Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

Author Topic: How to install a mod [v. 0.33a]  (Read 13417 times)

Avan

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1399
  • Pioneer of Starfarer Modding
    • View Profile
    • DevDB forums
How to install a mod [v. 0.33a]
« on: May 05, 2011, 08:33:41 AM »
Thought I might as well provide specific installation instructions for anyone using this first beta, even though I know Alex plans on making things quite a bit easier in the future, I suspect there will be at least several more mods released for this early version soon.

navigate to your starfarer installation directory and then from there go to you missions directory:
../starfarer/starfarer-all/data/missions/
now, extract the mission folder to this location so you should have
../starfarer/starfarer-all/data/missions/missionname/
as the new directory of the mission

now just edit
../starfarer/starfarer-all/data/missions/mission_list.json
to include the name of the mission you are adding, and then you should be done!

If starfarer crashes on load, there is probably an issue with the mission name you added, or the creator of the mission did not bug-test their mission, which is really bad form.
Logged

calmforce

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 16
    • View Profile
Re: How to install a mod [v. 0.33a]
« Reply #1 on: May 05, 2011, 11:02:00 PM »
I don´t know why, but the "holdingtheline" mission crashes my SF installation in the mission screen, when I try to click on the mission.

The screen and game just stop responding. Starfarer on a Macbook Pro here, edited the .json with textedit to include the mission and have the folder with the new mission inside the missions folder of the game.
Logged

Avan

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1399
  • Pioneer of Starfarer Modding
    • View Profile
    • DevDB forums
Re: How to install a mod [v. 0.33a]
« Reply #2 on: May 05, 2011, 11:09:09 PM »
if it crashes when you click on the mission, that would appear to be an error caused by the game looking for a non-existant ship that is specified in the mission, which shouldn't happen, unless for some reason the mac build is missing something... which also shouldn't happen. (Because I know for a fact that the mission if installed right should run fine on the vanilla build of starfarer 0.33a)


Can you pastebin me the relevant contents of your ../starfarer/starfarer-all/starfarer.log file? It should be quite clear which parts are the engine/java compile spitting out error code.
Logged

calmforce

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 16
    • View Profile
Re: How to install a mod [v. 0.33a]
« Reply #3 on: May 05, 2011, 11:17:18 PM »
Hi Avan, thank you for the beautiful work you are doing!

There is no "starfarer-all" directory on the Mac and I can - for the life of me - not find any log file in the package. It does not seem to generate one.  I searched through all starfarer directories in vain.

Logged

Avan

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1399
  • Pioneer of Starfarer Modding
    • View Profile
    • DevDB forums
Re: How to install a mod [v. 0.33a]
« Reply #4 on: May 05, 2011, 11:18:36 PM »
hmmm... ok, I have no idea about the mac version... I thought it would have been like the windows version >.>

You'll need to ask Alex for help then.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 24116
    • View Profile
Re: How to install a mod [v. 0.33a]
« Reply #5 on: May 06, 2011, 10:22:30 AM »
Quote from: calmforce on May 05, 2011, 11:17:18 PM
Hi Avan, thank you for the beautiful work you are doing!

There is no "starfarer-all" directory on the Mac and I can - for the life of me - not find any log file in the package. It does not seem to generate one.  I searched through all starfarer directories in vain.


Logging is broken on the Mac right now, unfortunately. However, if it crashes, I believe the Console app shows the logfile contents (as they're also sent to standard out).

Can't check just now, but if you search for starfarer.command, that will be the "root" game directory - data/missions etc are in there.
Logged

calmforce

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 16
    • View Profile
Re: How to install a mod [v. 0.33a]
« Reply #6 on: May 06, 2011, 12:04:34 PM »
Hi Alex,

I have found the starfarer.command file but do not know what to do with it - I am new to the mac, only 2 months that I am using it and I don´t really know the functions or the OS too well.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 24116
    • View Profile
Re: How to install a mod [v. 0.33a]
« Reply #7 on: May 06, 2011, 12:13:47 PM »
Quote from: calmforce on May 06, 2011, 12:04:34 PM
I have found the starfarer.command file but do not know what to do with it - I am new to the mac, only 2 months that I am using it and I don´t really know the functions or the OS too well.

