Questions here: an inquiry thread! [Updated Sep 15th, 2014]

Discuss and distribute tools and methods for modding. Moderator - Grognak
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bamalf
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Re: Questions here: an inquiry thread! [Updated Sep 15th, 2014]

Postby bamalf » Sat Dec 17, 2016 4:20 pm

look at string 5636 in events.xml :?
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mr_easy_money
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Re: Questions here: an inquiry thread! [Updated Sep 15th, 2014]

Postby mr_easy_money » Sat Dec 17, 2016 4:50 pm

bamalf wrote:look at string 5636 in events.xml :?
bamalf wrote:
I've checked for extra '>' characters and extra closing tags
string 6509 in animation.xml (in russian version too :? )

okay well getting rid of these did help, but then it wouldn't work, so then I tried getting rid of all the ".rawclobber" extensions and now it works somehow. thanks for those though, b/c the extra '>' character in animations.xml probably causes an error (it did last time).
TheVastComplex
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Re: Questions here: an inquiry thread! [Updated Sep 15th, 2014]

Postby TheVastComplex » Mon Jan 16, 2017 5:09 am

I'm having issues making my names mod work. It is supposed to replace both male and female names with a list of cities/towns in Montana. However, when I patch it, all of the humans with names show up as either all female, or all male, depending on whether I put female or male nameLists first. Here is a link to my .ftl: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l4jmihcma4ytu9l/Montana%20Names.ftl?dl=1
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mr_easy_money
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Re: Questions here: an inquiry thread! [Updated Sep 15th, 2014]

Postby mr_easy_money » Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:01 am

TheVastComplex wrote:However, when I patch it, all of the humans with names show up as either all female, or all male, depending on whether I put female or male nameLists first.

it seems that the kickstarter names are hardcoded in some form. if you don't include them, what you described happens. the first two vanilla nameLists don't need to be included though.

you can still customize to a male/female, just that yeah, it's one gender or the other at the beginning.
FasterThanKestrel
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Re: Questions here: an inquiry thread! [Updated Sep 15th, 2014]

Postby FasterThanKestrel » Wed Jan 25, 2017 8:04 am

I am on a Mac, and I can't find the .xml files. I'd like to add lines to specific areas of the Blueprints.xml file(and others), but I have no idea how to do it. Is there any hope for me?
TheVastComplex
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Re: Questions here: an inquiry thread! [Updated Sep 15th, 2014]

Postby TheVastComplex » Wed Jan 25, 2017 2:14 pm

FasterThanKestrel wrote:I am on a Mac, and I can't find the .xml files. I'd like to add lines to specific areas of the Blueprints.xml file(and others), but I have no idea how to do it. Is there any hope for me?

Being on a Mac makes no difference. You need to download either FTL DAT UnPacker or FTL Profile editor. The DATS contains all the resources for FTL, including all the XML files, and the DATS can be found at ~/Library/Application\ Support/Steam/steamapps/common/FTL FasterThanLight/FTL.app/Contents/Resources. data.dat contains your XML files, whereas resource.dat contains game resources.
Last edited by TheVastComplex on Wed Jan 25, 2017 5:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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mr_easy_money
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Re: Questions here: an inquiry thread! [Updated Sep 15th, 2014]

Postby mr_easy_money » Wed Jan 25, 2017 2:42 pm

TheVastComplex wrote:You need to download either FTL DAT UnPacker

actually you can use Slipstream Mod Manager to extract the dats. I think they combined functionality from ftldat when they were making it.
TheVastComplex
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Re: Questions here: an inquiry thread! [Updated Sep 15th, 2014]

Postby TheVastComplex » Wed Jan 25, 2017 2:44 pm

FasterThanKestrel wrote:I am on a Mac, and I can't find the .xml files. I'd like to add lines to specific areas of the Blueprints.xml file(and others), but I have no idea how to do it. Is there any hope for me?

If you want to make modifications, I recommend using mods rather than directly editing the code. That way you will be able to restore vanilla FTL without needing to reinstall (also you can share your work). Mods in FTL either replace or append themselves to files, so using a mod would do exactly what you described wanting to do.
FasterThanKestrel
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Re: Questions here: an inquiry thread! [Updated Sep 15th, 2014]

Postby FasterThanKestrel » Wed Jan 25, 2017 3:52 pm

I understand that unpacking the .dat from SMM will give me the .xml files, but those don't then correlate to the actual resources, right? They're just duplicates of the actual resources?

I want to be able to create weapons and other things using Superluminal and the .xmls. I want my changes to take effect on the .xml files, but the extracted ones won't do that, right?

Also, I want to be able to change the .png files - I'm using those to create e new ship, and I just want them rotated 90˚. The same thing is true, though - extracting the dats won't actually give me the ones used by the program.


Sorry, I'm a little bit n00by with modding.
meklozz
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Re: Questions here: an inquiry thread! [Updated Sep 15th, 2014]

Postby meklozz » Wed Jan 25, 2017 4:30 pm

You can't operate on the packed files, you should use slipstream to repack with a newly created mod file after you add anything to the originals. The .ftl files are just zipped up folders with changed extensions, unpack one or two to figure out the structure, or read the readme_modders.txt from slipstream. Then you just put your file in a folder, pack it up to zip, check allow zips in slipstream options, click patch in slipstream. Get a decent packer like 7-zip and edit files in the archive to make small changes faster.