Calling all programmers! New SEIV project needs you!

[cswiger]

Originally posted by capnq:
I can't seem to find the SE IV EULA, but depending on how it's worded, and if you live in a state that has passed the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), reverse engineering the program may be illegal, as well.

Reverse engineering is a complicated topic, and the fact that the author encourages "mods" means that the interfaces represented by the public datafiles constitutes a public AI. Of course, Aaron owns the rights to both SEIV as a game, and the _data_ contained within those files, no questions about that, just as every individual mod author deserves credit for their own work.

In other words, writing a copy of the game and shipping the data files, images, or what have you from SE4 would not be okay. Aaron deserves to be paid for his work, and anyone changing SE4 should have paid for a copy. But it is okay to create changes to the data and ship those changes to other legitimate owners of the game-- that's what mods are, after all. :-)

Anyway, I haven't been wasting time-- I've been doing some coding myself. I need to clean it up and get my log4j stuff sane, but I'll try to put it on the web later today or tomorrow. Anyway, what I've written is a "universal SE4 data parser" which stores data in a LinkedHashMap for preserving item order, yet permits fast Queries.

It can also read data from several mods at once, keeping each "mod" or World seperate so that you can compare them in different ways. I'll include the output below, which shows each file, how many items per file (ie, and how big each item is), and what the Name+Description of the first item in each file (if present, was).

-Chuck

Path = d:\games\Space Empires IV Gold\Data
number of files under 'Data': 27
Path = d:\games\Space Empires IV Gold\Chuck_Baseline\Data
number of files under 'Chuck_Baseline\Data': 27
Path = d:\games\Space Empires IV Gold\Derek's Mod\Data
number of files under 'Derek's Mod\Data': 28
Path = d:\games\Space Empires IV Gold\DevnullModGold\Data
number of files under 'DevnullModGold\Data': 28
Path = d:\games\Space Empires IV Gold\Pirates&NomadsV3.0\Data
number of files under 'Pirates&NomadsV3.0\Data': 29
Path = d:\games\Space Empires IV Gold\TDM-ModPack_310\Data
number of files under 'TDM-ModPack_310\Data': 28
EmpireTypes.txt, line #23!nSI: blank line found in a mono-tuple list

Main: World 'Data' being loaded, parsed, & reset.
world.reset() on 'Data'

Filename:
Data\Abilities.txt item count: 139 item size: 1

Data\CompEnhancement.txt item count: 10 item size: 14
Larger sized weapon mount which increases damage from the weapon by 2 times. Req
uires a vehicle size of at least 400kT. Can only be used on Direct Fire weapons.

Data\Components.txt item count: 487 item size: 28
'Rock Colony': Materials needed to start a colony on a rock planet.

Data\Cultures.txt item count: 14 item size: 12
'Neutral': A race with no specific advantages or disadvantages.

Data\DefaultColonyTypes.txt item count: 8 item size: 1
'Military Installation':
Data\DefaultDesignTypes.txt item count: 23 item size: 1
'Attack Ship':
Data\DefaultStrategies.txt item count: 10 item size: 49
'Optimal Firing Range':
Data\Demeanors.txt item count: 8 item size: 1

Data\EmperorNames.txt item count: 26 item size: 1

Data\EmperorTitles.txt item count: 27 item size: 1

Data\EmpireTypes.txt item count: 14 item size: 1

Data\Events.txt item count: 17 item size: 10

Data\Facility.txt item count: 149 item size: 18
'Mineral Miner Facility I': Large scale planet processor which mines minerals fr
om the deepest layers.

Data\Formations.txt item count: 10 item size: 69
'Arrowhead': Formation with the leader at point position and all other ships ali
gned in a "V" shape behind him.

Data\Happiness.txt item count: 3 item size: 42
'Peaceful': Populations respond well to good events such as ships being construc
ted, colonies being created, Partnership treaties, etc. [ ... ]