Assistance for mod?

from Sins Forums

Hey guys, I've been working on my own BSG mod for SOASE:E. I haven't posted anything of it yet as it's extremely early in development. Anyway, I've gotten one ship working in vanilla sins by using a tech ship's entity file [FrigateTechLight.entity] as a template. As I said, the ship works fine and does not conflict with the standard light tech frigate at all, so I know I've done everything right up to this point.

To adapt the ship for SOASE Entrenchment, I duplicated everything but used the newer entity file as a base instead, with a few stat changes from my original so the ship might be a little more balanced to my intent. I've written the entity.manifest file, the string file incorporating my two current ships is there as well. I have also updated the PlayerTech.entity file. And so at this point I'm a little lost as to what's conflicting... the game does a whole CTD with a dump and everything. I've tried EVERYTHING to get this to work and all I can seem to come up with is that it's some kind of problem with the gameinfo files I THINK and that's all... but what the problem might be, I'm completely clueless. Heck, it could even be something totally different. 

I've reworked this mod using the reference files for Entrenchment as templates for the entitys, string, and manifest files. Anyone have any ideas? I'm so lost and I wouldn't bother to post if I hadn't already gone and tried reaching the moon, so to speak.

modding
4,865 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

In these cases the dev.exe is your best friend (next to an experienced moder :thumbsup: ) You can find it in your install folder, open impulse right click on sins entrenchment and select application folder. The full name of the file is Sins of a Solar Empire Entrenchment dev.exe. The difference between this exe and the normal one is that this one, among other things, show error messeages which can greatly help debugging the mod.

btw did you use the forge tools 3 reference files? Thos are so old that calling them ancient wouldn't be a joke. These are the latest reference files: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/378266

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Well, with having a fair idea of how much is needed to add just a single ship to the game, there's a number of simple mistakes that could have been made as well.  Most of which tend to be little more then typos or minor oversights (like did you remember to adjust the count values where applicable in the files you altered?  Update your manifest files properly?).   Most of these simple mistakes should be caught by the dev.exe as well, though, so it really IS your best friend, like grunt said above.  Although it's unfortunately no guarantee that it won't still CTD with a minidump and no warning (how I wish we could just open the minidumps when that happens.) And yeah, definitely use the most current reference files, if you didn't just create your own the same way the ones in that link were (ie: harpo's textbinner tool).

If the dev.exe doesn't help, I'm pretty sure we'll help you figure out what went wrong, all the same.

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

well,if you need any other help with coding for the mod id be glad to help,can you post the mod somewhere and ill download it and see whats wrong??

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

I think I've figured it out actually, but I'll surely call upon your skills should it be needed later on. Turns out I've mixed and matched different files [vanilla sins/entrenchment entity files] without even realizing it... probably the product of my horrible organizational skills. [For serious, I've got files all over the place and I haven't even a clue what's what half the time... it's like my desk... a nightmare to keep organized on the best of days!] :P

Thanks for the suggestions with the dev exe, gunmaster1, it's been very helpful! :D methinks the biggest issue is the string file...

In thanks, I'll show you some shots of the ships in-game [though only half-working.... and the Valkyrie's textures aren't done by far.]

 

Valkyrie & heavy scout in-game

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Hey AeriesApocalypse. Feel free to look at eclipse and my sins entity editor tool ([Mod Utility] Entity Validation Tool now with Content Assitance and Syntax Coloring! (Release 8/24)). Let me know if you have any questions if you decide to use it. I find it incredibly valuable with the development of my mod and can't really see modding without it at this point.

- ZombiesRus5

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Whoa thanks, ZombieRus! That's an amazing tool, it's really something!