Matrix Games Forums

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Eventure wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 11:55 am

frankycl wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 9:43 am (...) RaceFilter-menu (...)

Sure, makes sense, the race filter will only contain playable races with the next update. The filter will be updated if you add or remove a playable race or by changing a race's playable flag.

Yes ! - That sounds very promissing.

Eventure wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 11:55 am

frankycl wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 9:43 am (...) MainStory-events <-> race-specific events (...)

Agree, main story events will only be displayed if a race specifically triggers it.

Huh ? I'm not sure if this is the same as what I suggested above.
Normally, if "a race specifically triggers it" it can't be a "main story event", because there are no "race-specific MainStory-events" in the game. It just wouldn't make any sense, because if you disable race-specific events in the settings of a new game, you can nevertheless get/play all main story events - totally independent of the race you chose to play ! And vice-versa, if you disable main story events in the settings, you'll get all events that are specifically triggered by the race you chose to play !
Therefore your sentence from above should rather read:
"race-specific events will only be displayed if a race specifically triggers it." or:
"main story events will only be displayed if NO race specifically triggers it (but all (playable) races can trigger it)."
- Or in terms of your tool:
main story events should only be displayed if you chose "Main Story Events" in the left filter-menu AND no specific race in the right filter-menu - and
race-specific events should only be displayed if you chose "No Category Filter..." in the left filter-menu AND 1 specific race in the right filter-menu.


Ok, now to something else/additional:
In the left filter-menu you also have the option to choose "Non Race Events" (which is per se a misleading term, imho, because those aren't events that don't have/need a playable race, but only are events, that are triggered by all races, but not the one that is named in the brackets; - but that's only nitpicking and not really important ).
But what IS important, is the following:
If you chose a specific race in the right filter-menu and also chose "Non Race Events" you will only see the events that have the chosen race in the brackets and the prefix "Non-" (like e.g. "(Non-Boskara)", if you chose "Boskara" on the right). But, as I pointed out some posts above, those events aren't the events that you could play with the chosen race (but with all other races), so, it doesn't make any sense to display them when you chose a specific race !
- Instead your tool should display all events with the prefix "Non-" and all OTHER race-names in the brackets, like e.g. "(Non-Human)", "(Non-Akdarian)", "(Non-Teekan)", etc. - but NOT "(Non-Boskara)", if you chose "Boskara ! - Why ? Because the term "(Non-Boskara)" would enable those events for ALL OTHER RACES, but NOT the Boskara (!) - and this is independent of the race you chose when you start a new race, except the Boskara. Because when you chose the Boskara you'll get the same events, but the race-specific version of them (= the events with only the race-name in the brackets), like e.g. "Aquire Slave World 1 (Boskara)"), but NOT the events with the "Non-" prefix, like e.g. "Aquire Slave World 1 (Non-Boskara)" !

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Eventure wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 4:32 pm oh man, my head is spinning.
(...)
Okay, as you can see, I didn't quite understand the concept behind it, but with your help I'm starting to see through it more and more.

Yes, it's a bit complicated, if you haven't had many experiences with it - but only, untill you capture the whole concept (from the DEVs) behind it.
All those different categories/event-types are only created to meet 2 main goals: To make it possible to have a great variety and and number of events for each race (with additionally a complex main-story and general events for all races altogether) and to keep the entries and the size of the XML at a max-possible minimum.

Eventure wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 4:32 pm To do:
(...)
-What I'm guessing is that the special events category filter behaves exactly like the main story filter, right?

Yes, they are the same for all races (and should also only be displayed when the race filter is set to no filtering).

Eventure wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 4:32 pm -Do you have a better name than "Non Race Events"?

Yes, how about "Race Events for ALL, BUT..." ?

Eventure wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 4:32 pm -As you correctly point out, the "Non Race Event" category filter is not inverted with the choice of a race as it should be.

Yes, that's why I told you that you'll need an algorithm for this (see some posts above).


Ok, but now I also have an additional issue with your tool:
Last time I was testing and playing with it I created an internal Game Events mod, but didn't save anything (just closed the window). But now, when I start the tool again, it won't let me do this again and it also won't let me create another Game Events mod:


Why this / what can I do to create another mod (because I have no other version to change to )

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Eventure wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 6:54 pm How about "Race Events Except For"?

