Sins Forums
Has anyone attempted to make templates using excel or vb or infopath or something like that to create a GUI for entity creation? It seems like a tool like this would cut down on mod creation time as well as errors.
It has been attempted but every update adds or changes the entities so they are all useless. The best tool now is
[Mod Utility] Entity Editor and Validation Tool (Fan made, Supports Rebellion) by ZombiesRus
I highly recommend this tool for any serious modder.
I doubt any GUI would really be faster than copying an entity file that is somewhat similar to what you would end up with. With Zombie's tool myfist linked you it will show you everything you can put in each line so you don't waste time looking things up.
It would save a lot of debugging time to create entity and manifest files using a GUI that didn't make typos. I was hoping someone with a copy of vb or excel would have built something. I don't have a copy of excel, and i don't really want to buy one, otherwise i would put something together.
The Eclipse tool does debug your files, it can catch quite a lot of errors as you make them. I think you might mean IDE, in which case Eclipse is exactly what you are looking for.
You couldn't put something together that would match what I did. Simple scripts can be used to generate the entity manifest.
Sins entity files are nearly as high level as you can get without the entire process of making information being automated. Seeing as there is such a limited amount you can actually do with the game, a gui really is not necessary. I don't even find the eclipse thing necessary (largely because I don't do abilities), and I iterate a ton of ship information for constant minor changes all over the place.
The manifest update script is super handy. But the process of adding dozens of sound files at a time is much more time consuming than updating the manifest ever was. Which still really isn't time consuming at all.
Also, buying excel. lol
Now, I would have loved if a programmer came along and made something respectable out of that bloody convertxsi.exe code or reverse engineered the particle editor and fixed the insane instability. Alas, I'm used to such silliness by now, what with Stargraft and Arsenal et all.
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