Hmm... you probably don't care about that, actually. But you should see an app named "Console" show up on the doc when the game crashes, and if you click on that, you should see the logging output in that window.

By the way, I want to mention that distributing missions is not officially supported yet. There will be a nice way to do this some time down the line (hopefully, soon). So do this at your own peril - it may very well work, but there might also be issues :)
Logged

calmforce

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 16
    • View Profile
Re: How to install a mod [v. 0.33a]
« Reply #8 on: May 06, 2011, 12:58:27 PM »
Hello Alex, I know that the missions are not supported yet. This Alpha is a great game in and of itself and I will gladly wait till everything is worked out.

The game does not crash by the way, it freezes and I have to force-quit it. There is no console in the dock after that. At least not one, that would show anything.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 24116
    • View Profile
Re: How to install a mod [v. 0.33a]
« Reply #9 on: May 06, 2011, 01:03:41 PM »
Quote from: calmforce on May 06, 2011, 12:58:27 PM
The game does not crash by the way, it freezes and I have to force-quit it. There is no console in the dock after that. At least not one, that would show anything.

Ahh, I see. Yeah, then it won't show the console. We really need to get that logging-on-a-Mac issue worked out.

Unfortunately, nothing comes to mind for why it might hang like that. It would do that if there was an infinite loop in the mission definition, or something like that, but then it would just hang everywhere.
Logged

Blips

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 246
    • View Profile
Re: How to install a mod [v. 0.33a]
« Reply #10 on: May 06, 2011, 06:06:50 PM »
My game is also hanging after trying to make a custom (or rather, new version of an existing) hull.

The original hull is intact so I doubt that that's the issue. I've ensured to update the new hull IDs and hull names and add the new hull to the ship_data.csv as well as create a variant for the new hull. Not sure what I've done wrong  :-\.

edit:
I've checked the log. The final lines of the log indicate it was trying or just had loaded the icon to my new hull (using same graphical resources as the original hull).
Code
56125 [Thread-6] DEBUG com.fs.graphics.TextureLoader  - Loading [graphics/ships/icons/icon_broadsword.png] as texture with id [graphics/ships/icons/icon_broadsword.png]
56125 [Thread-6] DEBUG com.fs.graphics.TextureLoader  - Loading [graphics/ships/falcon_cl.png] as texture with id [graphics/ships/falcon_cl.png]
56125 [Thread-6] DEBUG com.fs.graphics.TextureLoader  - Loading [graphics/ships/icons/icon_falcon-c.png] as texture with id [graphics/ships/icons/icon_falcon-c.png]
« Last Edit: May 06, 2011, 06:10:32 PM by Blips »
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 24116
    • View Profile
Re: How to install a mod [v. 0.33a]
« Reply #11 on: May 06, 2011, 06:10:01 PM »
Most likely there's a problem either with the ship sprite or the icon - that is, the filename might be wrong in the data file, or, more likely, the ship icon's filename doesn't match the expected icon_<hull id>.png form. If it hangs while loading, that means its waiting for an image to load that never does.
Logged

Blips

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 246
    • View Profile
Re: How to install a mod [v. 0.33a]
« Reply #12 on: May 06, 2011, 06:11:03 PM »
Quote from: Alex on May 06, 2011, 06:10:01 PM
Most likely there's a problem either with the ship sprite or the icon - that is, the filename might be wrong in the data file, or, more likely, the ship icon's filename doesn't match the expected icon_<hull id>.png form. If it hangs while loading, that means its waiting for an image to load that never does.

Ah alright thanks that explains the log.

update:
Yeah it was the icon file. I didn't know that it was based on the name. I just copied the existing one and renamed it and now everything is great. Thanks  :)
« Last Edit: May 06, 2011, 06:13:16 PM by Blips »
Logged