The Patch!

[Baron Munchausen]

Take a copy of your original file, not your modifications, and a copy of the new file from the patch. Compare them with FC (a basic DOS command). Save the results to file, since it will be large:

FC file1.txt file2.txt > differences

Load the differences into a text editor and go over your modification in another editor. This is how I handle changes to the beta for my own custom data set. Yes, it's tedious but less tedious than comparing the whole files by eye.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 22 November 2000).]

[SirDarwin]

Ok I've seem to have found a bug in the game.
I started a new game, with low tech. I used a existing race I had created, it is a Gas/Oxygen. Now, when the game started up I thought there was a awfully lot of planets I could colonize...thats because it showed up the Rock planets as well, which needless to say I didn't have the technology for. Anyone else had this problem?

[Regul]

Hey, great work that you released the patch before thanksgiving...thank's!

R*

[weekend is saved...*eg*]

[LintMan]

Talenn -
I won't be back at work (where my unix machine is that I was going to use to batch-diff the data files) until Monday, and that's probably a long time to wait for the info. But Baron Munchausen's post below points out how to do it yourself easily with the DOS fc command (which I had completely forgotten about). fc does essentially the same thing as the unix diff prog I was going to use, and is available to everyone and is actually a bit more readable.

Just compare the original 1.02 data files with the new 1.11 files to find out what the patch changes were. You can then also compare your modified data files with the 1.02 originals to make a list of all your changes.

Then you go through all those changes and compare them and merge the new patch stuff into your modified file (or merge your modifications into the new file if that would be easier). You're kinda stuck doing this Last part by hand, since there really isn't a way to fully automate the merge of your changes with the patch ones if there are conflicts.

[Jubala]

I see a perfect niche for a playercreated utility here. Comparing data files, listing differences and merging them and so on. Anyone up to actually coding it?

[Talenn]

LintMan and Baron:

Thanx alot for the help, guys! I was able to get it all taken care of tonight. But boy what a pain in the backside it was!

MM et al...in the future, would it be possible to make a list of at least which files contain changes? That would at least save us from having to go through and do a compare on every file that we may have ever touched just to make sure there are no changes.

Hopefully, the 'bulk' patch is behind us now and any future patches and upgrades will be easier to implement with existing mods. I hope so as one of the greatest strengths of the SE series IMO is the ability to customize so easily. I'd hate to see it become a major chore every time a patch is released.

BUT..that said...great job so far. I am really enjoying the game. I think I have almost as much fun tweaking and moding as I do playing! Well, maybe not quite.

Thanx again,
Talenn

[WendellM]

Talenn's problem (integrating modified items into patched data files such as Components.txt) led me to think about this matter (since I plan on creating modified or completely new data files).

As I see it, there are three ways to mod (restricted to Components for simplicity of this discussion; of course other things can be mod-ed): (1) create new components, (2) modify existing components, (3) delete unwanted components.

(1) is fairly simple: just add in your new items to the updated file. The only real complication is placing your items where you want them to appear relative to other items, since the file order seems reflected in the build/display order in the game. A possible solution would be naming the component which the new one would appear before or after.

To make (2) easier, the SE program could be modified to only allow one Version of a named component. So, when it reads in Component.txt, it compares each entry to all that have come before. If it encounters the same name ("Depleted Uranium Cannon I" for example), it replaces the previously read data with the new data (this is pretty easy to do - currently it just adds a new entry with the same name, but with the new stats.)

(3) can currently (and clumsily) be done by externally searching for what you don't want allow, and deleting those items. This could be automated by having a "Delete" entry that looks for the specified name among the earlier-read Component.txt entries and "forgets" the ones specified.

If this were done, mod-ers could just add their mod (add/modify/delete) items to the end of the updated data files, and these items would supersede the data from the Last patch. These "change" files could be updated for newer Versions of the data files with relatively minor changes.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts on possible solutions for what they're worth.

Wendell