ShadowDragon8685

I modded it to have the 30-round magazine and a five-round burst, because those things didn't actually have burst selectors, they just taught the shooters to fire controlled bursts of full auto. Honestly, I think that's kind of important, because I'd realized that with the mod, I was giving practically everybody M16 Carbines, as despite the lower damage and range, the range seldom came into issue and the reduced TU for firing and the reduced carry weight was more than worth the reduced damage and inability to go to careful Aim.

That's... Highly peculiar. Compression error? Maybe a problem with Mediafire? If it's happening between modder and moddee, that could explain mysterious/unreproducible problems.

Oh, and I've missed one important thing, too: Named Cell! Sometimes you'll find elements like this: <NamedCell ss:Name="_FilterDatabase"/> They're annoying. Ctrl-H them and replace them with an empty string to be rid of them. But sometimes, you'll find them on more than one line, like this: <Row> <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Abandon</Data></Cell> <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Abandon mission</Data><NamedCell ss:Name="_FilterDatabase"/></Cell> </Row> I hate that, don't you? Fortunately, there's a solution. Go to the find/replace dialoge again, and move back up one radio button, from Regular Expressions to Extended, and plug in the following: <NamedCell\r\n ss:Name="_FilterDatabase"/> Again, replacing it with the empty string will do you good. Find and replace all, preferably in all your open documents. Ctrl-F and look for NamedCell again. If you see it again, you'll have to adjust the search string. Each "\r\n" tells Notepad++ to select across another line break (Return, Newline, I guess.) Remember you need to select the white-space, too, when you're copy-pasting the second line part of NamedCell to plug into Notepad++. Happy hunting!

Actually, I prefer people to concatenate it to SD8685 or even SD. That doesn't bother me. First: Yeah, I realized that. I'm not sure where I got v21RC1 or why I thought it was current or near-current. I probably googled and grabbed the first one I saw. It has been holding up well, but since I realized it was so old, I'm now cleaning the metadata from v21RC1, 1.06, and 1.09, to do a text diff on them all and see what changed, as I'd heard there were bugs in the later versions, missing stuff and all that. Secondly: That's good to know. I do wonder what caused that, though; same basic glitch in the files, two entirely different mods. Did they pass through the Excel of the same collaborator at some point, I can't help but wonder?

Three reasons. One: I'm an obstinate pig-headed jackass and once I've set myself to something I'm either going to finish it or get frustrated, angry at everything it represents, and sod off to sulk for a while. Two: I'm still trying to get this all to work just right so I can play a bloody full game the way I want it to play. Three: I've developed a personal vendetta against this metadata BS and I want to see it scourged from the files we're distributing around these parts.

I just looked at all the files I'm going to have to clean... I despaired for a while, and then I stepped up my game. By which I mean I whined to a friend until he told me how to use Notepad++'s powerful regular expressions to do what I want them to do. Get the latest version of Notepad++, it's presently 6.6.8. I mean, this will probably work with versions newer than 5, but why take a chance? Note: When they updated Notepad++ past the fives, the plugincompare plugin - you know, that thing we all got Notepad++ for in the first place - broke syntax highlighting. To fix this, Google Notepad++ Compare Plugin 1.5.6.2 and install the updated version that unbreaks syntax highlighting. Anyway, here's what you do: Use <Row[^>].* To find and select ROW elements with stuff in them. Replace it with <Row>, replace them all. If, for some reason, the file you're working on has the <Row> elements on the same line as other elements, do not do this, as this is lazy and greedy and will gobble up EVERYTHING on the line. Do not have Matches Newline checked or you are in for a baaad day! That's part of the battle down. Now! Use <Cell[^>].*?[^/]> To selectively select CELL elements with BS in them. Note that this will SKIP self-closing CELL Elements; do normal searches to find them and kill them MANUALLY. What's a self-closing element? It's one that looks like this <Cell ss:Style="Bullshit"/> The key is the />. But now that the other Cell elements have been normalized, a simple expression can take care of them. Plug <Cell[^>].*?> into your search for, and replace all with <Cell/>. Bing badda boom, bob's your uncle.

