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[Alex]

Correct.

[Alfalfa]

Correct.

Awesome, thanks.

[Vayra]

This is a general request to anyone who is good at javascript/reading XML files/hunting down elusive sources of save file bloat.

It looks like my Kadur Theocracy mod causes saves to grow quite large (~50mb after around 10-15 minutes of play), and while hunting through the save file xml has shown me what I think is some optimization I could do (having scripts initialized only once with functions that let them do different things i.e. attack different stations etc. rather than initialized once for each station to attack etc.) I'm pretty sure it isn't the main source of whatever's making the save files huge. If anyone could help me figure out what's causing the save files to balloon, either by looking through the mod's code or by saving a game with it active and poring over the save file, I'd really appreciate it!

Download link for the latest version is here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35692174/Vayra1.1.7.rar

[Erick Doe]

Is it possible to create a new cargo type that functions exactly like a regular crewmember, counts toward crew, but doesn't get affected by XP?

[Turdicus]

So I'm just trying to get my first dinky little fighter into the game, I have everything all set up. The only thing is that apparently LibreOffice, the program I am using to edit and save the CSV files, seems to break the CSV file somehow. Do I have to use Excel? Or is there another program that I can use?

Thanks guys

[Hyph_K31]

Personally I use OpenOffice. Trouble is, I got it so long ago that I don't remember if you have to pay for it or not.

Either way, it is great for the purposes of editing the CSVs.

[Turdicus]

Aye, LibreOffice is the new project of the OpenOffice guys after they got bought out by some mean people. I'm sure your version is fine, just the newer versions are full of bloatware.

The error I get from simply opening a ship.csv file and then saving it (libreoffice tells me that some formatting in a text csv format might not be saved properly) is this:

Spoiler

2941 [Thread-6] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.D  - org.json.JSONException: JSONObject["id"] not found.
org.json.JSONException: JSONObject["id"] not found.
   at org.json.JSONObject.get(JSONObject.java:406)
   at org.json.JSONObject.getString(JSONObject.java:577)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.LoadingUtils.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.LoadingUtils.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.ShipHullSpreadsheetLoader.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore.new(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.OooO.super(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.oOOO.super.new(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.D.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$2.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)

[close]

Don't know if that looks familiar to anyone. It's probably something very simple.

[Vayra]

I believe that is indeed caused by your spreadsheet program not playing nice with the spreadsheets.

I'm not sure how LibreOffice setup works, but here's a helpful image I found by searching the forums on how to set up OpenOffice to properly open starsector .csv files (these were the default options on my copy, but ymmv):

My fresh install of Microsoft Excel 2010 also worked perfectly, though it's less than ideal because you can't open two docs with the same name at once (i.e. the vanilla ship_data.csv and the one in your mod)

[Gotcha!]

OpenOffice is free and great, except for dutchies like me.
Language settings will have to be set to US or UK english, or OpenOffice will wreak havoc upon your .csv files. Took me a lot of googling to find out that language settings were the cause.

In my case OpenOffice crashed a couple of times and apparently it resets the language settings afterwards. Not knowing this I completely torpedo'd several .csv files.

Long story short: Keep backups!

[Trylobot]

you can't open two docs with the same name at once (i.e. the vanilla ship_data.csv and the one in your mod)

    I still cannot believe that Microsoft has never fixed that. What a piece of junk software.

[Trylobot]

Aye, LibreOffice is the new project of the OpenOffice guys after they got bought out by some mean people. I'm sure your version is fine, just the newer versions are full of bloatware.

To be fair, I'm not sure I would call Apache as a company "mean." But all office suites are bloated. Microsoft's, OpenOffice, LibreOffice... bloat is the name of the game when it comes to productivity. Welcome to software.

Currently LibreOffice is the only one I have installed, but I'm not sure it's really best.

[mendonca]

A non ideal solution is to use your favourite text editor, such as Scite or notepad++. You might need to be able to count, and be a tiny bit patient, but file format issues should be non-existent.

[Alex]

Is it possible to create a new cargo type that functions exactly like a regular crewmember, counts toward crew, but doesn't get affected by XP?

Not directly, the way that works is pretty rigid. The best you might be able to do is create an item that allows one to install a hullmod that reduces the skeleton crew, or something along those lines.

[Alex]

This is a general request to anyone who is good at javascript/reading XML files/hunting down elusive sources of save file bloat.

It looks like my Kadur Theocracy mod causes saves to grow quite large (~50mb after around 10-15 minutes of play), and while hunting through the save file xml has shown me what I think is some optimization I could do (having scripts initialized only once with functions that let them do different things i.e. attack different stations etc. rather than initialized once for each station to attack etc.) I'm pretty sure it isn't the main source of whatever's making the save files huge. If anyone could help me figure out what's causing the save files to balloon, either by looking through the mod's code or by saving a game with it active and poring over the save file, I'd really appreciate it!

Download link for the latest version is here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35692174/Vayra1.1.7.rar

Took a quick look; I'm not sure there's anything necessarily wrong, though I could easily have missed some duplication. A save is naturally going to get larger compared to its size on startup as ships get damaged and more fleets spawn, the question is, does it continue to grow, or does it top out at a certain point? If you simply have 50mb worth of stuff, I'd suggest turning on save file compression. Should reduce file size by a factor of 20, and improve the save/load times a good deal.

(I'll have to deal with this at some point, ofc, as the vanilla Sector grows larger. Regardless of other measures, pretty sure that save compression will be on by default in some future release.)

[Turdicus]

Man it takes FOREVER to make an original sprite and get it into the game, I have a LOT more respect for you modders now, whew.

I suppose my question is how do you spriters usually star out with fresh art? I tried starting big, like 1000 pixels high, and then shrinking to 100 pixels for a frigate, but of course it really dilutes the image and makes it looks quite childish. Do you guys usually start at the pixel size you want?

Getting a detailed model into 100 pixels is incredible, the artists for this game and the mods have some genuine talent.