WTS/TG Mining Pack now working in 1.6.4 (HELP REQUIRED)

[Obletus_Grix]

!!! WARNING, THIS IS NOT PRETTY !!!

Ahoy Folks - I've been tinkering with WTS and TG's Mining Pack to see if i could get it working in post 1.5 versions of Transcendence. Previously I've been stuck running 1.3 just so that I could mine my way through to the galactic core, but I really wanted to experience some of the awesome new stuff in later versions and still have the use of the mining pack.

DISCLAIMER: i'm not an experienced coder, so this solution isn't subtle...

Okay, that aside, what i've done is decompile the latest Transcendence.tdb, cut & pasted (or hacked & daubed) the mod into the core files and included the majority of the mining pack as modules instead of extensions (yes, i warned you it wasn't subtle)

I've only done this because of my limited experience and couldn't get my changes to work as an extension (which i'd prefer) if anyone is willing to help with making these changes into an extension it'd be appreciated - even just telling me roughly how to do it would be awesome. I'm expecting to kick myself.

Anyway, to test this out you will need to create a dupe of your Transcendence install folder or otherwise back up your Transcendence.tdb file. Also, you'll no longer need the WTS/TG mining pack mod, so move that out of your mods folder.

Heres the link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/6lnbk ... ndence.tdb

I've left comments next to all changes made. If you decompile with transdata, open all of the xml files with notepad++ and search in all opened documents for edit++++ you'll find said codebutchery.

I've only tested this briefly and would love some feedback. Thanks and apologies to WTS/TG and George.

[digdug]

before 2006, we were resorting to do this kind of hacks.
today is not any more needed.
we have extensions and adventures that can be written and built without unpacking/editing/repacking the main tdb of the game.
I'm happy that you tried to fix a great mod. a bit less of the 38MB download.

[Obletus_Grix]

Yeah, i'd like it to be just a fixed mod and not part of the vanilla. I've tried mucking about with the mod files on their own but with no luck. My least favourite part was having to go into code.xml and comment out some of George's very well considered and more realistic ore distribution as for some reason the scanner included in the mod just wasn't picking up anything with that there.

I had thought last night just to keep this to myself but I've seen loads of posts asking for a fix, so thought i'd put it up so i could get some help with it it is literally the first mod i ever downloaded and my number one favourite

Like i say, any help/advice is appreciated!

[digdug]

hi, sorry, I didn't mean to come out negative my previous post.

It's just that, I think, it's the first time since ages that I saw a mod packaged like that.

of course we are going to help you That's why we are here

The main problem with such a mod is to know what has been changed.
And because you repackaged the entire game like that it doesn't make it easier

Did you actually copy pasted what was contained in the mod inside the vanilla game files ?

or did you apply some custom fixes that you did ?

[Obletus_Grix]

ah its alright dude, i'm hardwired for feedback and i'm not picky how it comes lol you gotta be thick skinned bout these things

yeah the only thing i outright pasted over was i took the &stminingcolony from the mining colony upgrade from the mod and pasted it over the original in CommonWealthMining.xml (yeah, i know...) as the upgraded colony wasn't appearing, so couldnt access the items included in the mod. I set a single name for the mining colony so that I could see the mod working.

this negated the necessity for the Mining Colony Upgrade extension, so I omitted that.

next, i read George's post about new ore generation and figured that there were two reasons that the ore wasn't appearing; the new ore distribution either meant that the scanner in the mod couldn't see the ore, or the ore just wasn't there to start with. Since i know there's been alot of work done to balance wealth with level, this was the most painful edit - I compared code.xml in 1.3 (WTS/TG mining mod works fine in 1.3) with code.xml in 1.6.4 - then commented out the new sysAddRandomOreByValue code here. Alongside this i've pasted in old 1.3 ore tables into GalaxyCompatibility.xml to be doubly sure that the old method will work, I havent looked closely to see what the differences are but i wanted to be sure.

then, I edited the mod files - taking out the entity unid's, putting them together into a list so i could omit any dupes in openoffice calc. Had to take out the mod entity unid from each file as these would now be modules. I placed all of the unid's into HumanSpaceVol01.xml and set each remaining xml file in the mod to be modules here.

I dropped the mod resources into the core resources folder and left the bobby packers folder separate as it made sense.

In eridani.xml i set one of the probabilities of a mining colony spawn to 100 so i could almost guarantee a mining colony in eridani (for testing, but i'll probably keep as is for my version) (i like to mine if you couldnt tell already)

but yeah i think thats it.. i realise that the major dealbreaker here is disabling sysAddRandomOreByValue and straight away thats going to have knock on effects to game balance etc - to an extent that i'm not able to tell, being an inexperienced modder.

there were some conflicts with the ore item graphics mod file, so thats on ice til i can figure it out. But to be honest i'm envisioning something 100% more elegant than the fix i've got right now. But for now, I can play the 9th most popular mod on xelerus on v1.6.4 which makes me happy lol.

so...reckon i can claim the title for the worst ever mod fix? i think so lol. Hence lashings of apologies are in order

[Obletus_Grix]

(i just figured if i was going to try n get help i'd better not come empty handed...lol)

[Obletus_Grix]

Update: I've been testing some of the edits i made alongside a vanilla install and i'm convinced that the least I would need to do is override or disable sysAddRandomOreByValue inside the <globals> in code.xml

...however i'm at a loss of how to go about this with a mod extension (and it pains me to do it, but until a new mining pack comes along i'll have to make do with this bandaid)

any ideas?

[relanat]

Nice work. Doing something like this and getting it working is a big achievement. Well done.

Adding the "edit++++" near all your code is a brilliant idea. Can't wait to have a look.