Grognak's Mod Manager v1.7 (Updated March 6, 2013!)

Discuss and distribute tools and methods for modding. Moderator - Grognak
Natalie
Posts: 15
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2012 8:46 am

Re: Grognak's Mod Manager

Postby Natalie » Fri Sep 21, 2012 4:50 pm

Alblaka wrote:Duplicate = Last version will override all previous ones without any issues.


I've once again encountered the '-added-in-front-of-file issue. This time adding freespaces and/or comments in front of the file content didn't change much, though.
Messing around some, I noticed only one of my two append files had the issue.

It's file-coding. If I tell notepad to save files in UTF-8 formatting, it will cause this bug. Using the (Windows-)default ANSI coding works fine.
I suppose it's something OS-dependant, I occasionally have some interesting issues with that.
Whatever, figuring out I just leave my files on ANSI pretty much solves everything ^^


WOOH Thankies! I was trying to adjust my Constitution Refit Mod to GMM and it kept crashing,with the .append
Then just changed the blueprints.xml.append to ANSI like you said and it works !
Alblaka
Posts: 98
Joined: Thu Sep 20, 2012 1:41 pm

Re: Grognak's Mod Manager

Postby Alblaka » Fri Sep 21, 2012 8:08 pm

I would like to make two requests:

1. ALWAYS enforce using appendaging instead of replacing files. First of all, modders REALLY shouldn't be replacing whole files in first place. Secondly, if you always take xml files as appendages, modders actually can still keep their previous files, since attaching a 'whole' modded events.xml to the base xml is tedious and eats bytes, but will still work flawless. The third, main reason: I commonly forget to add the .append after altering one of my files (I always open them as XML files for the sake of syntax highlighting) and then are surprised why the game doesn't start up anymore.

2. Please as well load zip's from the mods folder. The enforced convention to name them ftl files has a reason somewhere, but it makes 'compiling' mods more tedious, as, f.e. WinZip refuses to open anything but zip files. Even if it actually IS a (renamed) zip.
Which means I need to completely repack & rename the whole mod just to change single files.
Greetz,
Alblaka
Icehawk78
Posts: 230
Joined: Tue Sep 18, 2012 4:55 pm

Re: Grognak's Mod Manager

Postby Icehawk78 » Fri Sep 21, 2012 8:27 pm

A request I'd like to add (and may be able to help with) - rather than requiring either wholesale replacing or appending entire lists, could you include an XML parser, and allow a .merge file, which will read the actual XML of the .merge and insert it into the original tag?

In this manner, we could have, say, an eventList which is modified by three different mods, each of which adds another option to the list, without having conflicts. You could optionally even check for a custom "modMode" attribute at each level of the tree, so that within the file, I could say "merge this attribute's children with the original's", while one of the children could say "now replace this attribute with mine".
Inhumane Toaster
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Sep 21, 2012 8:37 pm

Re: Grognak's Mod Manager

Postby Inhumane Toaster » Fri Sep 21, 2012 8:40 pm

Okay so I would like to use a couple mods in FTL, the problem is that I bought the game on steam. When I try and use the mod loader, everything works fine. It gives the confirmation that it patched the mod successfully, however when I start FTl, nothing has changed. (This was with testing with the basic scrap advantage mod that was given in the .zip)

I see no change in starting scrap at all. Any idea's?
Alblaka
Posts: 98
Joined: Thu Sep 20, 2012 1:41 pm

Re: Grognak's Mod Manager

Postby Alblaka » Fri Sep 21, 2012 9:00 pm

Inhumane Toaster wrote:Okay so I would like to use a couple mods in FTL, the problem is that I bought the game on steam. When I try and use the mod loader, everything works fine. It gives the confirmation that it patched the mod successfully, however when I start FTl, nothing has changed. (This was with testing with the basic scrap advantage mod that was given in the .zip)

I see no change in starting scrap at all. Any idea's?


Steam does merely call the FTL.exe, there's no difference whether Steam's present or not.
HOWEVER, it appears the example Scrap Advantage mod is not functional at all :P At least it doesn't work for me either, whilst my own mod does.
Greetz,
Alblaka
Daichi
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Sep 21, 2012 1:29 am

Re: Grognak's Mod Manager

Postby Daichi » Fri Sep 21, 2012 9:18 pm

Alblaka wrote:2. Please as well load zip's from the mods folder. The enforced convention to name them ftl files has a reason somewhere, but it makes 'compiling' mods more tedious, as, f.e. WinZip refuses to open anything but zip files. Even if it actually IS a (renamed) zip.
Which means I need to completely repack & rename the whole mod just to change single files.

Yes please. It's annoying have to have a renamed zip file when you are just making your own mod.

Icehawk78 wrote:A request I'd like to add (and may be able to help with) - rather than requiring either wholesale replacing or appending entire lists, could you include an XML parser, and allow a .merge file, which will read the actual XML of the .merge and insert it into the original tag?

In this manner, we could have, say, an eventList which is modified by three different mods, each of which adds another option to the list, without having conflicts. You could optionally even check for a custom "modMode" attribute at each level of the tree, so that within the file, I could say "merge this attribute's children with the original's", while one of the children could say "now replace this attribute with mine".