I'm not sure where this problem came from, but I'm working with a copy of Lore+ to try and integrate it into Khall's Carbines, in a CE .25 build, and I've noticed something very peculiar with the row containing VEQ.PURCOST. It spams, after VEQ.PURCOST and Purchase cost, AEQ.PURCOST and Purchase cost approximately eleventy-billion times. I don't know whence that came from, or if it's been fixed in the recent editions or not (the one I have is, evidently, Lore+v21stableRC1,) but you should check to make sure that hasn't carried over. Since I've seen just about the exact same thing happen in a completely different mod, I'm beginning to suspect this is a flaw in Microsoft Excel.

That's a real headache. Oh well, it shouldn't be too hard to fix it. It's a shame there are folks out there who can't shake their Micro$uck addictions, though. I'm sure there's open-source alternatives to Excel. Are they less derptarded about obvious things like that?

Wow, really? That's... A ridiculous headache. Okay, let me refine my question: does Xenonauts require the correct row count to read from Strings.xml? I mean, it wouldn't really be hard to put it back in, just count the number of </Row> tags, really. Hell, do a ctrl-H, replacing </Row> with <!-- Morkmorkbjork --> or whatever, write down how many times Notepad++ tells you it replaced it, and then put it back.

I admit, I'm not 100% on it, but I'm fairly sure that the file doesn't even need to contain the row count. I suspect that's yet more metadata in the <Table> tag, which is only useful for spreadsheet files which are, themselves, too lazy to count. I'm betting (my ass, in fact,) that it would work with <Table> bare of metadata.

So, I've been digging through the guts of several mods, trying to figure out how to merge them, and I've come to a distressing conclusion. Metadata sucks! The core of modding is using a text editor which can do a text diff; I suspect most people use Notepad++ for this, though there are alternatives. You know what metadata does to a text diff? It makes it weep, it makes it scream, it makes it cry uncle. When you're doing a text diff, you only want to see actual differences in the files you're working with, not every single cell where one person who last edited the file used Arial and where the other used Microsoft Sans-Serif. Not to mention that it bloats your file size significantly. How significantly? About twice as much. I've spent the last hour cleaning up Khall's Carbines's Strings.xml. It started at over 12,000Kb, though much of that is because his spreadsheet program must have glitched somewhere and repeated the same few cells in a row approximately ten bajillion times. Clean up the glitched info, and you get a file that's been pared down to about 640K. Clean up the blasted metadata, though - the NamedCell nonsense, the style info, etcetera - and you can get the sucker down to 390. That's not liposuction, that's taking a chainsaw to the file. So, what should a properly edited Strings.xml file look like? <?xml version="1.0"?><Workbook><Worksheet ss:Name="strings"> <Table> <Column/> <Column/> <Row> <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Column Name</Data></Cell> <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Column Contents</Data></Cell> </Row>... </Table></Worksheet></Workbook> And honestly, I'm not even 100% that <Workbook> and <Worksheet> are necessary, but I ain't gonna strip 'em. But that's it - you should have a <Row> tag, containing two <Cell> tags, which contain a <Data ss:Type="String"> tag, which contains your info. Not only does this make things much lighter in the file size and much, much easier for whatever text diff program you're going to use in the end, but it enhances human readability by approximately over nine thousand percent. Once you've pared most of the file down this way, you can just hold the page down key to scan the file and look for bits that are obviously out-of-place. For example, just by visual scanning, I detected a long section beginning with Items.AlienBaseCoreDesc and proceeding to Researches.HeavyDroneWreckageDesc where the second cell is missing entirely, and I'll have to look into that. Oh, and one last tip? <!-- This is a comment. --> That's the comment tag. Everything ignores it, it's just for human readability, which makes it the most perfect thing ever for someone tinkering in the guts of an XML file to leave themselves (or future modders) notes as regards what they've seen which they thought was strange in the file, or (perhaps more importantly) done to the file. Documenting your work now will save you massive headaches later, I promise you that. (Plus, it makes it very easy to ctrl-F on the string "<!--" to find things you've seen before.)

This may be a trivial, or impossible request, but... Would it be possible for you to set the spreadsheet programs you're using to strip out or omit cell and table metadata on saving? Editing spreadsheet-formatted XML files in Notepad++ isn't so hard, without the metadata making things godawful confusing and inserting random line breaks everywhere.

