Modding Tool

[DavidG]

After recently writing a program that would display all the techs/components/facilites is a window with info about them and links to required techs or resulting components/facilites etc. it occured to me that it would be fairly easy to moddify the program so it could be used to customize the data files. ie required techs or abilites could be selected from a pull down list etc. The question is does such a program already exist and if not would anyone find it usefull?

here is the link to the program I wrote:

Link for just the exe file if you alreadly loaded it before:
Viewer EXE only

Link with install program:
Component/Facility/Tech Viewer

[ June 08, 2002, 12:48: Message edited by: DavidG ]

[Gandalph]

Absolutely useful, and some attempts have been made, none of whitch run properly on my system, so I welcome a new addition.

[Gimboid]

Similar Programs have been done before, but none modify components and facilities at the same time...

There is Krsqk's editor, which is useful for creating a multiple component set (such as mega meson bLasters 1-5).

Krsqk's Editor

There is the editor that is on the SEIV Gold CD. that is useful only for creating new components from scratch it does not show u the entire tech tree though (neither does Krsqk)

Then Lastly there is my component editing program. It shows u the entire component tree, lets u view/edit components and has features similar to the ones u have nominated. It does not show the facilities tree, but does read in the abilities.txt and techareas.txt files for loading on drop lists when u are using the program.

My component editor

Take a look at the ones ive mentioned, and by all means create your own editor if you wish. You might think of a few ideas after looking at the other programs, and even if your program isnt commonly used u might have fun making it anyway...i personally found making my program was quite interesting and enjoyable

[Gimboid]

Originally posted by Gandalph:
Absolutely useful, and some attempts have been made, none of whitch run properly on my system, so I welcome a new addition.

What exactly went wrong when u tried using any of the modding programs on your machine?

[Gandalph]

Gimboid,

It is actually your program that will not work for me. The error I get is this.

The other programs just don't do as much as I would like, so I have been doing everything by hand.

[DavidG]

Originally posted by Gandalph:
Gimboid,

It is actually your program that will not work for me. The error I get is this.

The other programs just don't do as much as I would like, so I have been doing everything by hand.

I tried it and got a similar error. After reading the readme :-) and then putting the program in the data directory as instructed it worked OK

[Gimboid]

My program tries to read in the abilities.txt, components.txt and techareas.txt files from the same directory as the program is placed.

If it cannot find them u will get exactly the error u mentioned because the file IO operations it attempts will not work because the files cannot be found

i could make it gracefully exit... with some sort of popup saying cannot do anything because file not found, but i neglected todo that and instead chose to add the warning in the readme file instead.

[Gandalph]

Hey, it worked. I guess you can tell that I am a "when all else fails RTFM" kind of guy.