Should be almost the same (as my suggestion) and sounds good (at least for me).

Eventure wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 6:54 pm You have already a mod at the \mods folder with the same name and version.

Yes, that's what your tool tells me - but why, when I haven't saved anything before ?
- Is this like in some Excel-modules where every entries are saved immediately (without asking) ? If so, I would prefere to save only when the user wants this (manually) - or at least to be asked if you want this to be saved !

Eventure wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 6:54 pm Change the name of the mod to create a new one or increase the version number.

Ah yes, I get it - you mean the mod-version number, yes ? - Oh my, and I thought your tool meant the version-number of the game ... but I thik you really should offer a bit more hints for dummies like me (lol). - How about a message that reads: "Mod-version already exists..." ?

Eventure wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 6:54 pm You could load the load too or to automate this, you can select the option at the App Config to auto-load the last mod.

? How do you "load the load" ? (but I'll certainly try this auto-function - Oh man, I'm soo longing for this WIKI... )

Eventure wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 6:54 pm BTW, is the 1.0.4.6 released (saw it at your screeny)

Yes, it's the last (half-official) BETA-release - see here: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 1&t=384242 ... but probably only lasting until tomorrow, so you won't miss much.

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Eventure wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 8:10 pm As soon as you click Create Mod, a folder is created at the \mods folder with the xml parts you selected before.

Ok, I understand this now - but in this case you shouldn't call the button "Create Mod", imho, because if you don't edit and don't save anything I wouldn'call it a mod. And it's also a bit strange that you have to click on "Load Mod" if you haven't created one before.
Maybe better call the buttons "Load XML" instead ?

Eventure wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 8:10 pm Sure, there is room for improvement!

Ok, I have some additional (event-) things for this "improvement room" :

When you have set the left filter to "No Category..." and select a specific (playable) race in the right filter there are sometimes events displayed that don't have a meaningful name and that don't are one single event that's not connected thematically to other events (you have seen that most times some of the events are connected in "event-chains", yes ?), like e.g. for the Boskara there are 4 times the events "Answer No" (1-4) and 4 times the events "Answer Yes" (1-4), but nowhere is an indication for what the questions for these answers were (which would be the preceding event) or with what events these answers-events are connected in general.
Now, I know that this is due to the fact that those event's only are a (middle) part of an event-chain and that several other Boskara-events are directly connected to them. I also know that it's quite easy to find the other connected events (since they are always in a consecutive row of events in the corresponding XML), but somebody who doesn't know this and only uses your tool will never have a clue as for which other events are connected or what other events he should search for. - So, this definitely needs some additional improvement, imho.

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Eventure wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 10:24 am

frankycl wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 8:59 pm (...) it's also a bit strange that you have to click on "Load Mod" if you haven't created one before.
Maybe better call the buttons "Load XML" instead ?

Eh? No, it is not necessary to load a mod before creating it. (...)

No, I didn't mean a fresh start / the creation of a new mod. I meant your hint/advice from above that I should click the "Load Mod"-button, in order to load the GameEvents.xml again which I loaded in the session before, but without editing or saveing anything. And if you hadn't told me to do this I would have never thought that I need to use this button without having edited/saved anything beforehand. At least it's not very intuitv, in my opinion. It would at least need a tooltip (on either the "Create..."- or the "Load..."-button (or both)) that gives a hint that the unaltered XML is also named/handled as "Mod".

Eventure wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 10:24 am Yes, I see the problem, so it would be better to have a treeview instead of a listview for the race-specific events.

Yes, I think that would be great (especially when you could open/close the tree-sections like in a XML ), but if this is too expensive / time-consuming it would also be possible to link the events by some terms or symbols in their name that would identify them as a part of a specific event-Chain (since your filter-lists are sorted alphabetically it would of course be necessary to use this identifying term at the beginning of the event-name ). In this case I'd suggest to simply add a keyword of the root-/starting-event to each event that is connected with this.

Eventure wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 10:24 am What are the identifiers to find the root event and the follow up's?
I see, that some events have a TriggerEvent under TriggerActions, where the Generated Item Name(s) value identifies a follow up event.
If an event has no TriggerEvent, it's either the last of the line (if noted anywhere before) or one without an event line.
Is that the structure of an event line?

