Custom Mod Troubleshooting/Tips for Beginners

from Sins Forums
Hey, I just wanted to post something of my own experience, born from an OMG moment when I was trying to get my mod to work, and it kept freezing.

My friend apparently did the same thing, so I figure I'll start off the thread with my specific mod learning points, and other people can add on.

Here are my things to start this off: 

- When changing angular speeds be very careful.  Change them by exact multipliers or else Sins flips out.  If you're wondering what of the dozens of things you changed in your frigate entity file that caused Sins to hang when applying the mod, check the angular speeds.

- Make sure it's in Mods/Modname/GameInfo.  If you're just putting the entity files and stuff in the modname folder, Sins will give you a valid checksum and pretend that it loaded it fine, but it didn't.  Yes, this is a noob mistake I made.
3,577 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
- ALWAYS check the 'Count' value and alter it when you add things to a list in any of the files. If you don't know what that is, above say, a list of upgrades for a planet, it will have 'StageCount #'. The number of stages below MUST reflect that number or your mod may crash, or just not pickup the changes.

General Rule of Modding
Check, Double check, and Triple check everything you do.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
-if you are changing a lot of stuff, keep a log of changes. You *will* forget what you changed and where eventually, and hunting one offending entry among dozens is complicated enough without you knowing what you should be looking at in the first place.
Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
To add to your tip Shooter:

-On top of keeping a change log, the safest bet is to make just a few changes at a time and test it to be sure that it doesn't crash the game.

I was playing around with the speed settings of a new Strike Craft class and went ahead and fleshed the whole thing out. On the next play test I went to build the new squad, but it cause a mini_dump. I painstakenly went through every piece I messed with to be sure I formatted it right. About 45 minutes latter I found I missed the end quote on my Ship's string value. I think the only reason it even loaded was because it was the very last one of the .str file.