Okay, can someone explain that:



I run my mod by using the parameter "+mod Better_AI_1_2" It shows it is loaded and I can see that at least the Color-Stuff works.

Now in turn 4 something happens that my Mod should prevent from happening: The governor orders a switch to "Colonial exchange" on my home Jungle-World.

But the AIPathsPrerequisites to build that is:

$(../ClassStarSystem:ConsumptionPerFood) lt $(../ClassStarSystem:PopOfMax) and ($(PlanetTypeArid) or $(PlanetTypeAsteroids))

None of these 2 rules apply! ConsumptionPerFood is 66% and PopOfMax is 50%. And the Planet is neither Arid nor Asteroid. No way it should be allowed to build that!



Not seeing any possible error with the rules I already had tested excessively without any noticeable breaking of my rules, I copied the file PlanetInfrastructure.xml from my mod directory directly into the directory where the game-files are.

Reloaded the savegame and voila: No more "Colonial exchange". The governor correctly switches to Ind->Dust as intended.



So it seems that my File "PlanetInfrastructure.xml" from my mods folder is ignored somehow. But I made sure it is mentioned in "Index.xml".

What am I doing wrong? Should it probably be the other way around and I should make sure it is NOT mentioned?



So far I always ran mods by directly copying the files to Endless Space\Public and it worked. But now that I try to run it from the external directory it's causing troubles as in "not working".

I feel your pain, and I do not know a solution. What is required is to find some kind of a bug which causes your mod to be partly ignored. This is not the "fun" part of modding.



I have found several different situations where a mod is ignored. "Sometimes" there is an error message in output_log.txt; first please confirm if you looked there (search for "Modding"). I have also found several minor-looking errors in output_log.txt; for example, if you add a new technology you should add an entry to AIParametersTechnology; if you do not, you get a message in output_log.txt. To minimize the size of output_log.txt, do not minimize the game (play in 1024x768 and keep it open) and do not exit the game. Both of those actions spam output_log.txt with many messages.



I have done some tests by putting an obvious syntax error into the xml file, such as a line which reads simply "SYNTAX ERROR". Sometimes this produces an error in output_log.txt, not all the time. At least one time it caused the vanilla file to be loaded instead, and one time it caused all the subsequent files to fail to be loaded. There are other conditions such as only including one file from AI/Parameters which cause strange results.



The only way to progress on this is a painful one, which is to forget about actually improving the game, and find bugs in mod loading itself. I did this with "readonly files", for example, which is now fixed. There are probably other bugs as well. Let's all try to find them, to spread out the pain.

Tried several things like making the mod standalone... This fixed the original problem but caused coloredanomalies and the sound to not work anymore.



Forgetting to improve the game but instead trying to find out why my mod won't load properly is kinda demotivating. Especially if chances are good that I can't do anything about it. :\

But in this case I don't have a clue what could be causing it. So there's nothing I can tell the devs what they should fix.



Edit: I now have copied the mod over the original files and use the mod as well. This seems to be the only way to make sure it works and still have the color-changes.



I really just want to have a playthrough with the mod so I can see if and how much harder it is. Difficulty will be only normal, Medium Spiral with 8 Players.



Edit: Seriously... All sorts of shit are going on when I activate a mod instead of just copying the files over to "Public" and play without using the Mod function.

I've never seen the "I won't build anything" bug before. Now I did. Does not happen without using the mod folder.

Ail wrote:
Edit: Seriously... All sorts of shit are going on when I activate a mod instead of just copying the files over to "Public" and play without using the Mod function.

Yeah. I am not sure if you work in software engineering or software test, but isolating this kind of problem is a skill. It is a valuable skill, but sometimes using it is not very fun. Please concentrate on fun things, and let us know all the workarounds you need. If the dev team has this skill, and is allowed the time by their management, they will be able to figure it out.

I am working in software engeneering. And I know that it can be hard to track down bugs. The problem here is that I have no access to the actual game code.

I think a bug report like:

"It seems in some cases the game loads the original files instead of the files from the mod."

should be more than sufficient as a bug report for someone who has access to the code to find out and fix what's going on.

Ail wrote:
The problem here is that I have no access to the actual game code.

That makes the problem more challenging and less fun, but not impossible. I have sent a private post to the development team with some detailed suggestions. Let us carefully copy files to the game install directory to make more progress on modding with less frustration, and hope they will fix it soon.

Similar issues i have and i, sometimes.

I found that is very useful to clean up the game cache from steam, almost in any saved modified file.

endlessv wrote:
I found that is very useful to clean up the game cache from steam, almost in any saved modified file.

Unfortunately, this game cache is usually a false alarm. The file EndlessSpace_data/output_log.txt is changed every time you run, since it contains output from your current game. Steam validates this, and it always fails. I have suggested to put this in (my documents)\Endless Space instead.