without a REQ2, it may crash.

4. If you increase the DIFF settings in the distribution.ini file, make sure that you have enough extra difficulty levels in your fleet and home fleet definitions in the various race.ini files.

5. Technically a game bug, the "structural" flag in an item definition is supposed to make an item unremovable once it is installed in a ship. However, if you "swap" a structural item with another similar item (e.g., a structural drive with another drive, or a structural weapon with another weapon) it will let you, unfortunately (at least on the Mac).

flap · #5 November 22nd, 2006, 09:59 AM

Thanks for these bits of info.

As I started to mod a bit WW, I also designed a few debugging tools for my own use. I'll try to implement some tests according to your info. When I'll have something viewable, I'll release it.

Fingers · #6 November 29th, 2006, 07:45 PM

The thing about the page numbers is that they don't actually affect anything. You could just write the "PAGE" line without a number... When you use something like "GOTO 3" it'll just go to the fourth page defined in the file. The numbers are just there to help *you* remember which one is #3, assuming you keep them in order.

You can not add difficulty levels, there's only five (0-4). The map size difficulty modifier must be between 0 and 2. It is added to the number of enemies setting (also from 0 to 2) and the sum is used to pick the difficulty level.

The structural bug as well as being unable to remove passengers (and many other bugs) have been fixed in WW 1.2. The Win32 version is out, hopefully the OSX will be done soon.

The IPAY number is only used in the final score calculations in the end of the game, and it's a simple subtraction. Your crash must've been caused by something else.

Jamiri · #7 December 1st, 2006, 11:52 AM

Quote:

Psientist said:
5. Technically a game bug, the "structural" flag in an item definition is supposed to make an item unremovable once it is installed in a ship. However, if you "swap" a structural item with another similar item (e.g., a structural drive with another drive, or a structural weapon with another weapon) it will let you, unfortunately (at least on the Mac).

Fixed now in 1.2!