T
thunderfoot
Deleted Due to Inactivity
Former MSFC Member
Hiya gang! Decided to start a thread to give all of us one place to post problems modding A2 and solutions for them. Kinda hard to go running all over the place for answers to things some of us have not experienced before. Or have not experienced in a long time. Hopefully, this thread will become yet another resource for the A2 Community newbies.
A few suggestions to make it easier to for the rest of us to help you.
- Telling us "It's broke and I don't know what I did.", makes it very hard to help you. Please be as exact as you can about when the fault occured, what you were doing at the time and what was the error.
EXAMPLE: I just installed the Blah Blah Mod using the auto-installer. When I started the game and selected the GodShip with the Penultimate Mega Oblivion Phasers the game crashed to desk top right after I tried to fire on another ship.
- Expressing frustration with either the Helpee or the Helper should be considered a No-No. We were all newbies once. Doesn't hurt to be reminded of this regularly. Their game is broken and they cannot play it and they want to know why right now! Further, they want the solution to be as quick an painless as we make it appear. This is A2. Nothing is ever as easy as it appears. And this is one of the simpler games to mod. Come take a look at my 5GB+ Dawn of War custom install if you want to see something complicated.
When one of the older hands offers advice, it is good intentioned and thoughtful. The advice is something they themselves usually do when they have a problem. "I already tried that and it didn't work.", is about the fastest way I know to get me to avoid a problems thread like the plague. Especially if it appears from the postings the Helpee is not making an attempt to use the good advice given to him/her. It is entirely understandable for one to be frustrated with A2. I have been pulling out the rest of my hair over this game for years now. Think first and then post. A little tact goes a long way. The operative phrase here is "Grace under pressure". The A2 Community is the finest bunch of online people I associate with. They are generous to a fault and far more considerate of others than nearly any other online game Community I can think of. If you've already tried something before asking for help, please tell us. Checks one off the list.
- When helping someone out, be clear and concise. Not everyone is hip to all the jargon and gobbledeygook which has sprung up over the years around modding this game. Do not make assumptions. The person whose thread you posted in may not know at all what you mean by, "Check the BBOM or over at SB34.". Are these these files? Where are they in the game? All we've done here is confuse someone further. Worse, we probably made them mad in addition to their already being frustrated. If you roll your eyes at what some new person has posted and think, "Jeez! Everyone knows about _____!", this thread probably is not the best place for you to be posting.
That's all I have for now. I'm hoping this will become a sticky such as they have over at A2 Files. MaP did a stellar service to the Community in starting that thread. I access it regularly. Strongly suggest others do as well. In time, this thread may become as useful. *crosses fingers*
Hiya, gang!
This is stuff which everyone knows about but at the same time everyone forgets about. Hunh? Did the Redneck just go all metaphysical on us? Nope. Not at all. Just thought I'd pass along a few things to save some pain. It was painful for me and I'd like others to avoid this pain if I can help it.
How to avoid the pain of having something wreck your game so badly you have to rebuild it? Simple. Back up the game. Make yourself a zipped copy of your custom install and a zipped copy of a Stock version. Does not matter where you keep these zipped copies at, either. Having a zipped copy of your current custom install means you'll never, ever have to worry again about trashing your game. You used one of those heathen, Godforsaken auto installers to place some new ships in your game and then all you get are error messages? No problem! Delete the install and unzip a copy of the backup. Ta Da!! Five minutes to unzip a new install of your current game versus a day or more to reinstall the mods you've already added? I'll take Unzipped for one hundred, Alex.
Why would I want a copy of Stock as well? This is a very good question! I am glad you asked. Two reasons. 1- Gives you a place to mod which does not trash your custom install. 2 - Gives you a place to function check a mod you want before you shift it over to your custom install. My current install is about 2.75GB There is no way I am going to allow anything anywhere near it until I am quite sure it functions as advertised. As awful as it sounds there are A2 modders out there who cannot mod. They get something to work and they haven't a clue as to how. They then decide to share this with us. Some of us know just enough about modding the game to get ourselves into trouble. Before you go placing something into the game willy nilly, check it in a stock version to ensure everything is there and everything works.
