AWACS v1 - Final Release

[dskzz]

Thanks for everyone who helped me iron out some of the issues on this. I wanted to get this up again for any weekend warriors.

I'll keep this shorter than my v0.9 post: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/10752-E-3-AWACS-mod-v0-9-released%21

The AWACS is an unarmed, slow, long range radar plane that is great for covering areas getting hit by a wave, continents underserved by your bases, and seeking alien bases.

Unarmed means it needs an escort & more radar means more targets, forcing you to reevaluate your fighter assignments, which may be stretched even thinner by giving over hangar space to the recon bird.

This lets you get at those waves esp early game when they keep seeming to hit everywhere but where your base is. Let's you cover lower priority areas from a single base (North America Base, launching AWACS in S. America to cover both and keep funding up.

This gives you a whole layer of strategy in the air game.

ALL LINKS FIXED

Screenshots:

http://db.orangedox.com/yvGOfSaHUlsGqI2Mzr/2014-06-19_00001.jpg - AWACS Xenopedia (Thanks again Sandyxx!)

http://db.orangedox.com/QkUHtUn9rDzajtTzni/2014-06-19_00002.jpg - AWACS Equip Screen (Pretty but useless). Maybe future expansion will allow for equipping radar units. That would be neat! Lol I guess I'm "a sucker for surveillance"

http://db.orangedox.com/Hzh34nfzVSbkdUYyp7/2014-06-19_00003.jpg - Base w/ AWACS in hangar

http://db.orangedox.com/W6SkOUPrt7Dy6iv6mj/2014-06-19_00004.jpg - AWACS patrolling on the other side of the globe. This shows the radar range. It can stick around there for a good 6 hours or so, if I calculated correctly!

Download:

http://db.orangedox.com/UmJ1U0gGo3xg79ahgA/xenonauts-airplane-awacs.zip

/TLDR

NOTE - I also included a file _readme_what_to_add.xlsx which has the lines and which files they were added to, so you can manually add the stuff in yourself. Which is helpful if you have like the Lore Mod, you can go in and add all the acas stuff easily. I hope that this becomes the norm for mods, because installing one mod that overwrites all your changes sucks! This lets you see what to add and where.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments! My email is in the readme.

Enjoy fellow Xenonauts!

PS Sorry if its bad form to repost this. I figured it would be OK.

Edited June 22, 2014 by dskzz
Fixed links, Bug fixed

[KevinHann]

Error (404)

We can't find the document you're looking for. Please check the link and try again.

[Ragnarok]

the link is wrong, it was shorted, notice the "..." in the url.

[dskzz]

Fixed all links! Thanks a lot gents; heck I should put you'r name as an honorary contributor!

[KevinHann]

Whoops, how did I manage to get that wrong?!

Sorry!

[dskzz]

Kevin, you might notice I added in a file _FuelIncreased-aircrafts.xml (I just added it now, so you may need to re download) That file increases the fuel values for all planes (assuming 1 mid-flight refuel available to each craft) which plays well with the AWACS strategies. You need to overwrite aircrafts.xml in your assets folder, or delete aircrafts.xlm in the zip file and rename _FuelIncreased-aircrafts.xml to aircrafts.xml in the zip file, then install it as you normally would.

[dskzz]

Whoops, how did I manage to get that wrong?!

Sorry!

My fault, I copied and pasted the pre-shortened links. Fixed it all by hand

[Cyph]

dskzz, how do actually get the plane ingame? and for some reason when ever i hit the buy a plane button the game crashes. Help? :c

[Ragnarok]

Same. Clicking on buying plane causes a crash.

Its either mod incompatilbity or a untested upload.

[dskzz]

Same. Clicking on buying plane causes a crash.

Its either mod incompatilbity or a untested upload.

Oh no. it works under v1. i am away i will check it tomorrow morning first thing on a fresh install on a virtual box. Apologies!

[dskzz]

OK sorry all, items-backup should be renamed to items.xml and installed. cant do from here i willfix asap

[dskzz]

Same. Clicking on buying plane causes a crash.

