Vega Strike Forums

I have NO modding experience (yes, I am probably the ONLY gamer alive who does not...) so I was attempting something small and fun and, well, it will not work. I have PR1.2, PU and the CSV editor. I was attempting the "Creating a weapon upgrade" as it looked quite simple. I followed the instruction laid out, even using "MyLaser" for the nomenclature, as best I could. Obviously something did not go right. If someone could pity me and help it would be cool. If there is a more definitive guide (I couldn't seem to find one) point me to it and I will be grateful.

Here are the tweaks I attempted using the How-To:

Weapons.XML - inserted a copy of the Laser descriptor below the Laser and tweaked the numbers a bit <BoltName="MyLaser"...>

Master_Part_List.csv - same song second verse using "laser", tweaked the description and price "File"name to "my_laser" (following the How-To)

units/units.csv - This one was a little squirrely to me as the How-To referrenced something I could not find on the list, but this is what I did in the list copying right below the "laser" and "laser_beam" entries -

Key
my_laser__upgrades
my_laser_beam__upgrades

Directory
.factions/upgrades/my_laser
.factions/upgrades/my_laser_beam

Name
"my_laser"
"my_laser_beam"

All other column entries copied w/o change.

I did try removing the underscores from the Name column on the Units.csv and some other stuff like that to no avail.

Thanks for any time and help thrown at me.

I am also stay-at-home-dadding it this year with a baby and four year old, so I will be popping on and off. So if someone asks for more info and I don't respond then know I am not ignoring your offer for help.

Thanks. I am enjoying this great throwback game, though. Good times!

Welcome richholl hope you made backups a look at stdout and stderr should give us an indication of what went wrong.More than likely someplace in the python functions that govern upgrades.

Enjoy the Choice

Well, awesome, I've already gotten lost with that reply. I probably should lay of the MOD and dring more egg nog, instead. stdout & stderr - it's Greek to me.

My wife and I teach as well as work with kids outside of school and I was trying to get a little flavor of tweaking beyond console cheat codes so I wouldn't always glaze over listening to some of the kids. Maybe I should leave brain surgery to the brain surgeons...

stderr and stdout are files in your /bin folder to which the engine logs things as it runs. Each time you start Vegastrike (PR uses vegastrike.exe as its engine), VS clears these files and then continuously logs events and errors to them, to help debugging when something goes wrong. They are text files, and what loki was suggesting was that you copy their contents and post them here so he can have a look at them, to be able to help you.

I appreciate the hand-holding; I know what it's like to try and explain something you can do in your sleep to someone who cannot even speak the language, literally. That was an excellent, concise explanation - you a trainer/teacher?

I checked the bin folder and found only .dll files. These were the only files containing a *std* string I could find on the drive.
std.py
std.pyo
std.pyc

WHOA, I stumbled into something. I though that since I was running the editor and other things as administrator (stinking Vista) that maybe I should run the game the same... Viola, there in the humble little mining colony we start on was the "My Laser".

My remaining query would be: Is there a super-Noob manual somewhere I have not found for MOD simpletons to begin a quest to learn in their spare time?

Thanks.

you found the simplest guides we have ATM in the wiki which meams they are not simple enough.One thing i would recommend is a better text editor than Notepad or Wordpad try http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm it's got syntax highlighting so when you open one of the files you can see something of it's structure immediately.

Enjoy the Choice

Hi richholl, and welcome to the forums.

From what I read here, I assume your newly created weapon will not show up. The most common error herefor is that the names and/or keys won't match, so stderr/stdout won't be of too much help in this case.

Looking at your specs, I find the following:

weapons_list.xml wrote:<BoltName="MyLaser"...>

units.csv wrote:Key
my_laser__upgrades
my_laser_beam__upgrades
...
Name
"my_laser"
"my_laser_beam"

So obviously, the BoltName "MyLaser" has no reference in units.csv since it is "my_laser" there. Simply change to BoltName="my_laser" - the names match now and you weapon should appear.

Also, be aware that you gave your weapon a common category within masterpartlist.csv - like "upgrades/Weapons/Mounted_Guns_Light", so that it can be bought on minor bases also, since you're assumably hanging out within Troy for testing issues. Take care, the game is character sensitive so lAsEr and LaSeR are not the same!

If this also doesn't help, make sure that your master part list is assorted correctly - so that your new beam weapon is in the "block" with all the other beams ( beginning in line 38 ).

Finally, if you're still stuck after all of this, I'd recommend to post master_part_list, units.csv and weapons_list so we might take a look at it.

Well, since the simplest of mysteries has been solved for the moment I will proceed with my tinkerings and see what kind of junk I can stir up. I smell an opportunity to invest in some of the Modder-kids and let them show me what end is up and get some lessons in the process.

Once again, thanks to all the brain surgeons who brought this classic into the now.

Well, the weapon shows up in the game, BUT the specs are the same as the laser. I would be glad to attach the STDOUT and STDERR (yeah, I found them right under my nose in the main folder...) and have the pro's give them a browse for possible insight, but my account is not set to allow that. Any further help and suggestions would be welcome. Thanks.

Try again.

PHPBB has some stupid "permissions" thing that requires each forum to specifically have attachments enabled.
It wasn't your account, but rather the General Modding forum did not allow attachments.

It should work now.

ace123 wrote:Try again... It should work now.

Ah, yes. Here are the files. Thanks for any insights.

Welcome richholl!

Well no reason to lough or to cry, I know even less of modding a weapon then you do. It would be great if you could enhance the Wiki Howto if you feel something there is Missing.

That would be great.

Thanks.

Cheers
Peter