SMAC within SMAX

[ete]

SMAX added sea terraforming options. Are some of these unbalanced? Could some of these have kyrub's AI patches applied to them? Should they be kept in some form?

Really? I thought the sea options were always there, there's nothing beyond kelp/mine platform/tidal harness in SMAX. They did add the ability to start a faction in water which comes with a +1 min bonus on shelf squares, but I thought seaforming existed back in SMAC.

And no, nothing sea-based is unbalanced as far as I'm aware. Useful sometimes, but the high cost of sea formers and sea colony pods holds back their potential until fusion, and at that tech level you either have or will soon have great land forming options like tree farms, boreholes and condensers.

[Ford_Prefect]

Smac had sea transforming.

[diessa]

I think I'm misinformed. I remember reading about new terraforming features added for the sea (e.g., sea bunkers), but those must've not been released. I'll try to confirm in a more concrete way. If it is just the original sea forming options, then that's awesome!

[ete]

Sea bunkers and sensor buoys plus a few others can be enabled by alphax editing in both games.

[Ford_Prefect]

@Ford_Prefect:
That sounds like the standard way to do mod managers (which isn't a bad thing), but you may be able to save some effort by using someone else's implementation. e.g. http://www.softpedia.com/get/Others/Miscellaneous/Generic-Mod-Enabler.shtml

Heh.  I've almost got the mod manager alpha test ready (I just need to get it to move and hash the files).  I should have it working by tonight (unless my job keeps me working late).

[DrazharLn]

@Ford_Prefect:
Good to hear. Could you upload the source to github or something with a FOSS licence? That way it's easy to maintain it (if changes ever need to be made) and there's an open source project available for the next time someone wants a mod manager.

[Ford_Prefect]

@Ford_Prefect:
Good to hear. Could you upload the source to github or something with a FOSS licence? That way it's easy to maintain it (if changes ever need to be made) and there's an open source project available for the next time someone wants a mod manager.

That's the plan!  It's what I did for the cvrColorizer.

[DrazharLn]

Thanks

[Ford_Prefect]

Work lasted allot longer than I planned.

Modding tool won't be finished today and tomorrow I will be very busy with work as well.

Status of Mod Manager:
* Can launch SMAC and SMAX
* GUI interface is done
* Can view a selection of mods
* A backup copy is made.

All that is left is actually selecting mod/s and having it figure out which files need to be replaced.

[DrazharLn]

Is it practical to keep the "real" (non mod or backup) SMAC directory composed entirely of sym or hardlinks? I just tried with .lnk files, and that didn't work correctly, but proper links should, and java has an interface for them. Reading online, I'm getting the feeling that windows only supports symlinks for directories and that files have to be hardlinked, which is a bit of a pain.

Anyway, would save some disk I/O, maybe not worth it.

Java link API: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/io/links.html

[ete]

Sounds great Ford .

@DrazharLn: I doubt performance of any kind if much of a concern, any modern computer should be fine.

[DrazharLn]

I've finished a first version of a mod manager for SMACX that hardlinks all the files in using only batch files. At the moment, it'll only work on Windows Vista or newer, but I know how to change it for XP.

Source and instructions later today (and probably the fixed-for-xp version).

Won't work on mac or linux, but replicating the batch scripts in bash wouldn't be hard.

[Ford_Prefect]

IT WORKS!

 

All that is left is allowing the user to change mod priority and looking for bugs.

[DrazharLn]

Here's a version written in batch script. Should work fine on Windows XP or higher. Maybe even on older versions.

To use it, extract all the files to your (preferably unmodded) alpha centauri directory (mine is C:\GOG Games\Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri\), then double click on install.bat. Your files may momentarily disappear as I move them into a subdirectory, then they should come back.

To mod, put a directory containing all the appropriate files into <Your Install Folder>\_mod_manager and add the name of the directory to order.txt. Yitzi's 2.5, 2.5e, kyrub's mods are included as examples.

More detailed instructions in modman_readme.txt

The manager is very simple, so you can check the code yourself to check I'm not doing anything malicious. It has no dependencies other than the windows environment.

If you want something prettier, you might want to check out Ford_Prefect's launcher.

Edit: v1.3 uploaded

[DrazharLn]

Don't use v1 of my manager!

Uploaded with a bug that may delete all your SMAC folder. Realised quickly but internet went down.

Fixed version once I get non mobile internet back.

Edit: Well, wouldn't delete your whole folder except in fairly unusual circumstance, but it wasn't backing up the existing files properly.