at first, I like to express my thanks to egosoft for creating such an awesome game, just discovered it a few weeks ago and I'm totally engaged.
So I am trying to build my own ship-loadout-designer. I know, there are plenty of these things, but because I am a professional programmer (mostly C#) I'm eager to create one by myself By reading in the forums and looking at the unpacked xml-files I think I learned many of how things are defined. But some questions remain (currently, more to come^^):
For all questions holds, am I looking into the correct files? Or did I oversee something?
- Just for proper talking; most of the "entities" consist of two xml-files (and some *.xmf which are not needed for my tasks, I think). The "macro" file and the "other" file. How do you (the modder community) name these "other" files?
- As I understand it correctly, the ship equipment slots are defined in these "other" files. For example (from the "ship_arg_l_destroyer_01.xml"):
How are the possible (in these case) weapons for this slot are determined? On the weapons "other" file, I found something like (in "turret_par_m_guided_02_mk1.xml":
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<connection name="con_turret_009" group="group_mid_down_left " tags="turret medium standard missile hittable ">
Is it really just the tags?Code: Select all
<connection name="con_guided_turret" tags="turret medium missile component hittable">
- In the ship designer in game there are three different behaviors for selecting multiple equipments. Let's look at the "ship_arg_l_destroyer_01.xml".
- There are two weapons defined. In the ship designer we have two "slots" where we have to select the weapons "seperately" (even if there is no real "selection").
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<connection name="con_weapon_02" tags="weapon large standard arg_destroyer_01 "> <connection name="con_weapon_01" tags="weapon large standard arg_destroyer_01 ">
- There are three engines defined. In the ship designer we have only one selection which sets all three engines. Perhaps it's because of the "group"?
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<connection name="con_engine_01" group="group_back_up_mid " tags="engine large "> <connection name="con_engine_02" group="group_back_up_mid " tags="engine large "> <connection name="con_engine_03" group="group_back_up_mid " tags="engine large ">
- And there is the group "group_front_up_left" which consists of two turrets and one shield, but in the designer the turrets are just a "slider".
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<connection name="con_turret_010" group="group_front_up_left " tags="turret medium standard missile hittable "> <connection name="con_turret_002" group="group_front_up_left " tags="turret medium standard missile hittable "> <connection name="con_shieldgen_001" group="group_front_up_left " tags="medium shield hittable ">
I can image something about:
- No group but all are weapons, so display the separately.
- One group and all are engines, so combine them into one selection.
- One group with different equipment types, so combine the same ones.
- There are two weapons defined. In the ship designer we have two "slots" where we have to select the weapons "seperately" (even if there is no real "selection").
Thanks in advance for your help.