Take a look at the mod PDF file. Bascically the ConvertXSI is to convert 3d models from XSI into the mesh format. The ConvertData is used to convert the files into binary I believe to make them load faster in the game.

The PDF file should explain some things on how they work.

QFT!

Blair, let everyone know they ROCK!

Everything is very much appriciated.

blair... i could almost hug you... but your on the other side of the world. anyway im extremley happy cos now i can get some of inerts exelant models in game. mmm models

Thanks
Now going to sinfully mod that game.

I don't know about games you've played but most games i have modded allow for more than one mod running at once as long as the same files are not edited, and if they edited you could just merge the two, but then again maybe i'm just too used to how modding works in the Elder Scrolls Oblivion. Still in Sins you can run more than one mod as long as you overwrite your original files in your Install Directory. This would just take the user knowing not to overwrite files from one mod from another before merging the two.

Maybe some poor fool who knows programming could even make a tool that can package and install a mod while keeping track of what files were edited by what, so when another mod is installed the user would know if it had conflicts or not. Using a tool such as this would allow multiple mods to be installed without ever the need of using the Mod Folder which is pointless now anyways.

Thanks for the tools

I am not sure I understand - I can't think of any modable game which does not have a simmilar system in place. Take Oblivion, a VERY modable game - a custom mod manager had to be written by the community precisely for the reasons you describe, to mix and match mods. Even with that, if two mods modify same files, they can not be played together at the same time.

IF we take your situation, you can release your mod in modules, for example enhancing skyboxes, ships, gameplay etc. and as long as other mods do not modify the same files as yours do, you should be fine, they can all be installed in one folder.

Also, in other modding communities, it is normal that modders put extra effort into combining various popular mods into one big mod, precisely for this reason - people would like to play them all and they can't because of conflicts, so they have to be manually integrated.

The third party mod manager for oblivion only helps to install mods without conflicts, oblivion itself will run multiple mods and depending on the order the mods load the latest mod will overwrite any conflicting mods that is loaded before it, you just have to modify the load list. The mod manager only helps to detect conflicts and helps to install mods in a certain order so users don't have to manually edit the load list, and i think the latest version of the mod manager will even combine conflicting mods files such as the leveled lists etc, etc or this may be a seperate program i'm not sure it's been a bit since i modded in oblivion.

something of this type of tool will probably be needed with sins also, i know of a generic mod tool that is designed to work with multiple games which when i get home from work i may test this tool out for sins and see if it works. But my point remains about the mod folder is useless all it is there for is just to use up space since every single gamefile will have to be copied over to the mod folder, might as else just modify the original files with a tool that will back it up before each mod is enabled with the tool.

Example
mod 1 with tool back ups all original files,
mod 2 with tool back ups all files modified with mod 1
mod 3 with tool back ups all files modified with mod 1 & 2
and so on, all the while watching out for conflicts between all mods enabled.
Only catch is to uninstall you just uninstall mod 3 first, then 2, then 1, and you are back to original. This is the way most third party mod enablers work, atleast the ones i've seen.

I also am familiar with this type of modding, which my Sins Enhanced seems more than likely now going to be a Compilation Mod with my changes and other modder changes that i personally would want to play along with mine due to the fact mod enabling works in sins. I'm probably going to throw the modular mod structure out the window though. I will have to think about it for awhile.

X-mas came real early this year; well almost, I really want the Ultra High Resolution Graphics Pack (UHRGP) and the Tesla.

Thanks so much for this package!

Blair (and the whole team),

THANK YOU!

...

Ahem, I mean, thank you kindly for making the mod tools and un-binary'd .entity files available to us within a week of release.

Other than Oblivion and Supreme Commander, I can't think of any games that allow multiple mods to run without a lot of work. And in the case of both games, modding takes a fair bit of work.

This design, on the other hand, is easy, used by one of the most moddable games I know (Space Empires), and has some good reasoning behind it. As one of the devs themselves puts it, "how can the game know if you deleted a given file meaning for it to not be used, or just didn't copy it over expecting it to be used from the base folder"?

well eventually there will be a third party mod manager made for sins to correct this issue, hell i am learning myself to program and may eventually write one if one doesn't pop by the time i feel i knew enough to do it and do it properly. using a mod manager as i described above with the examples would take care of it.

As i said previously i know of third party generic mod enabler that is design to work with multiple games, i would just have to test it with sins and get permission from the author to allow it's use for sins if it works. I may test this tonight if i can find it again, will have to dig through my links from my modding days of Silent Hunter IV.

Silent Hunter one of my favorite sims of all time (My user name in that community is Samurai). To bad Ubi killed it for me with bullshit DRM. I was really into modding it for some time. Hell we even made a hires pack for it after the developers said it could not be done without a major rewrite of code and some other excuses.

In case anyone is intrested I have put up a fourm at pinkspaceponies.com were we can share code changes and upload our mods for testing and such...

Only thing I've tried to mod so far would be textures, and all I've done there is change lasers to white and autocannons to a dark red, along with tinting the phase jump to red. Hahah.

As soon as I get home from work, I'm going to be making carriers that do a lot more, um carrying. At least for TEC. 2 for the cruisers, 3 starting for the Sova-- and 1 (1.5?) new squad with every level. The Kol will start with 1, and gain .5 every level.

Can you tell I like the strike craft?

I need to start trying to import models. See if that works as intended. Need to figure XSI Mod Tool out first though. Should be quite interesting to experiment with Sins. Cant wait for the more complete tools that will come later down the road.

Wonderful, thanks a lot for the valued effort. Keep up the good work!

There is a bug in 1.02 that requires you to copy every texture into your mod directory if you want new textures. This will be fixed in 1.03.

There is also a bug in 1.02 that will cause all particle effects to not show up and has a high chance the game will crash when you load the mod after the game is started. To get around this turn on "Load Mod on Startup" and start the game up again.

This will be fixed in 1.03.

A shiny donkey* to the first guy who posts screens of new ships in game!

*donkey may be dead, imaginary, or both.

That was done a good two or three months ago.