TIP: Distributing Mods

Mon Mar 10, 2003 1:16 am by X-Lancer

I think I found a practical way of distributing mods. Right now, it's not yet a necessity but later, when ppl will produced more stuff, we should work out some "conventions". Anyhowz..

freelancer.ini is the KEY in the whole story here. It contains all the references to the INI files and DLLS.

To elaborate:

Suppose you modified some ships and locations where they are sold, in other words, you changed shiparch.ini, goods.ini, market_ships.ini. A person who downloads this, will have to back up his own INIs and the install yours. And when he decides to restore his original setup, he must delete yours and then install his own INIs back. SUCKS.

And there are only 3 files, what if you have 10 files, all in different directories.

Now the neat trick.
You can name your modified INIs like this:

mymod1_shiparch.ini
mymod1_goods.ini
mymod1_market_ships.ini

(actually you can name them wahateveryoulike.ini, it doesn't matter)

Next, you open freelancer.ini and for example, for goods.ini you find the line:

goods = equipment\goods.ini

and comment it out. Then add:

goods = equipment\mymod1_goods.ini

This way, a person who downloads this, must only back up his freelancer.ini and install yours. (and restore it when he want to get rid of your mods

Your INI/ DLL files will not interfere with original game.)

Am I the only one who sees benifits in this system?

ps: I think you can also add completely new files (not just modified existing ones). I haven't tested it yet.

Edited by - XLancer on 10-03-2003 01:16:50

Mon Mar 10, 2003 1:19 am by Nataku

WOW that should work and could be of good use right now..

Thx for the tip..

Greetz Nataku

Mon Mar 10, 2003 2:01 am by Kru Noctum

Even better idea (well at least for part of it) Otherwise its awesome

make a folder named "my_mod" or whatever, then put all your modded files in there. Then, instead of having to say /equipment/my_mod_goods.ini you can replace them all with "my_mod/my_mod_goods.ini" for example.

Great idea, this should be one of the convetions. The sooner we can standarize this modding stuff, the more easily we will be able to share stuff.

And I, for one, want to see everything shared with all. No feature hogging, people.

~Kru Out

Mon Mar 10, 2003 2:32 am by X-Lancer

Even better idea

Indeed!

Mon Mar 10, 2003 5:19 am by Nataku

only there is one setback ..

files like the universe so bases cant be int to the freelancer.ini file.

So you have the people to overwrite them or make a backup and since we want to be the most n00b friendly we can get the last would not be a option because some people just have no idea what to do and others dont want to take the time for even if it takes a min ...

Best would be a installer wich makes backups from all the files your gonna replace and when uninstalling removes the once you made and puts back the old ones..

Greetz Nataku

Mon Mar 10, 2003 5:42 am by ThresholdRPG

Xlancer and Kru: Great ideas!!!!

I think that is a wonderful way to handle the modding of the basic ini files. It is a shame it doesn't work for everything, but it is definitely a big help imho.

I'm just glad there are a bunch of folks who are organization freaks like myself. Heh.

Mon Mar 10, 2003 8:51 am by Harger

not only that. in the freelancer ini are infos for the main exe what dll´s it should use in sp as in mp. freelancer seems to be modders paradise. the only thing we now need is a sdk

edit: first reading then posting... hail me im stupid

Edited by - Harger on 10-03-2003 08:51:36

Mon Mar 10, 2003 9:01 am by ThresholdRPG

Just in case anyone is curious, this isn't just theory.

I tested this and it works great.

All my modded ini files are prepended with thresh_

For example:

thresh_shiparch.ini
thresh_newcharacter.ini

This makes it SOOOO easy to make sure I edit the right files and such. My backups are much safer because now they don't even share the same file names. I have been moving back my binary .ini files so if I ever want to return to "stock" FL, it will be easy to do so. All I would need to do is replace my ORIGINAL_freelancer.ini file.

GREAT find, Xlancer!

Mon Mar 10, 2003 9:13 am by AlphA

good idea, will be very usefull with all the mods well be having around soon. When this standardization gets accepted, i start working on an Graphical mod-switcher program.

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Mon Mar 10, 2003 9:18 am by PumpkinEscobar

The best way to distribute mods would be to use a diff tool to package them up and to apply them. GNU diff can handle merging of files and line changes etc... It would basically mean that you could take a standard out-of-the-box install, add 1-X different mods to the universe with ideally one command per mod. That's best-case, but for most mods that should do it.

It would be nice if the mod building community could standardize and agree on a tool like that, GNU diff runs on unix, linux, windows, just about any platform you can think of.

Mon Mar 10, 2003 9:21 am by ThresholdRPG

I was converting all the .ini files in the major directories over to this system and I noticed something that I figured I should mention.

The following file is not mentioned anywhere in freelancer.ini

DATA\EQUIPMENT\commodities_per_faction.ini

Now, following the conventions in freelancer.ini, it might be possible to just ADD a line that says:

equipment = equipment\yourmod_commodities_per_faction.ini

But since commodities_per_faction.ini is never mentioned on its own in freelancer.ini, it makes me worry if it will never get referenced.

Until someone has tested this, I would recommend that people keep extra backups when messing around with commodities_per_faction.ini

Mon Mar 10, 2003 9:32 am by rafeblade

I just got one point to make, althought this is a very good way to do things as I am doin it myself, how would we get around multiple mods or is this a one mod or the other kind of thing, u might think this is kind of a newbie question but this is the first game iv'e had where i have spent the time lookin thru the files to see what can be modded etc..

Mon Mar 10, 2003 9:36 am by AlphA

like i said: you could make a graphical mod-switcher program. just *click* and your on a different mod ^_^

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Mon Mar 10, 2003 2:40 pm by Berserker

Good point about multiple mods.

What happens if person AAA mods a couple of ships and you really like the mod. Then, a little later person BBB comes out with another ship mod that changes another ship or three and you realy like that, too.

How would you then go about using BOTH mods when playing?

Right now it seems like you'd have to manually add the two mods together..no, not completely, but add the changes from player BBB's mod to player AAA's mod.

I wonder if it would be possible to come up with a utility program that would allow you to select which mods you want and check them on a GUI. Sort of like what is available in both Morrowind and for Falcon 4.

But until that comes along, I think it VERY important that each modded file have a Readme that clearly documents what has been changed in each .INI file. That would at least make it much easier to cut and paste from one modded .INI to another so you have all mods you want incorporated into that particular file.

Mon Mar 10, 2003 4:37 pm by X-Lancer

Posted by Nataku:
files like the universe so bases cant be int to the freelancer.ini file.

What? They ARE referenced there. The first INI solararch.ini .. then universe.ini

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