Also, regarding my inventory mod, I'm likewise finding many more categories that are missing(FU mostly) but that shouldn't be a problem thanks to powershell. Anyhow, I had an idea. I think I could add other interface calls(as buttons) to the blank space. Or tabs with stuff. Or a combination. I MIGHT be able to add a "junk" grid too(probably under a tab), complete with a "transfer all" button that would send everything on that grid to either a container(if open) or merchant's sell tab(if open). But I'm not sure I want to. A grid is definitely not something I'd add after release... could break characters that are already using the mod! I think I could make brand new interfaces that are launched from within the inventory interface too. Whatever I do add, I want it to be functional and look good. I could be less ambitious and move the equipped tech and pet areas over to the blank space, and thus shorten the interface. If I don't want to USE the blank space, that makes lots of sense. And while the interface mod is vanilla based/styled, I'm thinking of making alternate styled interfaces too. Well that crash you had last time should be fixed. I missed some renaming previously. No revolutionary changes yet. I want to sort of have a more solid idea on the crafting before anything else. As you say, they really changed things. I probably need to look at all the ingredients too and make sure everything is obtainable legitimately, and the recipe reasonably balanced still. I guess post-release recipe edits for balance isn't so bad so that need not be a priority just yet. And of top importance would be things that simply don't work, or behave oddly, etc. I don't want to re-release it in a broken state obviously. I probably should look at colony tags, NPC toy interactions, things like that too but that wouldn't be the top thing either. Also I was thinking this. I might make a station that can take objects and spit out those objects with processing directives applied(color swaps etc). I think this is quite possible. Maybe also make a tool(think paintgun but an activeitem) that does this too. I think I'd need to add a messaging receiver functions to objects to support the activeitem, and that's a stretch goal. I'm sure I'll have other ideas too. edit: just noticed the techstations are lacking the script and thus don't produce pets. They also don't have the "uniqueId" but I think it is better that they don't since that can cause crashes when you have 2
All right. Would you like me to take a close look at recipes and make suggestions on what their categories should be, based on similar vanilla assets? Those categories are likely the only thing that's standing in the way of the mod actually functioning properly, aside from some odd/outdated ingredients.
Well your input on - the mod you made - is obviously welcome! I found a few more issues, shouldn't take long to correct them.
K. I got time tonight, so I'm going to take a look. I can tell you likely nearly all blocks are going to have to end up as having exactly the same categories. There's only one vanilla workstation that can even craft them. Totally kills the old play balance for plastic and carbon fiber. On the other hand, I do believe the plans for those are tied to the highest tier Instant Mail Catalog, so there should still be a measure of balance. Just tested my spray paint tool again. I can confirm that it's now working and since all the material modifier tools use the same Lua script...they should all be working. I'll leave that for more detailed testing later on.
Okay, I've typed up a long text file of suggested recipe adjustments and attached it to this post. I tried to look at at least one recipe of every type, looking for errors and to make suggestions on recipe categories. I've made the category suggestions as direct text copies of lines from vanilla assets, so you can copy and paste in most cases, though for some you'll have to choose appropriately, based on what tier we're dealing with. I barely touched on the storage lockers at all, so they may still have unseen errors, such as the repeated replacement of steel with durasteel, as seen in blocks and furniture alike. One big problem is going to be the lack of platinum ore in the current game. In many cases, that can just be replaced with gold or silver. However, the platinum tileset and it's matching furniture...that would be a really bad fix. It might just have to become a vanity set that's crafted entirely using purchased bars. One thing that's not listed in the file is that all storage lockers use platinum. I just noticed that. The current vanilla approach is to make them from 1 each of Durasteel and Silver. Each of the recipes will have to be adjusted for that little hiccup. Edit: Glass and Spring doors should have been listed for crafting on the tier 1 furniture station, too. I missed putting those in that list.
I kinda passed out last night before posting this(not recipe adjusted yet). I realized the colony tags ARE important - especially "doors" and "lights" - because the colony deeds will fail the room test without those two. So I fixed them, but they could still use refinement such as racial tags where appropriate. Added "npcToy" to the returnable teleporters, and the particles to the ship teleporters. Probably did something I forgot too... I was apparently ready to pass out. For some future updates(post re-release of course) I probably want hatch variants of all the doors, more open and close frames on the doors(smoother animation than vanilla), a station to add platforms(bring your own/any valid platform) to hatches. It would just spit out a hatch with altered JSON data as even the vanilla doors support "openMaterialSpaces". edit: The techstations still don't function as pet spawners, and the reason I didn't fix that is only 1 pet type is defined per object. The vanilla techstations are racial variants and so have racial pets. Most these aren't and I didn't want them all to spawn "cat" for example. I was already(for another mod's improvement) going to write a script for init() to check for the nearest player, see what their race is, and look it up in a table(that will gradually get populated with mod races too) to determine the pet. But this script could also try to detect for the presence of some pet mods and alter behavior accordingly. So I should move that little plan up the priority ladder as it would be beneficial here too.