No, I'm affraid it's not that easy, because there are also events in the middle of an event-chain that don't have this <Type>TriggerEvent, too. (I'm not sure what really connects the events instead (via the entries in the XML), but if you look at the names of the events and combine this with the text-descriptions that are mostly to find under <GameEventAction> (and keep in mind that they are always in a consecutive row of events in the XML) it's always very clear which events are connected to each other and which are not.)

Let me show you this in an example out of the XML:

The mentioned Boskara-events (in my last post) with "Answer No" (1-4) or "Answer Yes" (1-4) are all part of the root-events "Former Boskara Slave World" (1-4). So the chain would e.g. start with "Former Boskara Slave World 1 (Boskara)" (line 27243; game-version 1.0.4.6), which has a <Type>TriggerEvent- entry - so this would be the "question" (from above). Then the next event in the XML is "Answer Yes 1 (Boskara)", which has NO <Type>TriggerEvent- entry, but also isn't the last even in the chain, because it will only trigger a specific message for the player (<MessageTitle>We are!..., line 27355 f) - which is the same for the next event in the XML ("Answer No 1 (Boskara)") in analogy; therefore I will skip this. But the last event in the chain is only the next event (and the consecutive event for both answer-choices from above): <Name>Acquire Slave World 1 (Boskara), which has NO <Type>TriggerEvent- entry, but because of the text-description <MessageTitle>Slave World Conquered (line 27506 f) it's obvious that this must be the last event in this chain. (especially, since the next event is the <Name>Acquire Slave World 1 (Non Boskara), which would be a candidate for your "Non Race"-filter or whatever you will call it now.
See what I mean ?

Now, like I said, I'm not quite sure (yet) what connects those events in terms of XML-syntax (or for what you should set your search-filters), but if you want, I could make you a list of those event-chains in the XML (since I'm using/analysing this file anyway) , so that you'd only have to copy this list into your tool, in order to be able to display either an event-tree (from above) or to add the identifying terms in the names of the events (but of course, this would take some time).

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Eventure wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 7:57 am I looked at the documentation of the game events (here) and found the following:

GroupName
Name for a group of connected events. All unique event group
names will be presented for selection in the Game Setup screen,
allowing the player to turn groups of events on or off for their
game.

Oh, I didn't know that - yes, that's very interesting (since you/I can use it as an audit at the end ), but also a great pitty (the empty entries).
However, I think this is just another example for the rudimentally modding-support, so far by the DEVs. They just released/opend some files they were/are using, but forgo to make them usable for Non-DEVs completely (except for some rudimentally info and those not very user-friendly tools, like the Data Editor). So, everything else is up to us, so far (if we want to mod the files right now) and we have to come up with our own solutions, I think.
But for me it's also very clear that we'd have to wait a very long time, if we wanted the DEVs to "fix" those things or to provide more support (since they are still very busy with fixing bugs and issues (let alone an ample engine-overhaul) and haven't mod-support on their (current) roadmap at all). :/

Therefore I would rather like to accept your offer for "a modified GameEvents.xml file where the group names for each event line are complete", because I could need this as well for another mod I and my son are working on (and that couldn't be done with your tool, since it requires much more than only XML-editing).
But in order to do this it would be very helpfull to get the filter-lists of your tool as an editable text-file or spreadsheet (independent of how complete or appropriate they might be atm). Could you maybe provide me with this (possibly via an PM) - That would be very helpfull.

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Yes ! - finally I was even able to update your tool with the default installation (on C:).

But (I'm sorry but) I must tell you, that it now seems that some of your filter-list got mixed up a bit - like, e.g. there are now "Mortalen"- or "other" events listed when you set the filters to "No Category..." on the left and "Human" on the right.

Could I/we please have a fixed version (also for the XML-editing regarding the group-names) ? - Thanks in Advance.

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Eventure wrote: Wed May 25, 2022 4:14 pm All these Planet Destroyer Events are related to the Human race (Placement Race).

