[MOD][WIP] Extra scoop of vanilla

[cogitator]

(... a lot of stuff...)

Wow that is some pretty good stuff! I especially like the one with the code... I agree, the slave ship encounter definitely needs some work. I'm totally happy to incorporate your suggestions. I have to say though, keep in mind that most of the text in FTL is pretty short and to the point. Your stuff is great but a bit long, so I'll probably try and break it into a few different bits througout an event and paraphrase a bit. Sounds good to you? No promises about extra quests at the moment though I do want to try and keep a play style similiar to vanilla with little change - extra quests aren't a focus for me.

Also, please be patient, there is a lot of writing to do but I am going at a steady pace... It'll be worth it one day!

[Old Uncle Midwinter]

No problem! I'm the crotechy ol' goat of the internet for a reason, and that reason is that I love me some textwalls. Shorten/alter/change/drop whatever doesn't fit with your vision. Do you want me to keep throwing ideas your way from time to time? Thanks for the feedback, and glad you enjoyed. And speaking personally, looking forward to whatever ideas you come up with/are implementing.

[Kieve]

(...)
Also, verify that:

1) You don't have any XML errors
2) Every <choice> tag has an immediate child <event> tag (even if it's just an <event/>)
3) You didn't misspell any tag/attribute names

All good advice.

1) I have already checked my xml, unless there is something I'm just not seeing everything should be good to go. The only bits that are slightly weird are copied over from the original game files. Beyond that, everything is in pairs, open/close, etc.
2) Ah, at first I thought it might be this problem, which I discovered thanks to a post by Justin a while ago. But no, I am not (that) noob-ish.
3) This one had me for a sec because I realized I didn't know what the sensors were referred to in the xmls... then I looked and found they are called sensors. So good on that, too.



Pretty darn generic error. Most of my events are built using other pre-existing examples as reference, so I think they are mostly right.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dpqmn4nmx597l75/newvents.xml

There's a link to the version that I am currently trying to get to work. Any help is much appreciated folks!

Went over it with a fine-toothed comb, and found this in one of your text lists:

Code: Select all

<text planet="UNPOPULATED">There is a small federation ship trying to use the gravity well of this planet to escape a pirate raider.</text>>

Textlist "P_C_BEACON", last entry.
Not sure if this would cause an error, but

Code: Select all

<choice>
            <text>Leave him to his deluded fantasies.</text>
            <event>
            </event>
         </choice>

try replacing the empty event tags with just <event/>

That's all I could find. Pretty sure it's that double >> on the text tag that's causing your error, but if you clean that up and it still gives you "unknown error" messages, just copy-paste your events in chunk by chunk until it starts spitting up errors, and at least you'll know what sections are causing trouble.
Good luck!

[cogitator]

Thanks Kieve! Yes, I found one more small error last night, and corrected yours today. Sadly, still not working. Ah well, slow and steady wins the race. I'll fiddle with it more today.

I'd rather be writing though . It's a learning experience lol.

EDIT:
Nailed that pesky little bug! There was a choice tag with text immediately after it which was causing a crash but no error message. The real culprit though (the one generating the c++ error) was a choice tag that was missing.

Thank you everyone for all your help! From now on I'll test my events as I finish them...

EDIT 2: Midwinter, new ideas are always welcome!

[cogitator]

Just about a third of the way through events.xml! Things are progressing nicely, just did some work on the civilian asteroid event... it was already beefy but I figured what the heck!!

Bug testing continues on a per event basis. It's just easier that way. On a related note, today I found out that while many times the min/max works nicely to give a semi-random amount, you can't use it with damage. It'll crash yo sh*t!

I've been thinking and I want to check and make sure that, since my mod will include some of the original events, it won't break the modding rules currently posted on these forums. It would suck if so but...

[Old Uncle Midwinter]

If for whatever reason you can't post modified maingame events, I'd just build 'similar' events from the ground up. Hopefully it won't come down to that, but still. I don't have as much time today, so instead of throwing some code your way - what sort of events would you like looked at or extended right now? It can be a very broad sector, like 'Rock-events' or something. Also, I have no idea why semi-random is crashing your game when used for damage. Maybe the random number generator has a very set range..?

[cogitator]

Of all the racial events, Zoltan are the ones that really need work. I can't recall ever seeing a zoltan crewmember event in any of my playthroughs...

Other than that, next bit scheduled for work is all the distress beacons that take you to a space station - one on fire, the one with spiders(mantis revenge! >:D), the malfunctioning defense satellite, etc.

[Icehawk78]

I've been thinking and I want to check and make sure that, since my mod will include some of the original events, it won't break the modding rules currently posted on these forums. It would suck if so but...

What exactly do you mean by that?

Also, hopefully in the semi-near future, you'll be able to make mergeable mods so that the only distributable code you'll need will be changes.

[cogitator]

I was mildly concerned about distrubiting my mod because it would still contain original game assets along with the new stuff. Sent a PM to Justin, he said "(...)feel free to pad out the events." So, dilemma over!

[cogitator]

Hey all,

Just an update to let you know I am still alive and working on Extra Scoop... This weekend was a little crazy but now I'm at about 50% completion of the re-writes. If anyone is interested in bug testing, shoot me a PM and I'll get you something to try out later this week. Also, I have some extra free time coming up the end of this week... bonus!

A few questions while I'm on:
1) I'm looking at the various events that pop up with "the other ship used the time you were fighting to get away" with an eye towards making the FTL jammer more useful (I think it's pretty useless right now). So far I'm thinking that I'll trigger a special event that gives you the chance to use your jammer... it still feels a little stilted though, and I'm wondering if there is a way to hide options - i.e. if you have the FTL jammer, the other "...they got away" option won't even show. This is mainly because it doesn't seem right to have "they got away" with one of your options being "no, they didn't". Suggestions welcome, otherwise I'll figure something out that may require a little re-jiggering later.

2)I'm using Notepad++ and have done so for a long time. I love it, and it's free, but does anyone have suggestions on a better xml editor? Just curious about my options?

Cheers!