Gidoza wrote:Allright, and this file has every single weapon from Vanilla and CE in it as well?
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Did everyone actually make these mods by just inundating a text file with numbers and letters? I have no concept of how to conceive the end results of any of this...
you might be missing what the .append extension is for. when you patch in blueprints.xml.append, you are appending it (adding it) to the rest of the things in the original vanilla blueprints.xml file. this file is found in data.dat.
as a matter of fact, data.dat has almost all of things modders are able to change, e.g. names of sectors and how many hostile sectors there are (found in sector_data.xml); possible names for crew members (found in names.xml); possible events you can encounter (events.xml, as well as events_fuel.xml, events_nebula.xml, etc.); weapon type descriptions and end credits (misc.xml); cost of weapons, systems and system upgrades, description and properties of weapons and drones, descriptions of augments, color of the different races and the cost to hire them, and so on...
so back to CE. the file is blueprints.xml.append, which means it adds to the vanilla blueprints. however, in the process of writing this, I've realized you can overwrite the properties and descriptions of weapons, overwrite system upgrade costs, etc. so I'm actually unsure on your first question.
but here is something that is true. if your mod has blueprints.xml in it instead of blueprints.xml.append, it will replace the vanilla file. so this is probably why it is a blueprints.xml.append file: because you can overwrite stuff, and if you miss anything from vanilla, at least you didn't get rid of it. names.xml.append is probably a good example of using the ".append" suffix: if it was simply names.xml in your mod, then it'd replace the list of names in vanilla.
a better example actually, is when you create a ship mod in superluminal. notice that if you open the .ftl file, or the resource folder, that the mod's name is "blueprints.xml.append". otherwise, without ".append", it would replace the vanilla blueprints.xml, leaving out all the weapons blueprints, system blueprints, race blueprints, etc. hence why it has the ".append" suffix
Gidoza wrote:But for stronger clarification - can I change the xml.append file to .xml just by deleting the ".append" part of it, or is there some special way of doing it?
yes you can, but you don't need to unless you intend to replace the vanilla file. what @meklozz suggested is to make the editor recognize the suffix, so it will read it as if it were xml.
Lastly, what is the end result? you can change all the things I discussed in the sentence beginning with "as a matter of fact..." and more. you can't however, define new races and other hardcoded stuff (note that there is an exception as someone has found a way to edit hidden value's in the game's executable, but only for mac does it work atm).
the one thing in vanilla there isn't is combat augments, augments you have in your inventory that work at the beginning of fights to hinder an enemy, help yourself, or counteract an attack of the same sort by the enemy (disabling oxygen). I think also that there are augments you can use for other purposes than their main thing in the form of event things. for example, using explosive replicator to create missiles or to use adv ftl navigation to scout the sector.
so that is modding in a nutshell. you can also change various images, sounds, and fonts but that happens in the img, audio, and fonts folders respectively. I hope you are able to kinda see it. what will help is if you use an editor that allows you to actually see the tags, text, and comments in different colors, but yeah, the basis of all these mods does come from numbers and letters. not inundating. you can't go all willy nilly and expect the mod to patch...
