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May. 25, 2013

The Starport Forum Index > The Shipyard > Conventional Modding > A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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alfa astrix

A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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After talking to Friendly Fire about a few tricks I discovered for modding Freelancer, he suggested the idea of starting a thread for other modders, as well as myself, to post pictures and information about tricks that they know that they've just been holding on to. Here's my trick;

Combining Two or More Files Into One

You may ask why do this, well for several reasons. One, it allows Freelancer to load slightly faster. After combining the ship goods with the shiparch, it cut the load time down by .8 sec., then when I combined initialworlds, empathy, and faction_prop, it cut the load time down by 1.9 sec. Also, by combining these files, it makes it substantially easier to mod. There's one downfall to this that any larger TC mod designer will love; 3rd party programs don't like this that much. Here are some pictures of how I created all new .ini files.

Here's the links to those images so everyone can see better.
Freelancer.ini
Crafts.ini

Posted on: 2008/8/6 22:54

Bejaymac

Re: A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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I wonder if this "crafts.ini" will have the same drawback that FF & CoT have recently found, if your ships aint in the shiparch.ini they will refuse to dock with anything, they still fly it's just that they get refused entry at every base.

Posted on: 2008/8/6 23:09

**shuffles of with a new headache**

alfa astrix

Re: A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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Crafts.ini is set up just like the shiparch.ini. It's just a new file I created. I've testing it and this works. You just have to get freelancer.ini to recognize it.

Posted on: 2008/8/6 23:14

FriendlyFire

Re: A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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I'm guessing that's because there still is one shiparch.ini file, it's just renamed. It's with two shiparch files that FL goes foobar.

Posted on: 2008/8/6 23:16

"Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try."
-Peggy Noonan

alfa astrix

Re: A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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Wrong again. It still works fine for me. Just have to put the custom stuff before the original.

Posted on: 2008/8/6 23:19

Mindhunter

Re: A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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My trick is not rly a trick its a tool that will make coding way easier than before.

The trick is called Notepad++ and allows to open up to 20 files in one window.
I has feature like viewing 2 files at the same time which is very useful while coding ships factions or other stuff that needs a few inis.
Notepad++ also counts each line and gives highlights section start/end aswell as lines with a ; this makes it alot easier to find errors.
The drag and drop funtions is great aswell as the search and replace functions.

In one word: I've just uninstalled MS word ;D

Notepad++ is a opensource project and can be downloaded at sourcefourge, u simply need to google it.

Greetings
Mind

Posted on: 2008/8/6 23:38

Worfeh

Re: A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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What ever happend with the people who used the VI editor for advanced features.....

Posted on: 2008/8/7 0:07

Sushi

Re: A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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This was made by a developer of FWs when he was around. Thought this would be useful for many of you who use Notepad ++

Quote:

By: ViperKnight

I'd suggest anybody who does any sort of decent amount of INI coding to take 10 seconds or so to download Notepad++.

It's a great/fast notepad-like app which has cool support for things like code tags as well as billions of other cool things like auto tag closing and such.

It can be configured to completely replace Notepad if you want (so whenever something is told to open in Notepad, it uses N++ instead.

It can be downloaded at:
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/download.php

I'm currently creating a "custom language" file which will highlight Freelancer INI tags as well as other cool stuff (like automatic blocking and such). The main idea is it'll make navigating FL inis much easier as well as making things generally clearer and easy to see/read.

Here's a demo screeny:

And a full-screen one if you want to see the whole thing (warning: it's 1440x900):
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b222/ViperKnight/demoN.jpg

DOWNLOAD THE FL INI LANGUAGE READER HERE:
http://files.filefront.com/NP+FL+INI+ ... /;11393852;/fileinfo.html
It's called "NP_FL_INI_coder.zip".

Just unzip it into your Notepad++ folder. If you've installed it to work with only your user the file will have to go into "c:\documents and settings\ ~USERNAME\Application Data\ Notepad++\"

NOTES:
- I've had to create a couple of "fake" tags to close the code blocks since N++ won't except line returns (blank lines) as end points (very few IDEs will). I highly doubt these will have any detrimental effects as it doesn't add much to filesize or anything.
- The ";/" tag will close anything
- Some key words are very generic and may get highlighted in the wrong areas. In most cases it can't be avoided. It has no effect on the file itself.
- Normal FL tags DO NOT work properly due to the inability to read line breaks as block end points. At the moment it will just treat them as a bunch of nested tags.
- If everyone would like to adopt this, any new files we create should probably follow the new tag system (open with a tag, then always close it with ";/".
- If you wish to create a code block anywhere (say, to divide up NR ships and IN ships within the one shiparch file) I've allowed the ";[block]" and ;[/block]" tags to be used.
- Block tags appear in RED so they're easy to see.
- Comments appear in the standard green colour as well as italics.
- Some basic operators and words such as =, -, true, false etc will appear in a dark red colour.
-Number will apear in blue.

If I missed a tag, let me know and I'll add it to the file.

Posted on: 2008/8/7 6:42

Mindhunter

Re: A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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Some of the things he's saying there are fixed in the latest version i use.

For example:- Normal FL tags DO NOT work properly due to the inability to read line breaks as block end points. At the moment it will just treat them as a bunch of nested tags. (fixed, if not I'm sure there's a addon to fix that)

- I've had to create a couple of "fake" tags to close the code blocks since N++ won't except line returns (blank lines) as end points (very few IDEs will). I highly doubt these will have any detrimental effects as it doesn't add much to filesize or anything (seems to be fixed, never noted such a problem)

But hes right with:

I'd suggest anybody who does any sort of decent amount of INI coding to take 10 seconds or so to download Notepad++.

It's a great/fast notepad-like app which has cool support for things like code tags as well as billions of other cool things like auto tag closing and such.

Ill second that

Posted on: 2008/8/7 6:50

Strail

Re: A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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I do a lot of ini editing as i dont use xml and have found Ultra Edit to be the best tool for me.

The main reason I have stuck with ultra edit is due to its very powerfull find and replace features and easy to use macros as well as its project file functionality, where you can dump all your inis into it, and perform find and replace and macros on them all at once.

Posted on: 2008/8/7 9:33

Mindhunter

Re: A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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Notepad++ can do all that and much, much more.
Your should take a look at the addon galery

U can also do HTML coding with NP++ btw. u do HTML with it (sometimes).

Posted on: 2008/8/7 9:40

Strail

Re: A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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Yes im sure it does much more, however, so does UE. 4yrs working with it and Im comfortable with all the features and there is nothing that I cant do with it.
You might want to check out Ultra Edits features.
http://www.ultraedit.com/products/ult ... t/ultraedit_features.html

Posted on: 2008/8/7 9:45

OPR8R

Re: A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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you mean the loading times when you launch the game?
(before the menu appears)

if so it would be interesting to know if there is a difference between decrypted files and encrypted ones

Posted on: 2008/8/7 10:16

alfa astrix

Re: A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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As in when the loading bar comes up once you click new game and such. I know that tenths of a second isn't much, but it's something.

Posted on: 2008/8/7 10:32

Sushi

Re: A Few Hidden Modder Tricks

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Quote:

you mean the loading times when you launch the game?
(before the menu appears)

if so it would be interesting to know if there is a difference between decrypted files and encrypted ones

I've been really interested in that myself. If anyone could look into that, I'd be very appreciative.

Posted on: 2008/8/7 14:31

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