The next part is directed at newbie modders. You've just made the perfect GodShip version of Defiant and you decide to share her with the rest of us. Great! We need another GodShip version of Defiant! There is no such thing as enough Federation GodShips anyway, right? This is why I got into doing BSG, thl'Ingan, and Rihannsu ships. But this is for another post. The point here is this one. If your directions can be misunderstood or any part of your mod can be used incorrectly, then somebody somewhere will do so. They will then proclaim loudly that your mod is junk, you broke their game, there is no cure for world hunger and you are responsible for everything which is wrong with the world in the 21st century. Wow. Tough break for you, isn't it? Avoid all this by keeping this thought in mind. When you write the directions for installing your mod, assume the very first person whom D/L's it is modding A2 for the very first time. Further, this is the very first time they will have modded any game. A first time D/Ler chooses something just released by a newbie modder. Scary, isn't it?
Everyone prides themselves on how beautiful and accurate their ships are. How many of us place the same effort into installation directions? Into spell checking ODFs. Into making sure the Sprite entries match everything else. In making sure there are the correct number of quotation marks? Never ceases to amaze me how poorly written some of these installation instructions are. It is kind of embarrassing, actually. Someone brilliant enough to make an exact copy of Narada, for example, cannot spell? Nonsense! One of the reasons my mods have been well received is I take the time to ensure the install instructions are accurate and correct. Then I hand these off to someone else for them to look at. Without fail, they find something I forgot or misspelled or left out. so I add in the things left out and then give it back to them for the whole process to begin again. They then find other things I forgot and so on. Until finally, they can find no more errors. Now it is time for someone else to validate the first person and myself did indeed find all the errors.
You have to sweat the details. Sweat is what produces results. Sweat will make up for a lack of talent. The one thing someone wants above all else when adding in your new GodShip is for it to work without crashing the game. Honest. There are great many mods out there for A2 which are brilliant and have little or no instructions at all. And these get added to games a lot. Really? And then the people whom D/L'd these tell others how great the mod is. Really? And no one ever says an unkind word to anyone else about your GodShip mod. Really? Presentation is just as important as content. Well written, accurate installation instructions, and readmes, tell the potential downloader you are serious about modding. You have taken enough pride in that new ship to make the extra effort it takes to allow even someone whom has never done anything like this before to enjoy it to the same level of quality you do. So make the effort. Yeah, it's boring writing stuff no one reads. Yeah, it's tiresome and not nearly as much fun as hardpointing the little jewel you're sharing with the rest of us. But done properly, it can make the difference between your mod being seen as just another mod or one of those things everyone wants in their game.
A few suggestions to make it easier to for the rest of us to help you.
- Telling us "It's broke and I don't know what I did.", makes it very hard to help you. Please be as exact as you can about when the fault occured, what you were doing at the time and what was the error.
EXAMPLE: I just installed the Blah Blah Mod using the auto-installer. When I started the game and selected the GodShip with the Penultimate Mega Oblivion Phasers the game crashed to desk top right after I tried to fire on another ship.
- Expressing frustration with either the Helpee or the Helper should be considered a No-No. We were all newbies once. Doesn't hurt to be reminded of this regularly. Their game is broken and they cannot play it and they want to know why right now! Further, they want the solution to be as quick an painless as we make it appear. This is A2. Nothing is ever as easy as it appears. And this is one of the simpler games to mod. Come take a look at my 5GB+ Dawn of War custom install if you want to see something complicated.
When one of the older hands offers advice, it is good intentioned and thoughtful. The advice is something they themselves usually do when they have a problem. "I already tried that and it didn't work.", is about the fastest way I know to get me to avoid a problems thread like the plague. Especially if it appears from the postings the Helpee is not making an attempt to use the good advice given to him/her. It is entirely understandable for one to be frustrated with A2. I have been pulling out the rest of my hair over this game for years now. Think first and then post. A little tact goes a long way. The operative phrase here is "Grace under pressure". The A2 Community is the finest bunch of online people I associate with. They are generous to a fault and far more considerate of others than nearly any other online game Community I can think of. If you've already tried something before asking for help, please tell us. Checks one off the list.
- When helping someone out, be clear and concise. Not everyone is hip to all the jargon and gobbledeygook which has sprung up over the years around modding this game. Do not make assumptions. The person whose thread you posted in may not know at all what you mean by, "Check the BBOM or over at SB34.". Are these these files? Where are they in the game? All we've done here is confuse someone further. Worse, we probably made them mad in addition to their already being frustrated. If you roll your eyes at what some new person has posted and think, "Jeez! Everyone knows about _____!", this thread probably is not the best place for you to be posting.