This would be a great feature as well. May I also suggest a XML file mod format. Because honestly, as above, dealing with zip files at all is quite a pain when you don't need to even touch the resources.
Something like:

Code: Select all

<Mod file="data\events.xml" type="Merge">
<event name="START_GAME">
   <modifyPursuit amount="-50"/>
</event>
</Mod>
<Mod file="data\events_ship.xml" type="Merge">
<ship name="LONG_FLEET" auto_blueprint="SHIPS_REBEL_ELITE">
   <destroyed>
      <modifyPursuit amount="-5"/>
   </destroyed>
</Mod>


Alblaka wrote:HOWEVER, it appears the example Scrap Advantage mod is not functional at all :P At least it doesn't work for me either, whilst my own mod does.

Yeah it doesn't seem to work at all, I brought up an overlapping issue in another post to try to address this issue.

Edit:
Seems like you want to edit the START_BEACON instead of the START_GAME event.

Code: Select all

  <event name="START_BEACON">
    <text>Welcome to a new sector! Get to the exit beacon and jump to the next sector before the pursuing Rebels catch you!</text>
    <autoReward level="HIGH">scrap_only</autoReward>
  </event>
Grognak
Posts: 172
Joined: Tue Sep 18, 2012 9:42 pm

Re: Grognak's Mod Manager

Postby Grognak » Fri Sep 21, 2012 10:18 pm

Alblaka wrote:It's file-coding. If I tell notepad to save files in UTF-8 formatting, it will cause this bug. Using the (Windows-)default ANSI coding works fine.
I suppose it's something OS-dependant, I occasionally have some interesting issues with that.
Whatever, figuring out I just leave my files on ANSI pretty much solves everything ^^

Thank you, that's very helpful. Added it to the first post.

Alblaka wrote:1. ALWAYS enforce using appendaging instead of replacing files. First of all, modders REALLY shouldn't be replacing whole files in first place. Secondly, if you always take xml files as appendages, modders actually can still keep their previous files, since attaching a 'whole' modded events.xml to the base xml is tedious and eats bytes, but will still work flawless. The third, main reason: I commonly forget to add the .append after altering one of my files (I always open them as XML files for the sake of syntax highlighting) and then are surprised why the game doesn't start up anymore.

The problem is that many files need to be replaced rather than appended to (ships, graphics, music, etc.)
Also, I'm pretty sure appending the whole file on top of the other one would cause the beginning loadup screen some issues.

Alblaka wrote:2. Please as well load zip's from the mods folder. The enforced convention to name them ftl files has a reason somewhere, but it makes 'compiling' mods more tedious, as, f.e. WinZip refuses to open anything but zip files. Even if it actually IS a (renamed) zip.
Which means I need to completely repack & rename the whole mod just to change single files.

I will make this a feature defaulted to off in the next version.

Icehawk78 wrote:A request I'd like to add (and may be able to help with) - rather than requiring either wholesale replacing or appending entire lists, could you include an XML parser, and allow a .merge file, which will read the actual XML of the .merge and insert it into the original tag?

This was actually the original method GMM was planned to use, until I figured out appending overwrote old events and ran with that (the easier solution.) You give a strong use-case scenario though, so I will look into it.

Daichi wrote:This would be a great feature as well. May I also suggest a XML file mod format. Because honestly, as above, dealing with zip files at all is quite a pain when you don't need to even touch the resources.

Would not work well if you wanted to replace graphical resources, and I don't really want to support two ways of doing the same thing.

And as a side note, I will try to replace/repair the Scrap Advantage example for the next patch as well. :P
Icehawk78
Posts: 230
Joined: Tue Sep 18, 2012 4:55 pm

Re: Grognak's Mod Manager

Postby Icehawk78 » Fri Sep 21, 2012 10:34 pm

Two other things that may be system-specific:

1) In Ubuntu with two screens, the mod window spans both windows but only appears on the right screen. Kinda weird, but I didn't see any code specifically setting that.

2) I also had an issue with the system trying to create a temp folder that already existed, which blew up the mod manager until after I added an existence check.
Daichi
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Sep 21, 2012 1:29 am

Re: Grognak's Mod Manager

Postby Daichi » Fri Sep 21, 2012 10:39 pm

Grognak wrote:
Daichi wrote:This would be a great feature as well. May I also suggest a XML file mod format. Because honestly, as above, dealing with zip files at all is quite a pain when you don't need to even touch the resources.

Would not work well if you wanted to replace graphical resources, and I don't really want to support two ways of doing the same thing.

Not all mods need to replace graphics. And the ones that don't would benefit a lot if such a method did exist. My method would allow you to just open notepad, make your changes, hit save, then load up the mod manager to apply it. You can keep your notepad window open, and keep making changes while your testing things. No needless zip files just to make edits. How about just using unzipped folders? I just want a way to rapidly make changes without having to worry about small unnecessary things.
Alblaka
Posts: 98
Joined: Thu Sep 20, 2012 1:41 pm

Re: Grognak's Mod Manager

Postby Alblaka » Fri Sep 21, 2012 10:41 pm

Daichi wrote:No needless zip files just to make edits.


Well, for minor tweaks I simply use fldat itself :3 Bat-file FTW. > unpack data.dat, open Notepad++ (which already has tabs on all necessary files), alter entries, repack data.dat, start game.
I only use ModManager if I wrote a lot of new stuff and are too lazy to merge it into the corresponding files.
Greetz,
Alblaka