Merging mods

Ha, won't be my mods per chance?

There is no easy way of doing it currently, which is a shame. I'm sure in the future the devs may release something to aid us here, or possibly a public programmer.

If those are my first 2 mods you speak of, then you are in luck, I have merged these already for my future project (More planets and Bonuses in the same mod). I will upload it now for you, rapidshare usually takes about 20 minutes for a file this size, so I'll post back when its done. When doing mods I leave all the new text at the bottom of the file I am working on, so it can be easily separated from the original text. That is assuming that you were talking about my mods, because if you weren't, I look like a fool now

Edit:
Rapidshare Link
There's no readme, but I think you know what to do, just the same as the other mods, copy in the entire Textures folder first, then add the modded files to it. It should work ok, if not, just give me a shout.

Okay, thanks Well thats a couple on the list to merge, haha

I think THIS was the target you originally intended, thanks for the repack, I am definately looking forward to more content from you.

Sh*t. Thanks cniesig, I missed that totally. The link function adds a http at the beginning of what you type I think.

Yeah. Hopefully a mod manager will be possible. Programatically speaking, it would take something that could load the entire base values (or with things like textures and meshes make sure that they exits) and know what it all means, be able the compare the mods for changes against the base and each other for conflicts (one of the promissed features of 1.03 will help out with this piece a lot), then be able to write the new mod into the mod directory. Now after writing the English.str editor, I'm already daunted by the thought of all of that. If the program could do all of that, what's to keep it from just becoming a full mod editor?

In theory, merging mods should be easy if they're designed cleanly to begin with. Shared files between different mods will be a nightmare, but if each mod has unique files (other than English.str) obviously, merging them is a piece of cake.

I would definitely encourage people to create new files for all of their work instead of just modifying and overwriting the existing, that will making merging much easier.

It would be help if the modders would state the changed files or just pack the changed files.

At the end of the day, it depends on the complexity of the mod. Total Conversions, even merged with the most basic mods would require a lot of work to do manually. With 2 simple mods it can be done with relative ease, but still requires time and effort.

Having all the strings in one large file I think was a blunder on the devs part. They could have done it like the Total War games, have all the string from one category in one file; units, buildings, abilities, user interface, etc. If a modder doesn't have the strings together, say at the bottom or top of the .str file, it would make merging a lot more time consuming.

While I'm on this point, I'd like to say that all my new strings are at the bottom of the file.

thanks for the merge of your mods...I e-mailed you recently about this..you didnt reply but I knwo your busy..this pretty much fixes my problem..thx again
-Dularaki

Just found your Email in the junk folder, which has to be the most poorly designed thing on Hotmail. I will reply tonight with how to reduce the number of effects the War Torn planet has.

Also, this is to everyone who is interested, the project I am doing now will be a merge and update of both my mods. Will probably take a week to complete.