[Su-tehp]

OK, If this topic has been mentioned before, I just want to say that I DID do a search and found nothing.

Anyway, I made slight modifications to the Species.tbl file as a small test for my campaign. I managed to change the titles and some slight text of the "Great War" and "Reconstruction" entries, so that was no problem.

What went wrong is that I tried adding two new entries with corresponding single frame ANIs and neither one appeared. I copied the exact form of the previous entries when I made the new ones, so that shouldn't have been a problem.

One funny thing I noticed was that when I moved the "NTF" and "Hammer of Light" entries to come after the two new entries, the "NTF" and "Hammer of Light" entries ALSO didn't appear on the screen when I went to the Intelligence sction of the techroom.

Anyone have any suggestions how to fix this?

[CP5670]

I don't think it is possible to do this; I also tried it a long time ago with no success. (the entry headers are probably hard-coded into the game, so if it notices anything strange in the tbl it just ignores everything after it) Perhaps something for the source code people...

[Black_Dragon]

Ask one of the guys that are doing projects of different species,  like Babylon Five,   ehh.......   dont remember the others but ask one of them.

[Sesquipedalian]

Reciprocity did it.  Go ask Aldo in his forum.

[Killfrenzy]

I successfully changed all the entries in the species.tbl file so none of it had anything to do with FS2....I'm not saying WHY yet!:p

BTW - does anyone know how to add a completely new species? Currently there's three species in the game, but I'm wanting five. Is there any way to do this? Preferably without having to go into masochism within the source code (I'm just starting to learn C++, so don't try to get me to do anything yet! )

[CP5670]

Oh wait, never mind what I said before; I think I was confusing the cutscenes.tbl and species.tbl.

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by Killfrenzy
Currently there's three species in the game, but I'm wanting five. Is there any way to do this?

No.  As I understand it, the code is built on the assumption of only three, and trying to change that would involve such a massive overhaul of the code that even the most ambitious of the SCP people shudder at the thought.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Su-tehp
OK, If this topic has been mentioned before, I just want to say that I DID do a search and found nothing.

Anyway, I made slight modifications to the Species.tbl file as a small test for my campaign. I managed to change the titles and some slight text of the "Great War" and "Reconstruction" entries, so that was no problem.

What went wrong is that I tried adding two new entries with corresponding single frame ANIs and neither one appeared. I copied the exact form of the previous entries when I made the new ones, so that shouldn't have been a problem.

One funny thing I noticed was that when I moved the "NTF" and "Hammer of Light" entries to come after the two new entries, the "NTF" and "Hammer of Light" entries ALSO didn't appear on the screen when I went to the Intelligence sction of the techroom.

Anyone have any suggestions how to fix this?

Um......I checked the old species.tbl I did for Rec.....all I did was replace existing entires  - I know you can;t add new ones - and it worked fine.  the only problem I remeber having was that the ani didn't show up if it was the wroing size.

[Su-tehp]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Um......I checked the old species.tbl I did for Rec.....all I did was replace existing entires  - I know you can;t add new ones - and it worked fine.  the only problem I remeber having was that the ani didn't show up if it was the wroing size.

Meaning that the replacing anis have to be the same number of bytes as the previous ones? How difficult is that to arrange, Aldo?

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Su-tehp


Meaning that the replacing anis have to be the same number of bytes as the previous ones? How difficult is that to arrange, Aldo?

Nah.  same physical (pixel) dimensions.  i think it's pretty easily possible to make a mistake there.

Er... just try renaming an original ani for use in your new table, to test it.

[Su-tehp]

Aldo, I tried using your Species.tbl file from your old reciprocity vp file. It worked...once.

After I extracted your Species.tbl file from your old reciprocity vp file, I went into the techroom and I saw all the entries, even the one for the Nightmares and its single frame ani. But when I tried to modify the text of the species file, the nightmare entry disappeared.

The funny thing about all this is that when I first used your species.tbl file and saw the Nightmare entry, I HADN'T changed it's "AlwaysInTechroom" flag from 0 to 1! And afterwards, when I did change it to 1 to make it always visible, it wasn't visible anymore!



So I decided that the Species.tbl file from your old reciprocity vp  had become faulty somehow and I re-extracted it. But I still can't make the Nightmare entry visible, either with keeping the "AlwaysInTechroom" flag at 0 or at 1!

How do I fix this?

[CP5670]

Alright, I definitely need to try playing around with this file again. I did try changing stuff around in there once, but that was way before FS2 even came out (this was in FS1), so I can't remember a thing on how the file works.

Su, that might be something similar to the problems that occur in ships.tbl and the tech room; perhaps that information is stored in the player file. Try creating a new player and see what happens.

[Killfrenzy]

Originally posted by Sesquipedalian


No.  As I understand it, the code is built on the assumption of only three, and trying to change that would involve such a massive overhaul of the code that even the most ambitious of the SCP people shudder at the thought.

*Long, colourful curses*

[Su-tehp]

Guys, I have a question that may answer why I didn't see some of the entries:

Is there a text limit on these entries? Like say, if I replace the writing of one particular entry in the species.tbl file but do nothing else except make the length of that paragraph larger than before, would that make the entry disappear from the Intelligence techroom menu?

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Su-tehp
Guys, I have a question that may answer why I didn't see some of the entries:

Is there a text limit on these entries? Like say, if I replace the writing of one particular entry in the species.tbl file but do nothing else except make the length of that paragraph larger than before, would that make the entry disappear from the Intelligence techroom menu?

Maybe.... i'm not sure, because I don't know which section of the SC would be relevant.  There is a character limit for ships.tbl descriptions mentioned in parser.cpp in the code, though.