SE4X Colonization vs. Compatability Poll

[Urendi Maleldil]

Using the Colony Tech Mod, which makes colonization research more detailed and prevents some forms of cheating in multiplayer games, also will make the unofficial SE4 eXpansion incompatible with downloaded ship sets.

It's a relatively simple matter to modify each ship set so it will work with the mod, but it would be complicated for casual players and a pain for more technically inclined players who have a lot of ship sets.

I know what I want to do with the mod, but since I also want the SE4X to be a community effort, I want to know what you guys think.

[Suicide Junkie]

Eh?
Shipsets aren't going to be affected by the mod.

The AIs might.

[Fyron]

SJ:
There really is no disparity between shipsets and AIs... every AI has to have a shipset, afterall. There are certainly shipsets without AIs, but they don't matter regarding this issue.

Urendi:
It is trivial to write a program that will update all the shipsets installed in the mod to work with whatever system you go with. Its just a lookup in AI_General, then a find/replace in AI_Research. People would just have to remember to run it after adding new shipsets. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Urendi Maleldil]

Imperator Fyron said:
Urendi:
It is trivial to write a program that will update all the shipsets installed in the mod to work with whatever system you go with. Its just a lookup in AI_General, then a find/replace in AI_Research. People would just have to remember to run it after adding new shipsets. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



I know the operation is simple, but I'm no programmer. At least not since High School. I suppose I could write a DOS program in QBasic, but then nobody would use it. I'll just have to track down someone who can write it in a newer language that can be used by Windows.

I'm actually leaning towards the program option myself. Especially since it opens the door to other additions to the SE4X mod that would not be possible if it had to be compatible with unmodified AI.

[Aiken]

UM, you may find VBScript suitable for your task, since you're familiar with QBasic.
And VBScript's natively supported in Windoze via WSH without compilation bothering.

[Ed Kolis]

Really? What kinds of scripts can you write in VBscript that will "just run" against Windows? What's this WSH thingy? Windows shell? Is that new to Vista?

[Fyron]

Every version of windows came with at least a few versions of VB runtimes. 2k/xp have something like VB6, or whatever the last non-.NET version was.

Note that there is absolutely no reason why such an application would need a GUI. There is nothing for the user to interact with. All it needs to do is scan through and adapt each set of AI files. A simple command line utility than can be double-clicked in explorer is all that you need. Anything else is a waste of time and overkill, IMO.

[Parasite]

VB6 was the last version before .Net. Lots of my VB6 apps don't run on Vista though. Possibly because of database issues, but I have not worked closely with them yet.

[aegisx]

Ed:

You can use vbscript with cscript (wsh):

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/cscript_overview.mspx?mfr=true

It is on pretty much every windows system and it pretty simple.