Game crashes when manually editing ship crew members

[Disc10]

Hello there!

I've been having issues tinkering with the game files, and I'm hoping someone could help shed a light on the issue.
What I'm trying to do is change the Zoltan crew of the Adjudicator into human crew, for narrative purposes in a youtube series I'm working on during the year. This has not been going well for me so far.

My first attempt was to use FTLShip Edit, which I was informed was completely the wrong use for it, and that's fair enough. I then tried to edit the blueprint file directly, which just resulted in a game crash:



I then discovered that I should be doing it as an .append file, so I made one with the changes I wanted, created an .ftl mod file and... another crash. But a different one!



So yea. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong and being incredibly stupid but is there any way to fix this? I need to get this sorted as soon as I can really so any help will be very greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

[alextfish]

Hah. That crash unfortunately means your XML isn't quite right. It's very easy to get things fractionally wrong, and XML is a very sensitive format.

First: Carefully look through the text of your blueprints.xml.append file, in particular looking at every tag inside angle brackets <likeThis>. Every "<tag>" should either end with "/>", or end with ">" and be matched by a later "</tag>". (But not both!)
If you find any cases where this is wrong, fix them up, re-zip the mod and try repatching.

If that doesn't work, then second: Copy the entirety of your blueprints.xml.append file into a forum post here (enclosed between [code]...[/code] tags). Post it here and we'll take a look

[Disc10]

Thank you for the information, I shall get back to you with news of success or crying and an .append file.

[Disc10]

Yea, I can't see what's gone wrong. As far as I'm aware I've only changed the crew of the adjudicator from "energy" to "human", which if I'm not mistaken (and I probably am) should be all I need to do. Nothing else should have changed, so what's breaking? O_o

I can't post the append file as code as was suggested (massively over the character limit). However since I only changed one thing then in theory it should be identical to the normal file. Well, other than the energy ship crew being changed from energy to human.

[alextfish]

Hmm. Yeah, if that's all you've changed, it should be fine.

Can you confirm that if you unzip the .ftl file (after renaming it to .zip), all you see is a data/ directory, and the only thing in that data/ directory is a file called blueprints.xml.append? And that blueprints.xml.append file only contains

<shipBlueprint name="PLAYER_SHIP_ENERGY" layout="energy_cruiser" img="energy_cruiser">
...
</shipBlueprint>

? That should be all you need, that one <shipBlueprint...> ... </shipBlueprint>. I don't think that should be too big to post in a forum post.

But if that is all that's in your .ftl file, and it is too big for this forum, can you post it onto http://pastie.org and tell us the URL of the paste you create?

Because I agree, if the only thing you've changed between the base game's blueprints.xml for the energy_cruiser and your blueprints.xml.append is the crewCount class, that shouldn't cause this kind of crash.

If your zip file has anything else in it, try removing whatever else is there so that data/blueprints.xml.append is literally the only thing there, and give it another try.

[Disc10]

Well, I had the WHOLE blueprints file in the .append, not just that specific section! So I fixed that, and it still doesn't work I'm afraid. :/

Here's all I have in it now however:

Code: Select all

 <shipBlueprint name="PLAYER_SHIP_ENERGY" layout="energy_cruiser" img="energy_cruiser">
   <class>Zoltan Cruiser</class>
   <name>The Adjudicator</name>
   <unlock>Learn from the Zoltan, sometimes diplomacy works.</unlock>
   <desc>The Zoltan's advanced shields technology gives this ship an edge during each battle.</desc>
   <systemList>
      <pilot power="1" room="11" start="true"/> 
      <doors power="2" room="10" start="true" img="room_doors_6"/>     
      <sensors power="1" room="0" start="true"/> 
      <oxygen power="1" room="4" start="true" img="room_oxygen_2"/>   
      <engines power="1" room="13" start="true" img="room_engines_2"/>   
      <shields power="2" room="15" start="true" img="room_shields_7">
         <slot>
            <direction>up</direction>
            <number>1</number>
         </slot>
      </shields>     
      <weapons power="3" room="14" start="true" img="room_weapons_7"/> 
      <drones power="2" room="16" start="false" img="room_drones_8"/>     
      <medbay power="1" room="8" start="true" img="room_medbay_4">
         <slot>
            <number>0</number>
         </slot>
      </medbay>   
      <teleporter power="1" room="2" start="false"/> 
      <cloaking power="1" room="6" start="false" img="room_cloaking_3"/>
   </systemList>
   <weaponSlots>4</weaponSlots>
   <droneSlots>2</droneSlots>
   <weaponList count="4" missiles="12">
      <weapon name="BEAM_2"/>
      <weapon name="MISSILES_1"/>
   </weaponList>
   <droneList drones="2"/>
   <health amount="30"/>
   <maxPower amount ="5"/>
   <crewCount amount = "3" class="human"/>
   <aug name="ENERGY_SHIELD"/>
</shipBlueprint>

 
<!-- ENERGY SHIP -->
<!-- LAYOUT = Alternate -->
<!-- SHIP ID = 7 --> 

<shipBlueprint name="PLAYER_SHIP_ENERGY_2" layout="energy_cruiser_2" img="energy_cruiser_2">

   <class>Zoltan Cruiser</class>
   <name>Noether</name>
   <unlock>Learn from the Zoltan, sometimes diplomacy works.</unlock>
   <desc>The Zoltan's advanced shields technology gives this ship an edge during each battle.</desc>
   <systemList>
      <pilot power="1" room="14" start="true"/> 
      <doors power="1" room="8" start="true" img="room_doors_6"/>     
      <sensors power="1" room="13" start="true" img="room_sensors_4"/> 
      <oxygen power="1" room="12" start="true" img="room_oxygen_7"/>   
      <engines power="2" room="3" start="true" img="room_engines_5"> 
         <slot>
            <direction>up</direction>
            <number>0</number>
         </slot>
      </engines>     
      <shields power="1" room="5" start="true" img="room_shields_8"/>
      <weapons power="4" room="7" start="true" img="room_weapons_4">
         <slot>
            <direction>up</direction>
            <number>0</number>
         </slot>
      </weapons>
      <drones power="2" room="2" start="false"/>     
      <medbay power="1" room="0" start="true" img="room_medbay_4">
         <slot>
            <number>0</number>
         </slot>
      </medbay>   
      <teleporter power="1" room="4" start="false"/> 
      <cloaking power="1" room="6" start="false"/>
   </systemList>
   <weaponSlots>4</weaponSlots>
   <droneSlots>2</droneSlots>
   <weaponList count="3" missiles="0">
      <weapon name="ION_1"/>
      <weapon name="ION_1"/>
      <weapon name="BEAM_LONG"/>
   </weaponList>
   <droneList drones="2"/>
   <health amount="30"/>
   <maxPower amount ="5"/>
   <crewCount amount = "3" class="human"/>
   <aug name="ENERGY_SHIELD"/>
   <shieldImage>energy_cruiser</shieldImage>
   <cloakImage>energy_cruiser</cloakImage>
</shipBlueprint>


[alextfish]

Hmm.

I tried creating a simple mod, with just that content in a blueprints.xml.append file, and it seems to work fine.

So give this a go and see if if works for you or if you still have problems. If you still have problems, I fear that somehow your FTL install has got corrupted, and you might need to reinstall.

http://www.toothycat.net/~hologram/FTL/HumanZoltan.ftl

[Vhati]

What I'm trying to do is change the Zoltan crew of the Adjudicator into human crew, for narrative purposes in a youtube series I'm working on during the year.

ComaToes Profile/SavedGame Editor

With that, you can tweak the ship/crew however you want.
No modding or xml needed.
And you can edit again between sessions to fit other plot events.

[Disc10]

@alextfish: That mod file works perfectly, thank you! It's very odd though that my one kept crashing, who knows what was going on. O_o

@Vhati: Ahhh, I forgot about the save game editor! I think I shall go that route in the future, thank you.