It seems that an awful lot of Strings.xml entries went missing in Khall's Carbines's strings.xml, in addition to the ridiculousness of three entries being copied like, tens and tens of thousands of times. But, after I beat those back into shape, and stripped cell metadata from the Community Edition's Strings.xml, I've got enough commonality for a text diff to actually be meaningful. And by that I mean it's like, 80% commonality. It's taking me a looong time, but I think I'm closing in on fixing this bad boy.

Chacineiro, you might consider that shotguns are very good in close quarters assault. Their maximum potential damage received a buff: he set the damage of each pellet down to 3/5ths, but doubled the number of pellets, so the new maximum damage potential is 1/5th higher, and the damage will follow the curve more, giving you more assured likely damage. A shotgun is good on the close quarters offense. Alien jackass crouched behind a low wall with a gun? Run up to the wall with a shotgun and feed him a faceful of hot lead/lasers/plasma/hypersonic ferrous metal. But they are not good in close quarters defense, because they're big and cumbersome and difficult to bring to bear. In theory, though, this need not be the case; there is in theory some design space for, say, a short-barreled shotgun with a low ammo capacity but a hellacious reaction modifier. But I digress; if you want to get that delicious reaction fire, use a pistol or a carbine. If you want to blow someone the hell away at point-blank range, use a shotgun. If you want to get someone into point-blank range so he can blow an alien's face off without getting his own ass blown off from reaction fire, use a flashbang to get the alien's heads down. Or a full burst from a machine gunner. Combined arms for the win.

I would point out that there is already a powerful sonic grenade weapon in the game. That's what the "bang" part of the flashbang is. That said, an LRAD mounted a Hunter would be interesting, if possibly anachronistic. Then again, reverse-engineering alien tech is an excuse which forgives a multitude of sins. How about grenade launchers? Fires miniaturized (lower splash and less-damaging; but no less suppressive) versions of the standard grenades, at far greater range. The M79 grenade launcher (single-shot, break action,) was introduced in 1961, so that's been around a while. The China Lake (pump-action, 3-round tube magazine,) grenade launcher was introduced in 1968 for the Navy SEALs, and the Milkor MGL (the ubiquitous six-round cylinder grenade launcher seen in every game with grenade launchers ever) will be prototyped in 1981 - slightly anachronistic, but there's nothing saying your lab boys can't engineer something akin to it. Grenade launchers would, I think, be quite nice weapons - after all, the aliens do get their exploding plasma rifle, it's only fair we should have something to return the favor with. With the lesser damage and splash range, they wouldn't be quite as useful as having a grenadier throw a full-sized grenade in, but they'd be faster to fire and with a longer range, so they'd be more practical for room-clearance and for long-range suppression.

Max: Yep, I already tried that. I've wiped my save-games folder and I'm trying to manually merge again, this time merging Khall's Carbines with Lore+ instead of the inverse. There is something very FUBAR with Khall's Carbine's Strings.xml file. To the tune of a single row's two cells being copied over 9,000 times between them, and the next row being the same way. I suspect this to have been a glitch in whatever spreadsheet file he used to make it, I'm going to try fixing it manually.

Digging further into your Strings.xml file, Khall, starting on Line 9225, you appear to copy/paste the alternating lines <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">weapon.lasercarbine</Data></Cell> <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Laser Carbine</Data></Cell> Over nine thousand times. That is not hyperbole. The next instance of the word "row" is on Line 25,620. then on the very next line, weapon.lasercabine.desc begins, and it is copied again over nine thousand times, that "row" ending on line 42,16. I suspect this may not be intended. [e]Also, just as a suggestion? Hang game balance. The AK-47 as you depict it is clearly loaded with the 30-round banana magazine. I go in to the necessary files to change that myself, I'd suggest you make that a stock alteration. Don't need to mess with the upper tiers, just being a bit grognardy re: real guns. Personally, I also kind of wish this game had more than the standard pistol. Like you have your standard 9mm, then you can have a low-accuracy but bullet-spraying one-handed machine pistol/PDW type weapon, such as the IMI Uzi, or a really heavy pistol like a Colt Python in .44, but it should require a soldier with over 70 STR to fire without penalties, ala heavy weapons.

