[pietraz]

Hi, I'm new to the scene, but as I am a curious beast I wanted to fiddle around with some tables (notably, to remove the annoying shudder of Maxim gun).

All goes well, I installed the Maja 0.85, added vp extention to windows explorer and stuff so the .vp opens up properly.

I found the table and was able to remove the "shudder" flag from the Maxim gun.
The problems start when I try to save the goddamned thing. First it asks me to set up an output path. So I set it up for the directory the .vp file is in but even if I press save again I get an error:

Couldn't create output path D:\Games\FS2\Great War II\<ENTRIES>\Data\Tables for entry weapons.tbl

What should I do to save this modified table to the .vp?

I can't export the whole package either. It tells me to specify the filename, so I put it in, end it with .vp extension and click OK. I don't get an error msg, but the .vp file isn't there...

Am I a retard or am I just doing something wrong?
Help, anyone?

[JediMasterTim]

I would just use VPView to extract the tbl, make the necessary changes, and put it in data/tables.

[Jeff Vader]

Indeed. If you only want to use a modified table, the best option is to place it to \freespace2\modfolder\data\tables and then use the \freespace2\modfolder\ directory as a mod when FREDding or playing.

You should never put anything in existing .vp files. You can create your own vp files, but it doesn't actually affect your mod in any way and is only useful, if you plan on releasing it to other people when it is ready.

Also, it's Maja.

[pietraz]

Sorry for misspell. <Corrected>

Thx I did what you suggested. I simply didn't know that anything you put in Data folder gets the priority over the entries in .vp file.
I don't plan on releasing any mods, that's for sure, the modification is only of that one entry and for personal purposes only.

[Jeff Vader]

I guess a short revision on priorities is in order.

- \data\ is read before the .vp files in the same folder
- .vp files are read in alphabetical order (which is why patches often have numbers at the beginning of the file name)
- selected mod folders are read before \freespace2\
- selected mod folders are read in the order in which they are in the -mod parameter (for example, "-mod fsport,mediavps" makes the game engine read \freespace2\fsport\ first, then \freespace2\mediavps\ and finally \freespace2\)

[pietraz]

Thank you, it's good to know.

What about the settings in the mod.ini?

I mean, primarylist and secondarylist entries. If, for example I run Sync mod and mod.ini has mediavps in primarylist?

Thank you in advance.

[Jeff Vader]

The primarylist and secondarylist lines in mod.ini files are used to create a -mod flag to be used by the game engine. Mod folders in primarylist are set at a higher priority than the selected folder and mod folders in secondarylist are set at a lower priority than the selected folder.

For example, if you select \sync\ as a mod folder and the mod.ini in there has \mediavps\ in secondarylist, the game engine will use the command-line flag "-mod sync,mediavps". Note that in this case, and most other cases, mediavps should be in secondarylist and not primarylist, because mods may have some changes that need to precede the MediaVPs.

As another example, we can take a look at Silent Threat: Reborn. It requires the FSPort MediaVPs to be read before the STR data, if the player wants to use the FSPort MediaVPs. Therefore STR's mod.ini has FSPort MediaVPs in primarylist and FSPort and the regular MediaVPs in secondarylist. That way the used parameter will be "-mod fsport-mediavps,STR,fsport,mediavps". And that way STR will work properly with MediaVPs.

[pietraz]

Thank you VERY much, Lobo, that's exactly what I needed to know