Its either mod incompatilbity or a untested upload.

& also cyph stupid mistake fixed. I renamed the items file. could you give it another try please? i will still test on a virtual box. Please let me know if it fails again.

[TacticalDragon]

What a interesting mod!

We actually use in XNT short kind of Scout aircraft with good radar capabillity.

I will make a test of this beauty.

Many thanks!

[Cyph]

Of course! ill give it a good run though and let you know if any problems arise ^v^

[Frakel]

This seems like a really interesting addition - thanks for making this.

A few things you might consider:

1) Since the game i set in 1979-1980 you should probably remove the part of the xenopedia article that mentions 1992 as the year production of the Awacs ended.

2) Since the Awacs is supposedly a much larger plane than the other xenonaut aircraft, you might want to increase the scale of the plane in the pictures - cropping of a little of the wings to make it fit in the hangar might look better than your current solution - don´t know if you´ve tried that approach?

3) Xenonaut aircraft shouldn´t have USAF markings -perhabs you could remove the markings seen on the wings of the Awacs in the aircraft equip screen?

Just a few things to consider

Cheers.

[dskzz]

This seems like a really interesting addition - thanks for making this.

A few things you might consider:

1) Since the game i set in 1979-1980 you should probably remove the part of the xenopedia article that mentions 1992 as the year production of the Awacs ended.

2) Since the Awacs is supposedly a much larger plane than the other xenonaut aircraft, you might want to increase the scale of the plane in the pictures - cropping of a little of the wings to make it fit in the hangar might look better than your current solution - don´t know if you´ve tried that approach?

3) Xenonaut aircraft shouldn´t have USAF markings -perhabs you could remove the markings seen on the wings of the Awacs in the aircraft equip screen?

Just a few things to consider

Cheers.

Thanks you and everyone else for you enthusiasm!

Good call on the Xenopedia entry. I've sort of wanted to rewrite that any, it's just stock from off of Wikipedia. I can do better.

And yeah, the USAF markings do stick out. Wanted to see if it all worked before I spent the extra time removing that. Plus it occured to me sometime that the Xenonauts organization doesn't really have a logo - or does it? Like X-Com was also the name of the group. Technically, Xenonauts isn't XCom. Is there an emblem? I guess I can make it blank but that's sort of boring. Maybe a UN logo? Your troops are all in blue afterall, lol.

2 - This was def a concern. Are you referring to the equip screen or the base screen?

RE - the base screen, If you saw the last version of the mod, the wings extended the entire width of the hanger. I wound up shrinking the image slightly to make it fit in the hanger better. So you propose squaring off the wings maybe like a quarter of the way in from the ends, and making them flush with the hanger walls?

The base screen, that's actually a good idea I can expand the pic considerably you are right it is a huge bird, with wingspan almost as big as the fuselage length.

Edited June 22, 2014 by dskzz

[dskzz]

What a interesting mod!

We actually use in XNT short kind of Scout aircraft with good radar capabillity.

I will make a test of this beauty.

Many thanks!

Thanks for the kind words and please def check it out. If you think it fits the role and would be an asset I'd love to get it considered for inclusion in your remake...that would rock! I've used a lot of Into Darkness' mods to get my game to play the way I like.

Edited June 22, 2014 by dskzz

[darkray]

Hey dskzz,

I would really appreciate some help with this mod.

Now, you mentioned you included the file "_readme_what_to_add.xlsx" in case people who used other mods such as Lore+ could add the content provided in this mod without rewriting over the previous mod and potentially ruining their game.

I must say I have little to no modding experience when it comes to this game or for that matter .XML editing.

So, if your not too busy with real life or improving your mod, would you please consider giving a detailed explanation on how someone would go about implementing those extra lines of code within other mods that use the same .XML as your mod?

Thank you dskzz for reading this & your consideration.