You know, this is a pretty good idea. Just one problem: Not everybody has Excel, which is a paid-for product. I think that getting this ball rolling, you should standardize on XML code to be inserted into whatever file with a text editor (such as Notepad++, or in a pinch, Notepad.)

I have a question... Why is the Strings file provided with this mod so incredibly enormous? Your Strings file is over 12,000kb in size, the standard one is only 621Kb.

Well, I can try... I've tweaked gameconfig to hell and back, though, tweaking all kinds of numbers. Anyway...[ATTACH]5194[/ATTACH] This is the save file, I've got thirty scientists working on heavy lasers, they'll be done shortly. Here's a copy of my gameconfig, here's my Xenopedia, here's my Researches, and strings is making Pastebin choke. Its Gonna Stop Working.sav Its Gonna Stop Working.sav

With all the genetic- and mechanical- and probably nano-augmentations they have, their wounds probably instantly close off and/or their circulatory systems route around damage.

It's a pity that's not like, a machine gunner. Or better yet, somebody with an automatic shotgun.

Alright, I'm using the CE 0.25, and have slapped onto it Jsleezy's real fighter portrait packs, Jsleezy's armor compilations, Khall's carbines and shotguns mod, and Lore+. The problem is that Khaal's Carbines and Lore+ both modify strings.xml, at least, I think that's the problematic file. They also modify xenopaedia.xml and researches.xml. I've tried to merge these files as best as I could, with the original files, but the original strings.xml was so huge that notepad++ choked every time I tried to run a text diff on it, so I just to just give up and try copy-pasting the non-formatting stuff from Lore+'s tiny strings.xml into the complete strings.xml included with Khall's Carbines. Anyway, the problem comes up after heavy laser research is complete. The research triggers off normally, but I can't close out of the xenopedia article on heavy lasers for the troops and aircraft by clicking the close button, as one normally does. If I press escape, it closes, bringing up the xenopedia article on base-defense laser turrets. That, too, will not close. If I press escape a third time, it takes me to the "research is empty, no new research was added, would you like to go to the labs or close this window" pop-up. That one will not close no matter what I do - I can click on either of those buttons, or I can jam the escape button, it matters not. I don't want to give up on Lore+, because I love it, but if it comes down to a mod which actually changes the game and one which merely improves the atmosphere, I'll have to pull Lore+ out. Before it comes to that, though, can anyone point me in the direction of what might be causing this, that I can fix manually?

That's arguable. I would say that Marauders obsolete Foxtrots - not because the Foxtrots can't still perform, but because the Marauders can do everything the Foxtrots do, and everything Condors can do, but they're faster, more agile, more durable and they can do the roll. Ideally, maximum marauders is the best imaginable squadron set-up, six on each base so you can launch 2x3 or 3x2 depending on the situation. But to get that many Marauders, you would basically had had to import a significant fraction of the Alien fleet to the surface of Earth in flaming scraps. So chances are you're gonna make do with a handful of Marauders at the equator in the Americas, Europe-Africa, and Indochina, and have Foxtrots nearer to the poles.

Who's orders are you going to follow in an alien invasion? Those of the guy whom you're out of contact with and is probably dead, and who might be a mere police chief or armed security guard supervisor anyway, or the guy dressed up like he just beamed down from the Enterprise and clearly has a plan to deal with the copious amounts of ALIENS you find yourself surrounded by? Also, you're assuming they HAVE a superior to take orders from - Middle Eastern Tribesmen and hicks with shotguns have only themselves to follow, and thus have full prerogative to place themselves under your command. As for the whole "being able to give them orders," that's why getting an Xenonaut next to him would be required - so the Xenonaut can physically hand that guy a radio tuned in to the Xenonaut frequencies. And as for balance, well, a few guys with pistols or shotguns aren't going to make much of a difference at all late-game, and early-game, the player needs every "clever" advantage she or he can get, which makes conscripting already on-scene armed members of the public or members of other forces. Also, I imagine that once the invasion is in full swing and un-hidable, most militaries and civilian armed agencies would issue standing orders that all personnel are to cooperate fully with the Xenonauts. That's why, for instance, Spetznaz GRU and U.S. SEALs won't shoot at you, even if you just landed at what should be an ostensibly top secret army base.