[Homura]

Hey,

I just started to do some modding and wanted to test some things.

But i can't start Freespace 2 anymore when i am changing something in the ships.tbl. (with Notepad++)

How do i properly edit the tables or do i have to make my own mod for this?

[Black Wolf]

Changing ships.tbl will definitely stop FSO from working, if you do it wrong. It's pretty fundamental to the game. Delete the changed version and FSO will revert back to looking for the (unchanged) version in the VPs, and it will work again.

What specifically were you trying to do? If you were trying to add a custom ship, the vast majority come with -shp.tbm files, which will work in the engine without changing ships.tbl. If you were trying to make changes to the attributes of existing ships, like hitpoints and top speed, there are a couple of ways you can do that. Editing ships.tbl is one way, and FS2's files are great in that they're all very human readable, but they can be a bit finnicky with regards to the order in which things show up, certain special characters etc. If you've entirely broken the game and it's not giving you any error messages, I'd guess that you probably removed one of the # entries, like #Ship Classes or #Default Player Ship or something like that. Don't do that. as long as you only change the things you specifically want to change, and leave the rest alone, ships.tbl is generally pretty forgiving, and when you make a mistake, FSO gives generally pretty detailed error messages telling you what you did wrong.

However, editing ships.tbl and popping it in your data\tables directory is generally a bad idea, as it will cause incompatibilities with other mods you might want to play. Alternately, and probably a better method than wholesale editing, is to create a new mod where you can change things without messing up compatibility anywhere else. Create a new subfolder in your FSO directory, then create a further two nested subfolders, data and tables, so the address will look something like c:\Games\Freespace2\YOURMODNAME\data\tables. You can put a modular table in this folder to make the changes you want to make. If you use the +nocreate tag (see the wiki page I linked to) you can change the entries you want without changing anything else. Your mod will need a mod.ini file before it will run, but you can copy that from an existing mod and just make small changes as needed.

If you have a close look at how other mods have done it (and read the relevant parts of the wiki as needed), you'll be able to adapt their syntax fairly easily to make any changes you might want to. The mediaVPs, IIRC, and Blue Planet, have good nocreate examples to crib from.

[Homura]

Many thanks, 

i definitly will experiment with that.

Of course I made a backup file before i started testing some things.

I was trying to set the deccelarate speed faster so the ship slows down much faster after the warp in. I can set it slower with no problems but up i wont work... 

Yeah i already have some missions for a campain so i will try using my own mod. In this regard i want the base-mods to be MediaVPS2014 and BP. Can i just put these into the mod.ini or do i need something more?

[jr2]

Many thanks, 

i definitly will experiment with that.

Of course I made a backup file before i started testing some things.

I was trying to set the deccelarate speed faster so the ship slows down much faster after the warp in. I can set it slower with no problems but up i wont work... 

Yeah i already have some missions for a campain so i will try using my own mod. In this regard i want the base-mods to be MediaVPS2014 and BP. Can i just put these into the mod.ini or do i need something more?

Yes, you can, your mod would then be dependent on (and load automatically) MediaVPs2014 and BP.  Not sure if you need to specify both, or just BP and BP will load MVPs2014, I'm sure BlackWolf or someone else will let you know (or just look at other mods like yours, say, one that depends on FSPort-mediavps or somesuch).

If you have a search tool like Everything, you can simply search for the file mod.ini and peruse different iterations of the file, like so:





EDIT:  Looks like this is the specific part of the mod.ini wiki entry you're looking for:  http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Mod.ini#primarylist.2Fsecondarylist

However, it's not too clear on what mods should be considered primarylist (if any) and which should be secondarylist.  Black Wolf or someone will have to help you there, as I'm no longer certain enough to comment definitively on that.  There was an entry somewhere that explained it, but I don't know off the top of my head where to find it.

[The E]

The mods you depend on should always be in the secondary list. The primary list exists to make more exotic mod configurations happen; for the vast majority of mods, leaving it blank is the correct choice.