[dskzz]

Darkray - absolutely. I have Office 2010. Execl lets me load any of the xml files in the /assets folder. That makes modding easy. All you do is open any of the files you want to mod in excel and you can modify the values like they were laid out in a spreadsheet - no need to add any messy XML code to the files. If the xml files don't open up in excel automatically you can right click on the file, select open with, and then pick excel. (Assuming you have a PC and Excel)

So the "_readme_what_to_add.xlsx" file lists each file that I modified along with the line i added in excel. So what you do is go to your xenonauts assets folder. If you are using xenonauts off steam you need to right click on the game, click properties, click view local files or something like that. If youve gotten one mod installed already you prolly know how to do this anyway.

When you got the file open, go through each file I listed in the _what_to_add sheet, copy that line, and insert the line into open file. For example, modding aircrafts.xml you open that file in /assets, copy the line from _what_to_add - airplane.human.awacs, 200, 0, 4800, 800... take that whole line, copy it and paste it into the aircrafts.xml file in xenonauts. save file, then do the same for the other files I listed - items, strings, and xenopedia.

NOTE - in _what_to_add each entry (mostly) has a grey line with the column names. DONT ADD THAT LINE!

The final entry, scripts_basebuilt.lua is not an xml file so its a special case. But the process is the same. Open that file w/ a text editor from xenonautes (/assets/scripts/_basebuilt.lua) and copy the line UnlockKnowledge to the open file. Save file.

Copy all the image files included in the zip as well - those are the two folders aircrafts and xenopediaimages. You can more or less just copy those directories onto the directories in the game folder.

I hope that all was clear! I'm not much of a tech writer. lol. If you have any more questions, my email is in the readme or feel free to post more on this thread.

Good hunting!

d

Now if you can't get these open in excel let me know I'll see about hutning down the actual XML code.

[darkray]

thanks dskzz, for the in depth tutorial

Almost everything went well while referencing your guide during installation of the mod and it functions as intended minus the the ingame text, & descriptions; but only because when attempting to edit the strings.xml & xenopedia.xml I receive a error.

Now, it turns out the creator of the lore+ mod either locked or don't know their mod files are corrupt.

A further explanation would be that when attempting to access or edit the fore mentioned files above from the lore+ mod within an .xml editing software, it returns a error message stating the file is corrupt.

I'm not sure it's much you or I can do about that considering the creators of that mod purposely locked those files to prevent tampering, and possibly stolen material by another creator.

Thanks again though 4 the help & I wish you luck on your mods & hope you will continue to improve them

Edited June 28, 2014 by darkray

[dskzz]

I'm glad to hear that it worked for you darkray.

I can't speak for Lore+, I haven't gotten around to installing it yet, however, you should be able to mod the actual XML code if you can't open the files in excel. I have seen a few XML files that I couldn't open because the schema (basically the layout that tells the XML reader what the values for each "column" are) is somehow corrupted. That might be what you are experiencing. The xenopedia is probably tough to add to in xml, but the strings file shouldn't be to tough. That's the more important file anyway because without it instead of seeing "AWACS" all you see is ###### which for me spoils it!

First BACKUP strings.xml! I can't promise you this will work correctly!

Next, open strings.xml in notepad or a better editor (I use notepad++), scroll down somewhere to the middle of the file. If you want, search for Chinook, and add in after that entry. Find a line around there that says </row> then copy and paste this on the line right after that:

<Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0">

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">airplane.human.awacs</Data><NamedCell

ss:Name="_FilterDatabase"/></Cell>

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">AWACS</Data><NamedCell ss:Name="_FilterDatabase"/></Cell>

</Row>

<Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0">

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">E-3 AWACS</Data><NamedCell

ss:Name="_FilterDatabase"/></Cell>

<Cell ss:StyleID="s68"><Data ss:Type="String">E-3 AWACS</Data><NamedCell

ss:Name="_FilterDatabase"/></Cell>

</Row>

Good luck! Let me know if you have problems.

