What is the actual installation folder? Is it: Galactic Civilizations II - Ultimate Edition or something else? I might just drill down into "Stardock Games" and list the directories there looking for gc2, that might be the least fragile method.

Thank you for the reply though!

Being the true programmer that I am (read=I'm lazy) I've decided I'll autodetect any thing located in the directories that I know about, and let the user pick the location if I don't find it. That covers everything, requires less coding on my part, and still gets the job done. If anyone is interested in my tool, please let me know and I'll post updates and screens as I have them.

easyMod will

• Project Support - Each mod is a project and files are kept together
• Concurrent Project Support - Allows you to work on a multiple number of mods at once
• Eventually, every aspect that can be modded via XML, will be available through the tool
• Simplified editing. If that aspect requires 3 XML files to be modded, that's hidden from you and only required to fill out text fields
• Super modding - Mod your favorite mod!
• Project Merging - If you have two projects and you want to combine them, you will have the ability to do so
• Sandbox support - All projects are created in their own directory, so there is no risk or corrupting your game or another mod
• Hints - The tool will provide hints as to the "sane" default values are or make suggestions based on the type of mod you want
• Ability to automatically package your mod for distribution
• Simple image manipulation, palette swaps, etc
• Addition of new assets into the game (planet tiles, custom maps, etc)

easyMod wont

• Do any type of 3D modeling (importing, exporting, etc)
• Modify the in-game user interface

If there are any other features you would like to see, or don't like one listed, please let me know.

Thanks for all the replies thus far!

Nice idea!

I plan on having everything update as you add/edit it, including (dropdown now , and lists). I should have a very rough and feature poor version by the end of the week. I already have about 3k lines of code written and some initial UI done, but I still have a long way to go. I only wish I knew more about Windows GUI programming in C as I think I could code it up quicker that way.

Something you might want to look into is validating the tech tree so that there aren't any circular dependencies.  I've done it a couple of times myself and it causes the game to crash when generating the galaxy, so it would be good to catch that before I get all the way in-game.

Nice job!

I say, that was some speedy coding.

I would like to risk my pc for the sake of GCII Modding!

EDIT:

On a side note:

Try to edit the OP so its up to date.

Peace.

Sorry for the lack of updates, I got caught up an a pretty exciting game this week and got my first ascension victory (usually I get culture or alliance)  with 9 majors and 4 minors or a gigantic size map. I'll get back to work shortly...

Thought I would post an update:

- Game autodetection is complete (as much as it's going to be at least)

- Game failover in case auto-detection fails is complete

- EasyMod configuration reader/writer complete

- GC2 ini reader/writer complete

- GC2 Hints xml reader/writer complete

- GC2 Hints editor complete

In Progress

- Config loading

- Project creation

- Project modification

- Project loading/saving

- Custom Races editor

After the next updates are complete, it will be ready for some testing, just see if it breaks on other people's system.

System Requirements:

- Oracle's Java (7u5) (Found here: http://java.com/en/download/index.jsp)

- Windows XP or later (32/64 bit ok)

- At *least* GalCiv II. DA and Twilight are also supported (and preferred)

I am planning on adding an auto-update feature so you don't have to manually keep downloading the updates. I've always hated that and I assume anyone kind enough to test this out would find it annoying as well. Sadly, that will not be available for the next few releases.

EDIT:

Thanks for the steam installation path. I added that into the game path autodetection. As I don't have the game from steam, I'm hoping the directories structure is the same and it "just works" for steam users.

I can give you a firm "maybe" on that one

Edited main post and added screenshot of the hint editor.

Of course! I hate being locked into a particular size. Resize, maximize, or minimize, the choice is yours.

Images - Yes, I can do that.

Texture - Maybe, if it's a standard image format, which I think they are.

Models - Most likely not, as those are 3D images and I don't know of a java library that handles the 3D format used by the game.

Yep, I'm sure.