I could never program in straight up XML. That would make me bark like a dog and then pee in a corner until I die. Instead, use X-Studio. It's no visual studio grant you, but it's not a half bad editor specifically for X3 and makes development actually possible imo.TheVillain wrote: ↑Tue, 21. May 24, 18:45Thankyou for taking the time to give such a detailed and thought out response.
I had rummage in those files, i'm kind of familiar with xml from other games but x3 is more complex. The work done to make outposts function as they do is staggering to me and tinkering with that makes me raise eyebrows to the point they pack a bag and threaten to leave.
Your totally right about versioning, and duplicating function. I was just going to do it for myself, not to publish or fork MH3 or anything. I think one of the joys of X3 is the sandbox and modding posibilities. Hell it features an ingame script editor. Unfortunately I just hit things with a wrench until it does something cool.
For now I settled on just manually running the old 'explore universe' command for exploring the map and microing the occasional sattelite.
Out of interest, where do people 'settle' to do the management in x3? You cant (at least I don't remember being able to?) seta in a station, so I usually just hop to a nearby empty sector and do all the menu diving from there. But I wonder sometimes about a better solution. Could a pocket sector be made that only the player can jump to (like the old unfocused jumpdrive)? Could a player...pilot a station? Just so seta works? I dunno.
I agree, the work done on outposts, and in other areas is staggering. The more I got into it, the more I was shocked; not only at the amount of complexity, but at the differing code organization inherently resulting from at least 4 developers "doing their own thing" to it over many years. It can be a royal P.I.T.A. to do even simple things and there are a terrible amount of hidden dependencies and 'implied' things. So yes, to continue work in this code-base takes a degree of fanaticism for X3 , a lot of skill, and a whole lot of time and determination and aspirin. On the plus side, I don't know of a single simulation like X3 where you can script almost any behavior. As far as I can tell, even X4 isn't even remotely close. I guess we'll see.
Personally, I tend to settle in an NPC 'friendly' system while I do my screen work, or I find a huge friendly NPC fleet and just follow the leader. It's sort of interesting to tag along. What I don't do is sit in my own systems. In-system mechanics seem to make your TL's behave like drunken monkeys when it comes to docking or even moving around, but if you're out of system they behave. There's also the occasional ship collision if you are in-system. I also like moving around to hear different music. I wish they simply had a rotating music player built-in, instead of tying the music to a system.
Regarding a 'pocket' sector, you could just find an unknown enclave system in ZMap, and remove the gate going to it and save the map. Then use the cheat menu to jump there when in-game. There would be a few possible problems with it so it's hit or miss. First, it could have, or later spawn a pirate base. Second, it 'might' be chosen at game start as the renegade pocket, which would really put a wrench in your plans to sit there unmolested. If neither happens though, you should be able to sit there. You could even build an outpost there with a jump beacon or jump station perk and no one could ever attack you.
cheers
I don't have it in me.