Need help with a tool...

[Black_Knyght]

Can anybody tell me the best tool to use for adding/creating new weapons and/or componants in SEIV?

I tried the "Tech Gridder", but can't seem to get it to work?

[Ed Kolis]

Hmm, I'd suggest the templatizer, only I don't seem to have it around at the moment - might be on another hard drive...
There's also DavidG's GUI-based modder: http://www.spaceempires.net/home/dow...E4_Modder.html

[Atrocities]

BK I have added over a 100 new components to the component pack. Images 2305 - 2496. In case you are making new images you might need to know that these numbers have been taken.

[Suicide Junkie]

The tech gridder is not for adding completely new components, or even extending an example into a tech area (although you can use it for one-dimensional techs).

It is for weaving multiple tech areas together to make a multidimensional tech grid from a single example component
A great example is the missiles in Carrier Battles mod.
There are various tech areas, including "Missile Manufacturing", "Missile Targetting", "Missile ECM".
The component named "Light Nuclear Missile I" is the base model. Researching into manufacturing reduces the supply cost by 5%, and gives you "Light Nuclear Missile II". Researching into targetting instead, gives you "Light Nuclear Missile II" with bonus damage. ECM gives hitpoints.
Researching one level in each gets you "Light Nuclear Missile IV" with one of each.
In total, there are 9 levels in each tech area. In any particular game you will only see 27 Missile components (XXVII), however there are 729 different components in the components.txt file, corresponding to all the different possible research paths.
The tech gridder turns 1 component into 9, those 9 into 81, and then those 81 into 729.

Needless to say, the first step isn't too hard to do manually, but you need automation to go any further


See this quick how-to:
How Does the Tech Gridder Work?

[Fyron]

The best tool is, naturally, a text editor...

There is the SE4 Modder, but it has numerous quirks.

[Black_Knyght]

Thanx all.

I'd hoped there was a better solution, but that may have been asking for too much. I may actually have to put some effort into this.


Ed Kolis : What and where is the Templatizer?

AT : Thanx for that note. I'll take another look at them, and see if something else will work instead.

Fyron : Out of curiosity, what are the quirks with the SE Modder?

[Fyron]

The SE4 Modder should do what you want; its basically a GUI overlay for editing the components (and other data files). It doesn't generate anything from psuedocode like the templatizer, or from an overwhelming myriad of function parameter boxes like the tech gridder.

I don't remember what SE4 Modder's quirks are anymore, specifically. IIRC they were in obscure functions, and shouldn't detract from just adding some new components.

[Ed Kolis]

The Templatizer is described here:
http://wiki.spaceempires.net/index.php/Templatizer

Basically it's a formula parser similar to the one found in SE5 (though unlike with SE5, you CAN define custom functions in python ), and it outputs SE4-readable data files when given files which look like SE4 data files but have formulas enclosed in curly braces.

The download link is currently broken because I don't have the templatizer on my machine at the moment - anyone else have it handy? It's just a python script with a readme and some samples, and I don't feel like installing the hard drive that I think it's on just to retrieve it right now, unless you REALLY want to use it

edit: aha! I found it included with the Low Tech Mod on PBW! No readme or examples, but the documentation on the wiki page should be decent enough I'll put it up now:
http://kolis.dyndns.org/se/templatizer.py.zip