Custom Planets

Long story short, i've tested this condition a number of times and there's a constant to this behavior.

Out of the 39 individual races found in X-Worlds, each has a specific Homeworld and system (containing five different planets) pre-defined with all the necessary assets too. Proper editing of the customplanets.xml file. Etc.

What happens is this...

Tiny maps do have a limited amount of Planets to distribute & depending on the habitable/number ratios, spreading of the amount of stars & so on... the code reaches a MAXIMUM set of allocations. Thus, it discards some (not all, a few, maybe just one...) fifth even if they are declared through custom races structure files.

Have a look at the debug.err report after quitting such games; a section declares HOW the galaxy was initialized and gives the exact number of planets created. If your game had 9 opponents with 8 minors, the deck was absolutely loaded to the rim. Program reacts accordingly. Obiding by the law of complex parameters to maintain integrity and evaluate conditions.

It even happened to me once that TWO minors needed to share the same homestar! Felt strange, at first. But made a bunch of sense - codewise.

Expand the above reasoning to any sort of variable settings and you may certainly find out that, at times, some fifth planets never make the cut. Space is small place on a tiled logarithmic grid!

- Zyxpsilon.

But, if you meant... races ID.
This is rather odd! Cuz, for any to be locked as opponents - they still need to be properly defined and activated at the setup screen. Which makes them as frozen resources.

Maybe, some typos in the xml(s).

It's real funny how a simple *flaws.

- Zyxpsilon.

Correction to the above since THE character got even screwed on the post itself!

...a simple (((( left-bracket-less-than-symbol ASCII -- followed by a slant ))))...

can be misinterpreted by the code and as a result, force a whole xml file to be stripped of the remaining data. Right at the guilty spot!

- Zyxpsilon.

Dear Zyxpsilon

Do you know if it's possible to make make Mars a barren planet in the CustomPlanets, so that you can't colonize right away!

I would also like to know how to make Venus TOXIC...

I hope someone can help me.

Best regards
Kieldsen

Yup, refer to about the mid-section part of this long thread where Kryo mentions "Habitability" types to integrate right into a customplanets.xml file. Although, i understand that there is an indirect "limit" of one per system. We all have yet to figure why that is, but in the meantime - your Mars can be tagged as much Barren as you'd care to design!

WWW Link

- Zyxpsilon.

Thanks, a million     

Let the games beginn...

Hmm I fot that it broke the game if you assigned a barren/oceanic/toxic/etc tag to a planet in your home system?

if you only do one planet and make it the fifth planet then they`ll all show up

OH rite ok.

Well ive still not figured out whats wrong with my planets and systems.

Zyxpsilon -
I only had my custom civs in the game when I ran it.

Krios appeared fine.
I played as Eleria and it was a default system but for some weird reason the homeworld Draconis was quality 18 instead of 9.

The other races appeared to have similar problems.

Im still having trouble with this and as no one seems to be able to help me I wondered if I maybe uploaded "my mod" that someone might have a look at it and tell me what ive done wrong?

Give me a bit and ill edit the link in...

Ok got the link.

LOL.

Sorry took me so long.

My Mod Linky

Kay, i grabbed your stuff and i'll take a look later on this week.
Let you know if i can figure out the 'flaws' if any.

sorry ganoesparan06 i`m in the middle of setting up new gaming rig and redoing old puter too and it is taking longer then i had hope!! all well just going slower then I wanted to

Nasty

Thanks Zyx. I really am totally confused by it cos im sure ive done everything right.

Thats alrite Nasty - have a look when you can.

I had a similar problem.
I also added my custom races info into the Galciv 2 races XML in the DA/Data/DatEnglish folder. I made sure the Homestar info etc matched.

However, for some reason I could load one of the races for me to use, but I could not select the other races I had made as opponents. I'm still trying to suss that out.
Despite this, my custom homeworld/system graphics did show up.

Kay, i think i may have figured out what happened... here's my "report", somehow.

1- I would call that Mod a secondary distribution of Logic Sequence's High-Res stuff. Sure you want to do that? Cuz, from what i've seen the only essential files may just be the raws for planets. It's your choice, and it doesn't actually flaw up the mod itself... but, i'd find a way to fix some personally devised files if i were you.

2- There seem to be a 'raceconfig.xml' from DL rather than the expected DA structure. This does or would create a conflict somewhere down at the GC_loading attempts.

3- Your 'customracexml' files are quite messy and do in fact contain a number of errors while you were probably editing them manually rather than using the in-game valid *Save* regular process;

An excerpt from the Draconian Clan file, to illlustrate what may certainly be wrong...
-------------------
(WEAPONS)5(/WEAPONS)
(Ability1)20(/Ability1)
--------------------
This alone can screw up the whole thing since the only game_supported values are pulled off exclusively from the Ability## tag lines instead of the (TITLED_ones) which, IIRC, aren't used by the game as is (probably, only kept there for GC1 compatibility reasons by SD coders, btw).

4- We, as players, don't have any use for your /Backup folders... i'd recommend taking those out.

Otherwise i don't any other particular issues - unless you can provide us with some thorough details on what you feel is not working as it should, we or i can't guess a remedy or give you further help.

In the meantime, try fixing the thingy based on what i mentioned above and let us know what comes out!
Glad i could be of help, maybe.

mmm maybe Zyx help you better then I would have good gob Zyx!!

Nasty

ooops...
Forgot something important;

5- The 'customplanets.xml' has some extra Moons defined in some of your systems; the game only recognizes ONE Moon or Ring per planet. You should also verify for some typos in that key file since a single missing character (trailer backslash, less_high than symbols, etc) can screw up the loading process from the exact location of the error(s) downward. Thus, it may seem okay at first - but a whole block of items could go missing without your better knowledge.

Zyxpsilon.

Thanks a lot.

Dont worry I wont be releasing this "mod" or the stuff im using - I did it for myself. So you dont have to worry about "redistribution" - I didnt upload the GFX for that reason. I only wanted you guys to check the XML files for me, i forgot about the RAW files.

I knew I had made mistakes somewhere in the XML files but I couldnt find the errors. now that you have pointed them out hopefully ill be able to find and correct them .

sometime it helps to have another pair of eye look for mistakes!!

I find that when I can`t find or see the mistake it is time to take a break and come back later !!!

Nasty