Disabling mines

Possible, in any easy way?

from Sins Forums

As the title says (yes, I do hate mines, by the way); is it possible, in any way, to disable anything and everything including the mine-laying functionality of SoaSE:Ent? I've searched like a madman and all I found was a vague reference to a post involving some .entity file editing - I'm not really familiar with it, and the details were a little too vague. Therefore; is there a mod/script/batch file that has the ability to do this? I'm thinking of playing some Entrenchment games, but wont touch it with the AI regarding laying mines being what it is. As said - I haven't found any threads regarding this, really, but if I've simply missed them, I apologize.

Any and all help would be much appreciated. :)

modding
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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

As the title says (yes, I do hate mines, by the way); is it possible, in any way, to disable anything and everything including the mine-laying functionality of SoaSE:Ent? I've searched like a madman and all I found was a vague reference to a post involving some .entity file editing - I'm not really familiar with it, and the details were a little too vague. Therefore; is there a mod/script/batch file that has the ability to do this? I'm thinking of playing some Entrenchment games, but wont touch it with the AI regarding laying mines being what it is. As said - I haven't found any threads regarding this, really, but if I've simply missed them, I apologize.

Chances are, that .entity editting thread was exactly what you were looking for.  :P Such small changes aren't usually published as mods as no one cares enough to keep them updated, and script/batch files are pretty much useless for the same reason. So I'm afraid you'll need to learn a little bit of modding yourself, though if you are comfortable with things like scripts and batch files I doubt it will be hard for you. This short tutorial here should be sufficient to get you started modifying them, then follow the instructions in that other thread. Feel free to post any questions.

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Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

I suspected as much, that'd involve the hassle of converting them from binary to text and back though, am I right?
I've done quite a bit of scripting and misc coding, but if I can avoid it, I probably will. :p Not really that fun, in most cases. In this case - when it comes to simply disabling a damn annoying "feature" (also known as nuisance) - I'd probably want to avoid it, but if it isn't possible, not much to do.

The link is a 404 by the way, so some more substantial tips would be appreciated. ;) (EDIT: Seems to work now. Or not, getting 503s and 404s - unstable.) :/

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

The other thing I'm wondering is what software to optimally use for editing the .entity files - the structure in them seems logical enough. Notepad++, which usually is a very neat editor, renders loads of [NULL]s in the files, (just me not realizing they were not in text format at that point - my bad) and regular Notepad... well, let's just not. Any good known editors for the files? :) Will try Eclipse out, see how that works as well.

Cheers for the help so far!

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Once you're converted to text, whatever you're most comfortable editing with will suffice.  Personally I use Beyond Compare 3 simply because I usually have one file posted up next to the other I'm working on so I don't make stupid mistakes.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

The Bin->Text conversion has to be done beforehand, does it have to be performed in reverse afterwards (i.e. after the editing of the file(s)) as well?

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

If your Ent is up-to-date then the Reference files are converted already at SoaSE Ent Reference Files.

You can use text files. Bin just load faster and use less memory.

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Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Humble thanks, cheers for the link as well! (Noticed them while looking around, didn't spot the difference (as in, they were in text format compared to binary) though.)

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Alright, did some editing and ran the Dev file - getting a "Entity Ref not found: SquadPsiMineLayer" x3, and then the game crashes to desktop.

Any ideas? I can find no references to this within the PlayerPsi.entity or the entity.manifest.

If I re-add that line to the entity.manifest I get a lot of errors on the prereq. research not being available, and some on AI behavior, but the game doesn't crash.
Still, why would the removal of that one line cause a critical difference, and is there a way to circumvent it?

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

You have to remove it from the advent ships and hanger.  Those are your 3 instances where the game is referencing them, yet cannot load their entity files.

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Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Stant123, reply 9
You have to remove it from the advent ships and hanger.  Those are your 3 instances where the game is reverencing them, yet cannot load their entity files.

I suspected as much, that'll probably nail the issue. I forgot the Advent mines are classed as squadrons - thank you very much! :)
Can't find a file for the starbase hangar/hangar upgrade entity - is there one? EDIT: Nevermind, found it, although it seems to lack the mine/mine layer squadron.

Update: That fixed the issue - no errors when running the dev exe. :)
Thanks, everyone, for the help!

(Would throw some Karma out, if I could; "You already have a Karma dialog open.

Would you like to close the current dialog and give someone else Karma?" - even though there's no dialog open.)