SE4 Modder Ver 1.76 (updated for ver 1.91) - Page 7

Baron Munchausen · #61 September 1st, 2002, 04:31 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by DavidG:
Thanks for all the positive feedback (without which I'd likely lose the motiviation to keep working on it)

P.S. Any suggestion on what I can add next. I guess Races is the obvious one but man some of those files are long and complicated.

P.S.S. Any VB programers know if VB has a limit of the number of controls you can have in an app?

The 'obvious' next utility might not be so easy. We really need a formation editor that can handle the new 100 ships limit. Manually laying out a formation and writing the X/Y coordinates is a royal pain even for the old 30 ship limit. Now it's 100!? Eek!

The formation editor that was available previously (might still be in the download area?) worked well enough. It let you use a 'click & drag' interface to position the ships. It's just not able to handle 100 ships and the author refuses to try to update it.

[ September 01, 2002, 03:32: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Nebraskan · #62 September 1st, 2002, 04:04 PM

DavidG, I love your SEModder 1.5 and am starting my own mod. I have a question though.

On the left side a tree is displayed where you select the part you want to mod. One branch of that tree is Races, but you cannot alter anything in those Races files. Is this function not yet incorporated? If it is not do you plan to incorporate at some future date?

Thank you for an excellent modding tool.

DavidG · #63 September 1st, 2002, 04:29 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Nebraskan:
DavidG, I love your SEModder 1.5 and am starting my own mod. I have a question though.

On the left side a tree is displayed where you select the part you want to mod. One branch of that tree is Races, but you cannot alter anything in those Races files. Is this function not yet incorporated? If it is not do you plan to incorporate at some future date?

Thank you for an excellent modding tool.

hehe. I actually meant to hide that when I compiled the final ver 1.5. Ooops. I was thinking about incorporating Races but after taking a closer look at the Race .txt files they seem insanely complex compared to the data txt files so i'm not sure. I think for the imediate future I'll add some more of the txt files in the data directory like formations.txt and maybe the settings.txt

Nebraskan · #64 September 1st, 2002, 10:12 PM

DavidG, I am further along on my mod now and have found a problem area, not critical, but needs some improvement.

I was making a new set of weapons just for bases and weapons platforms. The first weapon was Base Point Defense. I used the ship point defense as a template to make the first Base PD. Saved that and went to the new listing at the bottom of the weapons list. I wanted to make a group of 5 so I used the create group button with the Base PD still highlighted. It asked for the damage increase percentage, I put in 25. For the range increase I put 1. My original Base PD had a range of 8, damage at all ranges 60. After clicking OK I watched the group files added to the weapons list, neat

. I then went and looked at the 4 new listings. Mostly good but the damage at range was not what I was expecting. The original was 60,60,60,60,60,60,60,60 and I was expecting 75,75,75,75,75,75,75,75,75 what I got was 75,75,60,60,60,60,60,60 you can see what happened. It did not increase the max range only the range of increased damage. Is this how it was intended or a programming error or oversight?

I still love SE4Modder but you asked for any errors or suggestions. I think you need to add a couple of controls on the Group window, one for setting damage to increase the same over the whole range of the weapon or incrementally. Another for the range, increase max range or just damage increase range.

Again thank you for an excellent modding tool.

Harold

Nebraskan · #65 September 2nd, 2002, 02:57 AM

DavidG, I'm sorry, I think I found another slight problem. Please don't yell at me.

I was changing system types to how I want them and those that I changed moved the suns and I did not realize it. Evidently when SE4Modder loads in the system types file it assigns Coord X,Y to the suns. However in only uses a valid number for X, Y is set to 0. I did not notice this and when I started a game I had some binary and trinary systems with all the stars in the 0,0 coordinant not down near 6,6 where they should have been. Now I'm really confused because I went back to SE4Modder and looked at the binary and trunary system types and the suns were set to coord 7,0 or 5,0 or 6,0 something like that but they were at 0,0 when I went into Mapmaker to lood at the systems in the quadrent.

Just thought I should alert you to this little minor strange problem.

Please keep fixing these minor problems and very soon this will be the Ultimate Modding Tool for SE4. Thank you

Harold

DavidG · #66 September 2nd, 2002, 03:11 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Nebraskan:
DavidG, I'm sorry, I think I found another slight problem. Please don't yell at me.

Harold

No worries. I like solving problems. means people are using the program

The problem with the systems was it wasn't saving the Y coord at all. in the txt File it would read "Coord 1" Since this is invalid I guess SE4 didn't know where to put the sun so put it in the corner. I've fixed this and I'll look at the other thing and post a fix soon.

DavidG · #67 September 2nd, 2002, 08:00 PM

Uploaded a Version that fixes the bugs mentioned by Nebraskan. As far as the Create Family goes it currently works like this:

A damage at range of:
60 60 60 60 60 60 60
using Nebraskan's example will in Level 2 become:
75 75 75 75 75 75 75 60

Various weapons differ in what the damage of the extendeded range slots are. I may add some more options in the future but for now a little tweeking of the new componets may be needed after you use the Create Family command.

DavidG · #68 September 5th, 2002, 04:15 AM

New Version now with Formation Editor! Yes now you too can taunt your foe by arranging your ships into rude words.

Ships (up to 99) can by positioned by dragging and dropping. To delete a ship select it (selected ship turns red) and hit delete button.

Currently the 'Design Type' field is set as 'Any' for all ships mostly becuase I don't know what the vailid values are. so if someone can tell me I'll see if I can add that.

[ September 05, 2002, 03:17: Message edited by: DavidG ]

Krsqk · #69 September 5th, 2002, 04:44 AM

Quote:

Currently the 'Design Type' field is set as 'Any'

AFAIK, design types would correspond to the AI_DesignCreation.txt files. Although you could probably put in any vehicle type there (useful for modders who create unique formations for their race), it would probably be best to stick to the default types. Also, the game seems to accept comma-delimited lists of types (see Dark Wing formation in TDM-modpack for example). Maybe a list box with toggle-able items would work here.

Quote:

P.S.S. Any VB programers know if VB has a limit of the number of controls you can have in an app?

According to VB6 Professional Edition, limits are:
- 32,000 unique identifiers (anything named)
- no limit on objects in a project
- non-graphical controls (all but label, line, image, and shape) limited by available system resources
- 254 control names per form
- control array indexes 0 through 32767 (counts as a single control name)
- 25 levels of nested controls (frames in frames in frames...)

The biggest hurdle seems to be the control names per form, unless you like piling everything into control arrays with lots of Select Case statements.

[ September 05, 2002, 03:51: Message edited by: Krsqk ]

Baron Munchausen · #70 September 5th, 2002, 04:58 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by DavidG:
New Version now with Formation Editor! Yes now you too can taunt your foe by arranging your ships into rude words.

Ships (up to 99) can by positioned by dragging and dropping. To delete a ship select it (selected ship turns red) and hit delete button.

Currently the 'Design Type' field is set as 'Any' for all ships mostly becuase I don't know what the vailid values are. so if someone can tell me I'll see if I can add that.

The design type can be any text string, as far as I know. But you're probably best off sticking with the default types that the AI recognizes, as Krsqk said. Attack Ship, Defense Ship, Attack Base(ship), Troop Transport, etc.

I'll have to try this out now. Oh, and one annoying thing about the default behavior of the modder: Why does it have to make all those backup files in the same directory with your data files? Can't it put them in some other specified directory? I like to be able to zip up my data files into a neat package but I have to delete or move all those backups if I use this modder. If it would keep them in another location this owuld be much more convenient.

[ September 05, 2002, 03:59: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]