Post by Fistalis on Nov 22, 2012 19:40:50 GMT -6
So, as the beta versions for update 3 come closer to update 3 its time I start working on updating the modern world to work with what we have, and hopefully I won't have much to fix by the time update actually releases.
I'll be trying to post updates as to what I'm working on during cache times so everyone can get an insight into what I do, how long it takes me and how much time/effort I actually DO put into my modding. Also I will try when I can to list exactly what I'm changing to give those new to modding some insight into what I'm altering to get my desired effects.
So now that I have a version that will actually run on my PC I start it up to see what immediate issues can be seen prior to a new cache.
Apon first loading up I see that facility costs are WAY high. I don't mind them being burdensome.. but in this case the U.S. facility costs are so high they have 0 chance of actually achieving anything.
So what caused this? Well it seems BG has updated it so that when I inflate my economy for the modern world Its now adjusting facility costs as well.
If i check the default campaign I see for instance that the default maintenance on a research facility is 7 million. In the modern world with the current beta update its 300 million.
What to do? Well the first thing would be to attempt to deflate the economy some. Now that facilities are properly scaling the maintenance costs it wont hurt if our other areas of spending are a bit cheaper as well.
Now normally I would simply plug in real world numbers.. however in this instance we have to balance the over all economic situation of all nations by adjusting a single number.. no easy task but I'm willing to keep poking at it until I get it right.
The point isn't to have them all perfect in a real world sense, but to have them all well done in relation to each other. Since my old economic changes should hold I just need to adjust the amount of overall inflation in the world economy.
Since its been awhile since I've touched it the first thing I'm going to try is to reduce the world wide GDP. This is done in the WMdata file.
Here is what it WAS set to:
Now the first thing we will try is to plug in the real world number and see how it pans out.
So now we have this.
World wide GDPc in PPP is an estimated 12000.. so we plug it in and recache.
Now I didn't remove the OOB from the cache for this one so its going to take ~30 mins to cache. Will update with the results once its done.
And I'm back.
Well the result has for comparison brought down the maintenance costs of the research senter to 287 million. While thats not much, the costs of social spending etc as well has been reduced. The net result is that the U.S. can stay afloat.. if just barely. Good enough for now, we can can and will revisit it later as we notice issues. Since there are many parts of the economy BG has adjusted this certainly won't be the last time we visit this subject.
Next up, all my new unit models aren't showing up properly.
Well this was to be expected, when BG updates the .PICNUMS file we have to adjust ours to their changes. SO what do we do here? Well to break it down, we have to make sure our entries in the pic nums file is correct. Since the updated file overwrote my old one I would normally have to do ALL the work over again. However.. I ha d planned for this, and now have a custom picnums file rather than just modifying the default one. But haven't implemented it.
So I need to figure out where the .picnums file is called from. I actually already know its called from the allload.ini So the easiest way to future proof this would be to create my own custom allload.ini and have the scenario file call it. So we copy it, rename it to MW.ini then insert this in place of the default Pic nums call.
With luck this should prevent me from having to redo it after every update.
Now to speed this up I mark out the .oob from the scenario file to make caching faster. Back in a minute with the results.
Back again.
Well, my models are still not showing.. so now we have to figure out what the issue is. Is the call for my custom AllLoad.ini not working? Or is my custom .PICnums file not properly done.
Well I look at the custom Picnums file and low and behold.. its done properly. I see all my units listed. So apparently a custom allload.ini isn't going to work, and the fact that it shows all the other units properly tells me its still loading the default Allload.ini.
So our only option is to once again.. replace the default one. Something I don't like to do, but if its the only option what choice do I have?
So for now I rename the default picnums file. Copy my custom one and name it as the default. Load up and low and behold it works. I now can see my custom models once again. In the future I will need to parse the new one and add the new entries BG did in order to have it properly show all the new models they added. But for now this gets it functional.
Now we have base functionality
Well its playable now.. kinda. All the UI changes were wiped out and we'll have to fix those later but I always leave those for last since it can drive me a bit crazy feeling around in the dark with the UI files.
So for now lets look at updating.
First lets start with something easy.. Leaders.
I have a thread I setup for people to let me know of leader changes. So lets dig that out.
So according to my own notes I have some of them fixed already.. but lets take a look and make sure nothing got altered in the update.
Hollande? Check.
Putin? Check.
Nikolae? Nope still Boris Tadic...
So we need to alter Boris to become Tomislav.
First thing is a name change I'm going to open up my .PPLX file and do a search for tadic.
Found it.
Now were just going to do a name change thats easy enough, so that becomes this.
Now His name is fixed.. for the picture.
In the code above we see his picture Is 30141. So lets go into our graphics folder and find it.
Once I've found it I Need to find a new picture to use over the old one.. Google is my friend, and I find a ton of pictures to use.. however I have to choose one. Which? Whats my criteria. Well generally I want one that doesn't make a leader look either too good or too bad. A national flag in the background is good, and I tend to gravitate toward official pictures when possible. Directly facing the camera is a plus as well.
So after some looking I find one. Just gotta crop it, resize it and paste it over boris's Face.
After some time modifying the pic and making sure its properly centered I move on to the next.. quite a few need to be done.. some aren't listed like Chinas recent change in leaders.
This will probably be all for today. Want to get some play time in on the new beta. I'll continue this soon.
I'll be trying to post updates as to what I'm working on during cache times so everyone can get an insight into what I do, how long it takes me and how much time/effort I actually DO put into my modding. Also I will try when I can to list exactly what I'm changing to give those new to modding some insight into what I'm altering to get my desired effects.
