Modding Tool

from Sins Forums

I'm making a .Net based tool that allows you to edit the reference files in groups. For instance, I want to change all the acceleration rates for psi ships or all frigates in general. It let's you select a class of file or make one up. Then a modifier line and it brings all of them up in a grid. You can move all the rates up or down with a slider or make individual numerical adjustments. I've got all the one liners complete but I need to insert some handling for multiline variables like resource costs and hull values ect. Are there any other features that I should build in here? I know I saw something about people wanting a convert from binary to txt and txt to binary, should I throw in a routine to import/export the current folder? I could possibly also include weapons, abilities, research editors but I'm already abusing a lot of company time to do this at work heh.

modding
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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

well the templates are usualy straight forward, so using a capital ship template (wich shows all the possible things to put in a certian field) would be nice, as well as things like weapon types (have a list of all the weapon types, animations, textures, sounds) which would prevent endless hours of searching through files. also the ability to add your own meshes/effects to the program would be nice too. abilitys would be way too complicated at the moment i would think, but if you want to spend hours learning all the possible uses for certian modifyes (which would take a LONG time, not to mention the templates verry a lot). research is usualy straight forward on the other hand and would be nice, expecialy something that can check the other files and locations of other research effects (every research subject has a location box, something to let you know if there is something currently in that slot would be nice) . also if you could add things like planet templates, frigate/cruiser templates, as well as planet modual (structures) templates it would be nice. mind you, this would take a lot of time and feedback from most of the community moders (from thoes doing particle/visual effects for some parts, to thoes who are heavy into coding). 

 

Another decent feature would be a section with moding tutorials, where certian things are explained in detail (like certian limitations, step by step instructions on how to do something, etc)