Creating new research and abilities

from Sins Forums

I've been trying to alter the three races from Sins by giving them some of each others research and abilities, and by creating some new research and abilities. The only thing that I've gotten to work is swapping some abilities. I had taken some Advent and Vasari research and placed it in the TEC research tree. I created new files off of the Advent/Vasari files, noted the new names in the PlayerTech file, noted them in the string file, and in the entity.manifest file. It should be noted this is being built off of the Mad Scientist mod. Now, for whoever made that mod, they placed all of the files they changed at the beginning of the string and entity manifest files. I did the same. The result was for all of the user interface buttons to say "string not found" and the game to minidump when I started an actual game. For further modding a mod, where should I place file names in the string and entity manifest files? Do they have to be in a particular order or in a particular location? Any help would be appreciated.

modding
2,679 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

where should I place file names in the string and entity manifest files? Do they have to be in a particular order or in a particular location?
End of quote

at the end of the file would be fine, but you will need to update the number of string lines and entity files to look for

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

aeyikanryar, the strings file and entity files do NOT have any particular sequencing but BOTH ARE EXTREMELY CASE SENSITIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a single case difference will cause a error in  the file.

it would be a good idea to co through each of the lines you added and check the case of EVERY LETTER.

for entity files I have released an entity maker that correctly builds any of the entity files you might want and it creates the entity files in alphabetic sequence.

and at present I am working on a strings checker/repairer, but it is still in early alpha state ie still trying to write the features I think will be needed do make it very useful.

harpo

 

 

SoundPackager - Customize the Windows sound scheme
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

I have been updating the string lines and entity files to look for. Maybe it will help to give a more specific example.

I just tried to create an ability for the TEC missile frigate based off of the Missile Barrage ability for the Marza. I renamed it missile swarm and corrected the ability, buff, and string files to reflect the new ability. From something I saw earlier, all mod files should have their accompanying effects files. The muzzle effect and hit effect files for this ability is already in the Mad Scientist mod. The sound files weren't, so I added them. Upon starting the game and trying to enable the mod, it froze. It wouldn't load the mod, but it didn't minidump, instead I had to reboot my computer. I'll double check the string and entity lines I added (BTW I added the lines I needed to alphabetically into the new lines that had been added for the Mad Scientest mod) for their case, but I'm simply adding lines to existing files from the Mad Scientist mod. I'll try again with the string and entity lines at the end, but I'm doubting it will work.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

I discovered what the problem was. The level requirement type was still set on "intrinsic" rather than "FixedLevel0". It's fixed now.