[Max_Caine]

Hi darkray. I was directed to your post by Ragnarok. I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean "locked down". The xml files I mod are edited in notepad++, and I don't believe I have altered anything in notepad++ that I would "lock down" an xml file. If you could explain to me further what "locked down" means, it would help enormously, because I honestly don't know what's happened there!

EDIT: To further explain, when I update for a new version of Xenonauts, I look at the files I have modded. If there are new fields, I add them in notepad++. If the field types have changed, I alter them. After any alterations, I cut and paste all the Lore+ stuff so it's near the start of the file. That's it. I don't make any special effort to "lock down" a file, or make any other changes.

Edited June 28, 2014 by Max_Caine

[dskzz]

Max,

Honestly don't think darkray described the problem correctly. As he said he's new to modding xenonauts. For some reason, occasionally Excel won't read the xml files' schema correctly and excel reports it as "corrupt."

OK I just opened a random xml file. Some of them in the /assets directory get the excel icon and open automatically into excel some get the xml web page icon and open w/ IE. MAnually opening one w/ excel (in this case, armours) get the message

"The specified XML source does not refer to a schema. Excel will create a schema based on the XML source data." (Darkray, do you get that message)

Although it does load the file ok once I do that.

OK. So Lore+ does have some problems.

I downloaded Lore+ (been meaning to install it anyways) and tried opening the xenopedia file in excel. I get "The file cannot be opened because of errors." It spits out a log file. Long one - here it is

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28665072/mods/lore_errors.txt

Once I click through the OK it fails to open. For the record opened it in notepad++. Ran my XML chcker - "Parsing error at line 311:EntityReft: expecting ;

Just doing some minor debugging, I delete that entry and it find an error in the prior entry. Looks like failure to escape some special character somewhere. It may not be a big enough deal to mess up Xenonauts but it makes it impossible to load into Excel, which makes life a bit difficult for those who want to add stuff to it via excel.

HOW TO FIX IT

Huh boy I can't help myself when I find a problem I have to debug it. Researches.ScoutingMission - The data string where it says " Meaning no disrespect to R&D" the & needs to be escaped, removed or encoded and that should make everything work just find.

[darkray]

Hello again dskzz,

Good luck! Let me know if you have problems.

Thankfully, there were no problems on this end.

I followed your advice and used the suggested program notepad++ to edit the fore mentioned .xml files and now the awacs text & descriptions are present ingame.

Hey Max_Caine,

I really appreciate the response

Now, If you focus your attention to what dskzz's posted below your previous comment, he better explains the issue that has been problematic for me while trying to edit the strings.xml & xenopedia.xml files included with your mod. These same files are used within dskzz's "AWACS v1 - Final Release" mod which conflict as you know because once you install another mod atop another using the same files they overwrite.

However, dskzz was kind enough to provide a detailed tutorial to get around that issue; while allowing users to utilize both mods.

Long story short Max_Caine, the problem is solved now and everything works as intended; so thanks 4 your awesome mod.

Yet again dskzz, Thank you for the help

Edited July 1, 2014 by darkray

[dskzz]

darkray, glad to hear it all worked out!

By the way Max Caine sent me a message that all of the Lore++ special characters are now escaped so I think things will go a lot easier from here on out. Lore is a great package and that escaping problem is one of those insanely minor PITA details that even the best of coders forget to address sometimes. Add in the fact that XML is, IMHO, a messy "language" and, well, there you have it!

Speaking of which I think that my next project will be a mod installer for xenonauts. Maybe in the next few days I'll post something to that effect (but in the meantime, I'll just bump my AWACS post by talking about it here:) ). Shouldn't be too hard, I think just a diff comparison of the xml files should do the trick, don't know if I'll even need to parse the files first or not. If anyone out there has done any work to that effect or has any thoughts please let me know (and thereby also keep the AWACS post on the front page)!

PS Notepad++ is awesome. I do all my coding in it. And the plugins are terrific. A handy tool for anyone doing any mods is the XML Tools Plugin for Notepad++. It's finicky (but so is XML) and takes some massaging to find errors it raises, but it sure is helpful to have!