Babylon 5 Mod

[Fyron]

The original data files were generated from an excel spreadsheet by Val oh so many years ago. Not sure what Pathfinder, Grumbler and Timstone do though.

The seeker speed thing isn't an error to SE4, so much as redundant. Perhaps report it as a warning?

The ability 0s and tech req area 0s are apparently safely ignored by SE4. Perhaps report them as warnings as well?

[Fyron]

Oh wow... trimming off those pointless ability and tech req lines reduced the file size by 0.9 MB!

[Wenin]

.9 MB is right =)

It's about 40,000 lines removed from the file. That's just to many "warnings". I'd rather just promote the removal of such data to speed up downloads and faster SE4 load times.

Since the file was essentially created from hand, then I won't worry about it.

[Fyron]

Just keep in mind that Num Abilities being less than the number of (valid entries for) abilities present is not always an error (same with tech reqs). That part should be treated as a warning, since it is commonly used by modders to "remove" such entries without actually removing them. Of course, having parameters to treat them as errors to be fixed, as warnings, or to just ignore them would be handy. But this is probably a discussion for another thread.

[grumbler]

The components.txt file was created essentially by hand and then copy/pasted as needed, followed by the search and destroy to make components specialized where needed.

In general, I left in 3 tech and 3 capabilities per component even when one or two were used because it is a lot easier to tajke them out at the end than to add them in when you need them and they are not there. Efficiency was not a high priority for the beta version.

Insofar as I know, no one is developing this mod any more. We are awaiting SE5. The Vorlon problem is solved by deleting their AI_research.txt file in the folder labelled Vorlons. They should not do any research - they are First Ones and no longer bother with such issues. By using the default AI_research.txt they will essentially discover nothing. Remember that they are not considered a human-playable race (and would be overwhelmingly powerful if so played).

[Wenin]

The data checker helped me locate more than 46,000 lines of either needless data or improperly formatted data. Removing this data shrunk the file from 10.4 MB to 9.28. =)

In the future I'll likely add the option to ignore those issues, so that the data checker is more useful during a Mod's creation.

[Wenin]

Thanks for the fix on the Vorlons.

[Fyron]

That will not really fix the Vorlons though. They will then try to use the Vorlon research file from the stock Vorlons folder if you have the race installed there. You need an empty research file (empty of entries, not so much file headers/footers) in the B5 Mod's Vorlons folder instead.

[Wenin]

I'm not following you Fyron. He said delete the Vorlon Research file. That will make them use the default one, which will apparently give them no new advancements.

[Fyron]

Missing AI files will be imported from the SE4\Pictures\Races\Racename folder before the Modname\AI folder will come into consideration. Modname\AI is only used if the stock Racename folder is also missing the AI files (or it doesn't exist in the first place).

If you do not have a Vorlon or Shadows set installed in your stock folder, and never, ever plan to, then deleting their AI Research files from the B5 Mod folders will work. But if you have these shipsets installed, you will create a new set of problems created by stock AI Research files being used in the B5 Mod.

Thus, for a complete solution you want to have a Vorlon_AI_Research.txt file in the B5 Mod folder that has nothing between the BEGIN and END blocks. This is the only surefire way to make sure they won't research anything non-existent.