Another thing, although I was just gonna send it in PM to someone, but you can't attach a file to messages. Appropriate enough here. edit: needless(accidental) dependency removed
I appreciate it, but everything's been released at this point except HPB. I should wrap up the recipes for HBP too. I think it is ready besides that (all future plans aside). The current files don't quite reflect the current state though. It is very close to release ready. I just need to push myself over the finish line. This is the hazard of an ADD person taking on many projects.
Good deal. The only problems I've found is recipie ones. Most building blocks build in backs of 20+... but HPB blocks recipes don't. Some also call for nonexistent materials to build them with. Probably misspellings or something.
I've made some small fixes to recipes for the Hull Plating mod, mostly because I got tired of waiting and wanted a few things to actually work right. The attached ZIP has a small collection of changed recipe files for dropping in to the existing mod's folder. I've changed the recipes that used to exist for portable use (made from pixels, like the old Portable Pixel Printer) and made most of them take 1 Tungsten Bar. I also moved them to the furniture station. The Rusty tileset is now made from Iron and Water, much like other rusty things. The only other thing I fixed is the recipe for the Concrete Slab, which has the appearance of the old concrete, like back when there were still USCM Bunkers around. I wanted to put my base on a concrete foundation, just because I love the look of that. I also increased the recipes I updated to output 20 blocks each, because that seems to be the standard these days. I may do more of this, depending on whether I get bored or not and depending on my desire to construct things without cheating. Edit: I made a couple more small recipe updates to make the tier 3 catalog craftable and to reduce the number of diamonds required for tier 2 and 3 to a more reasonable level. Heh. Now I can have the final version without feeling like a cheater. Fits in with my base better. Edit 2: I realized that the ship window blocks were not pixel printed as I'd originally thought. I've fixed the recipe for those so I can have nice-looking framed windows, without the tinting of the windows in More Tiles & Greebles (which look awesome, but aren't really clear). These now call for Glass (the crafting item, not the block) and 1 tungsten bar to make 20 of them. Edit 3: I decided to build an orbital tether using force fields, so I've made adjustments to the recipes for force field blocks. You start by crafting plain blocks at the highest-tier furnace (under the ingredients tab), followed by tuning them into other shapes at the furniture station. I wanted force field doors, as well, so I fixed the recipes for all the craftable doors. Some of these doors are not craftable because they're missing unobtainable ingredients. The steel door is still incorrectly pointed at Durasteel. I still don't know how much oil goes into a bar of steel and right now, I'm not concerned with that.
On the Hull Plating, I've found a pretty serious bug. I do believe none of the platforms function as platforms. I will test with others, however, and find out. I just put down some force field platforms and the game treated them as solid blocks. Poking around in the game assets, it looks like they actually changed the bits required in files to make a functional platform. Sheesh. Why can't they just leave well enough alone? Edit: For clarification, the game is treating Hull Plating platforms as solid blocks. I've checked another, more regular platform (cut stone) and it's affected as well. I think it's all of them.
I have indeed neglected to finish this, sorry. I did some recipe edits, but hadn't quite finished your suggested list. I'll admit recipes don't excite me much. Still it is silly to not finish up when that's about all that's necessary to get it workable. I really wouldn't take long. Making new content is more exiting to me than recipes, but then I don't because I know the recipe corrections need done first. That's the trap I fall into. I should just pop an Adderall and do it (yes I'm actually ADD). I have lots of 90% done stuff as casualties of my ADD Besides this mod. I forgot the platforms. Yes I was aware they changed platform file but it didn't click in. Thanks for pointing that out. I had to fix them for other mods for post-1.0 because they - as you say - where solid rather than an actual platform collision.
To be honest, recipes don't interest me, either. I built the Hull Plating mod as a platform for making art. Amusingly enough, I have lots of ideas for projects, but I almost never start any of them (mostly due to depression), but once I get going, it's hard to slow me down. However, I can't ever get myself to work on more than one project at a time. That's a big part of why I had no problem with handing the Ship Yard off to you. Short version: I get really hyper-focused, once I do start a project. I'd try my hand at fixing the platforms, but I'm not entirely sure how anymore. Is all different now and I'd have to stare at the vanilla files for a while first.
