Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Black Wolf on March 31, 2011, 08:26:56 am
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So, I've been looking into Species.tbl, and apparently I can have 75 entries. This makes me a little bit excited, as I'd love to be able to get a lot of my ideas for TI into there. But a list of 75 articles would be quite inconvenient. What I'd like to see would be the ability to link between articles, like a wiki article. This would be mostly useful in species.tbl, but (if feasible), it'd also be cool in ships.tbl (you could link to the Herc 1 from the Herc 2, for example). I have no idea how difficult this would be, other than from an implementation PoV - the syntax could be quite simple if limited to linking within the same table, I would imagine something like this:
Criminal forces in EP are primarily financially motivated but some, like the The $link="Neo-Terran Remnant" Neo-Terran $link="Neo-Terran Remnant" Remnant pursue ideological objectives.
Linking outside of the table would also be useful, but would quite possibly be more complicated, I'm honestly not sure. Intertable linking would be useful from both species.tbl and ships.tbl:
The GTF Loki was once the primary reconnaisance fighter of the $link=species.tbl,"GTVA" GTVA, but has since been retired in favour of the $link="GTF Pegasus" GTF $link="GTF Pegasus" Pegasus, and is now seen more often in the hands of the $link=species.tbl,"Neo-Terran Remnant" NTR. They are typically weakly armed, with at best a pair of $link=weapons.tbl"Subach HL-7" Subachs or $link=weapons.tbl"Prometheus R" R-type $link=weapons.tbl"Prometheus R" Prometheus cannons.
I can see potential problems flicking between the three areas of the techroom, so inter-table connectivity isn't the biggest deal, especially since I assume that would mean modifying three tables rather than one. But it'd be cool to see the tech room become more integrated and user friendly, and possibly encourage mods to flesh out their universes a bit more. Plus, I really hate loading a new campaign set 5 years after Capella and seeing "Eighteen months ago, Admiral Bosch launched his violent coup...", so anything that encourages people to remember species.tbl exists is a good thing in my books. :)
So, am I dreaming? Or is this viable? Would other mods use this if it was implemented?
Oh, BTW - if someone does decide to take this on (and I know I'm possibly strecthing things a tad at this point, but what the hell ;)), how difficult would it be to implement simple back and forward buttons? This'd just be a little bit of increased user friendliness, especially when flicking between tables. It'd also mean no searching through (potentially) 75 articles to find the one you were reading before you got distracted and clicked away.
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This is the kind of thing that would probably be better waiting for the interface overhaul to be coded. Don't ask me when this might happen though.