No - each (playable) race has the possibility to get/build Planet Destroyers ! - each (playable) race has also events that lead to this ability ! - But especially for the Mortalen these events are different than for all other races. That's why they have extra events with "..(Mortalen)" in their <Name>-tag and all other races are linked to those events by "..(other (=Non Mortalen))". You can easily see this if you look at the <TriggerRaceId>4 -/ <NonTriggerRaceId>4 - entries.
However there are additionally Planet Destroyer -evnts that are the same for ALL races (including the Mortalen); these are the events with no brackets at all (= they have NO <TriggerRaceId>-/ <NonTriggerRaceId>-tags). Therefore they also should appear in your list for ALL races.

Eventure wrote: Wed May 25, 2022 4:14 pm The description for Placement Race is:
Select the race that the event relates to

No, this should be changed in "Select the race that the event triggers (or that is linked to the players race directly)", because there are many events that relate to several other (than the players) races thematically, but are NOT triggered by these other races and also are NOT linked to the players race by the game.

Eventure wrote: Wed May 25, 2022 4:14 pm These events relate only to human race, so the events should also appear under the human filter, I think.

No, that's definitely NOT the case !

I think in general it would be better to filter the events for now with the already known keywords/characters (the Non-Race- filters seem to be correct now; except that "...(other)" is the same and should be added in those inverted-filters, too) and improve on this with the events-groups-addition I will give create for you.
(However for my work on editing the <GroupName />-tags it would be helpfull to get lists with the fixed-points from above (please ?)

EDIT: Don't need your filterlists anymore; so, please just update your tool (if you are quicker than me).

... furthermore I have loooked for:

"GroupName
Name for a group of connected events. All unique event group
names will be presented for selection in the Game Setup screen,
allowing the player to turn groups of events on or off for their
game."

in the game, but couldn't find this list/options anywhere. So, I guess that was just an idea, but they haven't implemented it
yet.

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Eventure wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 10:30 am Okay, please see that the lists currently displayed are only temporary until the group names are assigned to the events. After that, the events will be sorted later, in the way you define the group names.

Yes, that's what I meant.

... But I'm not sure what you mean with "indicators":

Eventure wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 10:30 am Therefore, according to my recommendation, the group names should also have a number of indicators in order to be able to optimally assign them to the individual areas later, e.g. race name, main story, special events, etc..

Since I don't change anything else, but adding the group-names, I don't think that you should change the way the filters where used (except the handling of "Planet Destroyer Events" - see above) or the way the filter-lists are displayed, right now; - as far as I've seen, they were all appropriate, now.
Only in the display of the outcome, when you use one or more filters with you tool, you should add the group-names order, I think (and maybe the tree-view).

And what I'm doing right now (with the group-names), is to copy/paste the (original) name of the root-event into the line for the group-names for all events that are linked to this root-event in the following event-chain (with some exceptions, because there are some syntax-errors and other bugs in the file, so far).
So, I'm not adding any other "indicators", but your tool should be able to link them together, according to their group-names - in addition to the other filters your tool uses regarding the <Name>- or <Trigger...>-tags. Wasn't that what you wanted, too ?

Eventure wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 10:30 am The current list will be replaced by a tree view with the next update. According to the current plan, this will then be structured like this:

(...)

Are you going along with that or do you have a few additions?

No, I don't have any additions, but I don't undestand a few things in this list:

1. regarding "Race Events (one tree for each playable race...":

Why do you want to distinguish between "Trigger"- and "Placement"- events ?
While it's true that not all events have <Trigger...>-tags, but instead use <Placement...>-tags (to identify the race that
triggers it), they are not seperated events, but they are all parts of the rgarding event-chain (mostly they are part of
the beginning/introducing root-event). - The <Placement...>-tags are only used to create/place an object anywhere in
the game that is later used as an trigger/location for the subsequent events of the same event-chain /-group.
So, I'd say that it doesn't make much sense to seperate them by your filter-lists.

2. "Undefined Events":

I wonder what this/they might be ? - You define them as "all events with no group name, trigger, placement and
nontrigger value" - but as far as I know there are NO events in the now existing XML that don't have any of the
mentioned properties ! Even group-names are now given to ALL events - independent of how many events are
connected to them (/ if there is an event-chain at all) (or didn't you want me to do it like this ?)

So, I could only imagine that you are referring to events that users might add into the XML in future times; - is this
right ? (if so, I think you should add a tool-tip for those filters )

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