Okay, another small update for recipes. I got sick of crafting non-basic force field blocks one at a time. I fixed the recipes to make them in batches of 20. Not counting trim or platforms, which I've not messed with much, just yet. My orbital tether is coming along nicely now. I think I finally found a material that makes sense for one of these things (force fields). Sadly with wood platforms, but that's easily fixed when the time comes. I'm going to have to rip most of them out for the rail system, anyway. Who wants to jump their way into space, right?
Cool. I'm working on adding some more ship parts into this mod eventually. Got the sprites pulled, just need to put them into their own mod structure, do the coding and recipes, then they are good to go.
Hmm maybe I should put it up on github to allow the edits directly, since I haven't thrown a new file for a while it isn't handy to keep you guessing what needs done. and if SivCorp wants to add content too, that's probably the best way, right? The downside is... I find github anything but intuitive. For example - 1. How do I accomplish something as routine as deleting an old, obsolete file? I can't find that simple option ANYWHERE on their website. 2. I branched Frackin Universe ages ago to do a pull request on it (not just anyone can commit), how do I make my old branch current? Delete and re-create it? And their stupid desktop app isn't any better. Nothing terribly obvious about it, doesn't seem to ever actually do what I want it to do (so I just use the website). And to make matters worse, it refuses to fit on my screen. I have to choose if I'm cutting off the right or left side. You can't adjust it really at all. This has to be the among the worst GUIs I've seen on a program, and I go back to loading MS-DOS from 5.25 floppies (so I've witnessed the evolution of GUIs). Given what github actually is - and who it caters to - you'd think they could do better. Surely they could find a programmer or two that could polish their website up and make an intuitive, compact, functional desktop application. I generally think I'm rather good at figuring technical things out including complex things, but somehow github makes me feel like a dolt. And it is still probably the best option for collaborating on projects. Unless any of you know any similar (but friendlier) solutions. As for the fixes though, for now I'm going to basically put the fixes in one folder, and delete them as I have merged them with what I have. So I can keep track. That being the case, it would be better to just send batches of new fixes. Thus why github(which I hate) is probably the best solution(that I know of). edit: I'm looking into Dropbox teams. That sounds dramatically better in theory. If in practice, I dunno. It only it would actually do the "create a team" thing. Could be my flaky connection in the way. edit 2: I'm kinda setting it up. Probably going to junction-link from the mod's folder to the relevant folder within the dropbox folder.
Well, I know the reason that GitHub (and git, in general) is a pain to use. It was designed that way on purpose to be counter-intuitive. It's one of the really stupid things professional programmers do on a regular basis. They pride themselves on using counter-intuitive tools to do a job. Don't ask me to explain, because I don't understand it myself. In college I saw that mindset all the time in my fellow CS majors. I never understood it, but it's very prevalent in just about every group of programmers you'll find. Even Linus Tovalds (creator of Linux) complains about it occasionally on Google+.
I've heard of what you're talking about(although I'm no pro). It is a weird pride/ego thing they get from being able to do things others can't - so they CREATE the situation to stroke their ego. Besides making hard-to-use tools, also they may intentionally make hard-to-read code. The best counter is probably saying things like "so called programmers who can't even make their programs intuitive are useless trash." That can't is key because you've just backed their ego into a corner. The only choice they have is to prove you wrong... by doing it right. Well for Github's and my complaining, the website does have SOME nice things. The online editing files directly is terrific. The files themselves are very clear - as good as I've seen outside of a text editing program. How it shows you the differences is also good (but could be smarter). The commenting about changes I like. But... if I have a file on my computer rather than editing in-line, that's more of a PITA that it rightly should be. Inline editing is fine for small changes and commenting. I feel you shouldn't do larger coding projects that way. I don't think I ever managed to add a folder structure on the website. I got that to happen by uploading through the app after making the folder structure on my computer first. Letting you do simple, basic stuff like that are what they need. I have mostly given up on Github pending some really good front-end program out there that can make it bearable. Or maybe a front-end website? Something. Dropbox is 30 years ahead where usability is concerned. It does seem to lack some of those features that I actually like about Github but I'm willing to deal with the loss for a solution that gets out of my way and just works. I think if they addressed a few deficiencies, github goes the way of myspace, geocities, etc. What they really could use is an option to choose either a download link or a "subscription link" that isn't a download link, and isn't just adding to your personal dropbox(limited to one dropbox folder). Let the end user choose where the file(s) or folder belongs, and the desktop client automatically updates user's content when the author updates it. Any changes in the user's files do not transfer upstream to the content author aka a one-way sync. It also would be nice if I didn't need to manually link my own files/folders into the dropbox folder. Anyhow I think I think I can't generate links for the team collaboration. It needs emails... uh. I officially hate that. Well if you feel like it, send PMs and if not I absolutely understand. I might drop the dropbox team idea in that case and see if there are other options.