That's all I have for now. I'm hoping this will become a sticky such as they have over at A2 Files. MaP did a stellar service to the Community in starting that thread. I access it regularly. Strongly suggest others do as well. In time, this thread may become as useful. *crosses fingers*
Hiya, gang!
This is stuff which everyone knows about but at the same time everyone forgets about. Hunh? Did the Redneck just go all metaphysical on us? Nope. Not at all. Just thought I'd pass along a few things to save some pain. It was painful for me and I'd like others to avoid this pain if I can help it.
How to avoid the pain of having something wreck your game so badly you have to rebuild it? Simple. Back up the game. Make yourself a zipped copy of your custom install and a zipped copy of a Stock version. Does not matter where you keep these zipped copies at, either. Having a zipped copy of your current custom install means you'll never, ever have to worry again about trashing your game. You used one of those heathen, Godforsaken auto installers to place some new ships in your game and then all you get are error messages? No problem! Delete the install and unzip a copy of the backup. Ta Da!! Five minutes to unzip a new install of your current game versus a day or more to reinstall the mods you've already added? I'll take Unzipped for one hundred, Alex.
Why would I want a copy of Stock as well? This is a very good question! I am glad you asked. Two reasons. 1- Gives you a place to mod which does not trash your custom install. 2 - Gives you a place to function check a mod you want before you shift it over to your custom install. My current install is about 2.75GB There is no way I am going to allow anything anywhere near it until I am quite sure it functions as advertised. As awful as it sounds there are A2 modders out there who cannot mod. They get something to work and they haven't a clue as to how. They then decide to share this with us. Some of us know just enough about modding the game to get ourselves into trouble. Before you go placing something into the game willy nilly, check it in a stock version to ensure everything is there and everything works.
The next part is directed at newbie modders. You've just made the perfect GodShip version of Defiant and you decide to share her with the rest of us. Great! We need another GodShip version of Defiant! There is no such thing as enough Federation GodShips anyway, right? This is why I got into doing BSG, thl'Ingan, and Rihannsu ships. But this is for another post. The point here is this one. If your directions can be misunderstood or any part of your mod can be used incorrectly, then somebody somewhere will do so. They will then proclaim loudly that your mod is junk, you broke their game, there is no cure for world hunger and you are responsible for everything which is wrong with the world in the 21st century. Wow. Tough break for you, isn't it? Avoid all this by keeping this thought in mind. When you write the directions for installing your mod, assume the very first person whom D/L's it is modding A2 for the very first time. Further, this is the very first time they will have modded any game. A first time D/Ler chooses something just released by a newbie modder. Scary, isn't it?
Everyone prides themselves on how beautiful and accurate their ships are. How many of us place the same effort into installation directions? Into spell checking ODFs. Into making sure the Sprite entries match everything else. In making sure there are the correct number of quotation marks? Never ceases to amaze me how poorly written some of these installation instructions are. It is kind of embarrassing, actually. Someone brilliant enough to make an exact copy of Narada, for example, cannot spell? Nonsense! One of the reasons my mods have been well received is I take the time to ensure the install instructions are accurate and correct. Then I hand these off to someone else for them to look at. Without fail, they find something I forgot or misspelled or left out. so I add in the things left out and then give it back to them for the whole process to begin again. They then find other things I forgot and so on. Until finally, they can find no more errors. Now it is time for someone else to validate the first person and myself did indeed find all the errors.
You have to sweat the details. Sweat is what produces results. Sweat will make up for a lack of talent. The one thing someone wants above all else when adding in your new GodShip is for it to work without crashing the game. Honest. There are great many mods out there for A2 which are brilliant and have little or no instructions at all. And these get added to games a lot. Really? And then the people whom D/L'd these tell others how great the mod is. Really? And no one ever says an unkind word to anyone else about your GodShip mod. Really? Presentation is just as important as content. Well written, accurate installation instructions, and readmes, tell the potential downloader you are serious about modding. You have taken enough pride in that new ship to make the extra effort it takes to allow even someone whom has never done anything like this before to enjoy it to the same level of quality you do. So make the effort. Yeah, it's boring writing stuff no one reads. Yeah, it's tiresome and not nearly as much fun as hardpointing the little jewel you're sharing with the rest of us. But done properly, it can make the difference between your mod being seen as just another mod or one of those things everyone wants in their game.
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