So now that I have a version that will actually run on my PC I start it up to see what immediate issues can be seen prior to a new cache.
Apon first loading up I see that facility costs are WAY high. I don't mind them being burdensome.. but in this case the U.S. facility costs are so high they have 0 chance of actually achieving anything.
So what caused this? Well it seems BG has updated it so that when I inflate my economy for the modern world Its now adjusting facility costs as well.
If i check the default campaign I see for instance that the default maintenance on a research facility is 7 million. In the modern world with the current beta update its 300 million.
What to do? Well the first thing would be to attempt to deflate the economy some. Now that facilities are properly scaling the maintenance costs it wont hurt if our other areas of spending are a bit cheaper as well.
Now normally I would simply plug in real world numbers.. however in this instance we have to balance the over all economic situation of all nations by adjusting a single number.. no easy task but I'm willing to keep poking at it until I get it right.
The point isn't to have them all perfect in a real world sense, but to have them all well done in relation to each other. Since my old economic changes should hold I just need to adjust the amount of overall inflation in the world economy.
Since its been awhile since I've touched it the first thing I'm going to try is to reduce the world wide GDP. This is done in the WMdata file.
Here is what it WAS set to:
gdpcbase, 19500
Now the first thing we will try is to plug in the real world number and see how it pans out.
So now we have this.
gdpcbase, 12000
World wide GDPc in PPP is an estimated 12000.. so we plug it in and recache.
Now I didn't remove the OOB from the cache for this one so its going to take ~30 mins to cache. Will update with the results once its done.
And I'm back.
Well the result has for comparison brought down the maintenance costs of the research senter to 287 million. While thats not much, the costs of social spending etc as well has been reduced. The net result is that the U.S. can stay afloat.. if just barely. Good enough for now, we can can and will revisit it later as we notice issues. Since there are many parts of the economy BG has adjusted this certainly won't be the last time we visit this subject.
Next up, all my new unit models aren't showing up properly.
Well this was to be expected, when BG updates the .PICNUMS file we have to adjust ours to their changes. SO what do we do here? Well to break it down, we have to make sure our entries in the pic nums file is correct. Since the updated file overwrote my old one I would normally have to do ALL the work over again. However.. I ha d planned for this, and now have a custom picnums file rather than just modifying the default one. But haven't implemented it.
So I need to figure out where the .picnums file is called from. I actually already know its called from the allload.ini So the easiest way to future proof this would be to create my own custom allload.ini and have the scenario file call it. So we copy it, rename it to MW.ini then insert this in place of the default Pic nums call.
#include "MW.PICNUMS", "GRAPHICS\MESHES\"
With luck this should prevent me from having to redo it after every update.
Now to speed this up I mark out the .oob from the scenario file to make caching faster. Back in a minute with the results.
Back again.
Well, my models are still not showing.. so now we have to figure out what the issue is. Is the call for my custom AllLoad.ini not working? Or is my custom .PICnums file not properly done.
Well I look at the custom Picnums file and low and behold.. its done properly. I see all my units listed. So apparently a custom allload.ini isn't going to work, and the fact that it shows all the other units properly tells me its still loading the default Allload.ini.
So our only option is to once again.. replace the default one. Something I don't like to do, but if its the only option what choice do I have?
So for now I rename the default picnums file. Copy my custom one and name it as the default. Load up and low and behold it works. I now can see my custom models once again. In the future I will need to parse the new one and add the new entries BG did in order to have it properly show all the new models they added. But for now this gets it functional.
Now we have base functionality
Well its playable now.. kinda. All the UI changes were wiped out and we'll have to fix those later but I always leave those for last since it can drive me a bit crazy feeling around in the dark with the UI files.
So for now lets look at updating.
First lets start with something easy.. Leaders.
I have a thread I setup for people to let me know of leader changes. So lets dig that out.
France- Hollande to replace sarkozy later this month. Fixed in next version
Russia- Putin (already have art for him in just have to make the change) Fixed in next version
Serbia- Tomislav NikoliƦ
Albania - Bujar Nishani
Egypt- Morisi
Libya- Mohamed el-Magariaf
Kyrgyzstan - Almazbek Atambaye
So according to my own notes I have some of them fixed already.. but lets take a look and make sure nothing got altered in the update.
Hollande? Check.
Putin? Check.
Nikolae? Nope still Boris Tadic...
So we need to alter Boris to become Tomislav.
First thing is a name change I'm going to open up my .PPLX file and do a search for tadic.
Found it.
1466,1,Boris,Tadic,,,1,3,,30141,,,,,,1004,1097,,,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,
Now were just going to do a name change thats easy enough, so that becomes this.
1466,1,Tomislav,NikoliƦ,,,1,3,,30141,,,,,,1004,1097,,,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,
Now His name is fixed.. for the picture.
In the code above we see his picture Is 30141. So lets go into our graphics folder and find it.
Once I've found it I Need to find a new picture to use over the old one.. Google is my friend, and I find a ton of pictures to use.. however I have to choose one. Which? Whats my criteria. Well generally I want one that doesn't make a leader look either too good or too bad. A national flag in the background is good, and I tend to gravitate toward official pictures when possible. Directly facing the camera is a plus as well.
So after some looking I find one. Just gotta crop it, resize it and paste it over boris's Face.
After some time modifying the pic and making sure its properly centered I move on to the next.. quite a few need to be done.. some aren't listed like Chinas recent change in leaders.
This will probably be all for today. Want to get some play time in on the new beta. I'll continue this soon.