Creation of a Backward mod tools

[Pehu Wizzard]

Well, not exactly backwards. My suggestion is just to create a tool that picks the .txt files that are in some module folder (you could define which folder in one python file).

Then, when you executed the .bat file, it would create all the module_* files so that it would make it easy to convert older mods, made before the arrival of the tools, to the new module system in python.

I think that this is possible for armagan to make, but I don't know how hard it would be.

Anyway... anyone think that this is a good idea? Anyone understanded anything of what I said? (Bad English + Skype = hard to write in English).

 

[Orion]

You mean... like changing all of the .632 files to be compatible with .70x? Like changing the item_kinds1.txt file format in .632 -

name_of_item name_of_mesh ##### ##### ###

to the .70x format -

itm_name_of_item name_of_mesh ###### ##### ####

by using a program?

 

[Pehu Wizzard]

Not exactly what I meant.

I was talking about making it easy to Ancientwanker to convert his Mag7 v.31 to the Mod Tools, since he made all his moding directly in the text files.

If there was some kind of tool to convert from the text files to the new mod tools, it would be easy for cases like this to adapt to the new tools.

And not only this, but maybe if the tools format change in upcoming versions, this reverse tool would be able to convert from the text to the new format.

But maybe I'm just to lazy to describe exactly what I mean in English.

 

[Orion]

As far as I can figure out, you mean something that would do pretty much what I already said, except with all of the .txt files.

Basically, changing from the old format to the new one via a modding tool.

 

[Pehu Wizzard]

It would change from the text files to the source codes in Python.

And that way, it would be easier to update those mods, using the mod tools.

 

[Leodan Flamelock]

This is the exact same idea I had, what Pehu is trying to say is that, Imagine you had downloaded a mod that made drastic changes to the troops and items files. Now say you want to use the module tools to change something in the scenes txt. You do your modifications and then run Build Module. Now the changes you made to scenes are there, but the modifications in the items and troops files are replaced by the vanilla folder. The idea is to implement a load module feature like the unofficial editor, instead of replacing all txt files with what you made in the module, it will load txt files, modify them, and then send them back.

 

[Effidian]

I'm planning on having the unofficial editor support old versions of all the text files from 0.704 on. If the file format changes I *should* be able to load the old version and write out the new version of the .txt file.

At least that is the plan...

I thought about being able to write out the python scripts. However, I'm not sure that really buys you anything if I support old versions going forward.