Special Component Hassle

[InaB77]

Hi there,

as the curious person i am i dove into Modding and created myself some SuperQuameno's

I ran across the following problem: Tried to add the Megatron Shields the Zenox's have as a starting Tech to my race by modifying this:

Code: Select all

 'Special Component: 0=None, 1=Death Ray, 2=Devastator Pulse, 3=Super Laser, 4=StarBurner, 5=TurboThruster, 6=Swift Vector, 7=Megatron, 8=NovaCore, 9=VelocityDrive, 10=ShadowGhost ECM, 11=Shaktur FireStorm, 12=High Density Fuel Cell, 13=S2F7 RepairBot, 14=PulseWave Cannon, 15=Raptor Targetting System
 SpecialComponent		;7
 

But for some reason i cant seem to get this to work. Does anybody know whats wrong there ?

Regards,
Ina

[Theluin]

The 7 needs to be before the semi-colon

[InaB77]

I disagree, in the races\zenox.txt file it looks exactly like posted above. All the values seem to be after the colons.

[Theluin]

Oh sorry my bad. I don't know why it doesn't work for you then. I compared the race file fragment you posted to the race file of the zenox with winmerge and it's exactly the same. Perhaps you pressed tab or enter right before or right after and that's why the game can't read it.

[InaB77]

Just made verified, everything looks correct but still doesnt seem to work. Also i just found another quirk:

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 'Special Government: 0=None, 1=Technocracy, 2=HiveMind, 3=MercantileGuild, 4=UtopianParadise, 5=Way of the Ancients, 6=Way of Darkness, 7=Corporate Nationalism
 SpecialGovernment		;5
 
 'Preferred Starting Government: 0=No preference, 1=Technocracy, 2=HiveMind, 3=MercantileGuild, 4=UtopianParadise, 5=Way of the Ancients, 6=Way of Darkness, 7=Despotism, 8=Feudalism, 9=Monarchy, 10=Republic, 11=Democracy, 12=Military Dictatorship, 13=Corporate Nationalism
 PreferredStartingGovernment		;5
 

... giving the SuperFrogs the WotA from the start doesnt work neither. Am i doing something wrong ?

[ehsumrell1]

Hello InaB77;
PM upload your races.txt file to me and I'll take a look and see what's
wrong! Hopefully I'll find and correct the problem!
[:)]

[Caesar_Augustus]

Greeetings... in Legends, the races.txt that needs to be modified is not the general one installed in the game directory,
but rather the one that appears for each one of any given race, in the races folder, that is installed in the game directory.

[InaB77]

Yep it's Legends. I modified the quameno.txt in the races folder at the posted points still, for some reasons those changes dont show up in the game.

[tjhkkr]

Welcome to the forums Ina!

Could it be that it is in the wrong directory -- not trying to be rude here, just something we all do periodically.

Hello InaB77;
PM upload your races.txt file to me and I'll take a look and see what's
wrong! Hopefully I'll find and correct the problem!

It could be something as simple as a misplaced Apostrophe or semi-colon!

[Igard]

Are you altering the Distant Worlds/races/quameno.txt file?

Or, are you creating a folder 'yourmod' in the customization folder? Distant Worlds/customization/'yourmod'/races/quameno.txt.

It should work either way, but perhaps there's some piece of hard-coding at work here preventing the vanilla files from making the desired changes.

[elliotg]

ORIGINAL: InaB77
Just made verified, everything looks correct but still doesnt seem to work. Also i just found another quirk:

Code: Select all

 'Special Government: 0=None, 1=Technocracy, 2=HiveMind, 3=MercantileGuild, 4=UtopianParadise, 5=Way of the Ancients, 6=Way of Darkness, 7=Corporate Nationalism
 SpecialGovernment		;5
 
 'Preferred Starting Government: 0=No preference, 1=Technocracy, 2=HiveMind, 3=MercantileGuild, 4=UtopianParadise, 5=Way of the Ancients, 6=Way of Darkness, 7=Despotism, 8=Feudalism, 9=Monarchy, 10=Republic, 11=Democracy, 12=Military Dictatorship, 13=Corporate Nationalism
 PreferredStartingGovernment		;5
 

... giving the SuperFrogs the WotA from the start doesnt work neither. Am i doing something wrong ?

Note that Way of the Ancients govt type (along with Way of Darkness) is a slightly special case: while you can set these as special govt types and preferred starting govt for a race, you cannot directly select them in the Start New Game screen (Your Empire step). However you can switch to them when in the game. You will also start the game with WotA if it is your preferred starting govt and you select "Random" govt in game setup.

[InaB77]

As i dont know how to attach a text file here so any of You could look over it i'd just like to thank elliotg for the tip on how to get WotA to work. Still i cant the special tech to work but i just triple checked that it is exactly matching the zenox.txt file.

What i did is created an Mod in the Customization folder according to the Modding Guide. The folder structure contains characterImages (with my nice special SuperFrog pictures utilized by characters), characters, Policy, races and shipImages.

Reason for creating this was more of a proof of concept than something really playable. It'd be nice to get those few things to work tho.

[feelotraveller]

I don't have much modding experience. That said, you could try copy and pasting the text from the Zenox file. Perhaps there is some invisible formatting causing a problem?

[InaB77]

so.. i just found out that even tho the special tech doesnt show up in the race description in the enyclopedia it does show up in game. still saying "zenox only" but definitely there

Problem solved...

[InaB77]

now that my "fun" mod is working - it's really hilarious having 5 different SuperFrog race communities and some standard races mixed in having a go at each other and just watching it on full auto in a small map - i'd like to get at a more serious mod:

i was thinking of creating a machine race. would it be possible to create this by copying some stuff from the existing machine race ? would it be possible to implement f.e. a always content flag (a planet is always content or happy as machines dont really care about happiness) ? enable a low colony count civilization to still be very competitive ? i'd really like to get some input.

Also: it's not currently possible to modify the research tree, correct ?

[Data]

Correct