Invalid references

Ever since I realized you could type in Descriptions, Civilopedia entries, Help and Strategy texts straight into new Buildings and Units without using TXT_KEY tags, I've become kind of lazy and stopped creating TXT_KEY tags completely. Now my Database.log is full of Invalid reference errors, which is to be expected. I'm however wondering if there are any other side effects to doing it this way, or are text key tags just there to ease editing? Could too many Invalid references cause problems with the mod eventually?

You've encountered one of the problems all ready - debugging errors in database.log is more difficult when there are a bunch of TXT_KEY errors in there already. The other main issue is localization, which is what the text keys are for. If you want to localize your mod into another language (or if someone else does) then you need to substitute in text keys for all of the raw text to be able to create entries for the separate languages.

I see, that makes sense. I've never had any trouble finding other errors despite the text errors though, and I'm not planning on translating my mod, so there's no harm really. Thanks.

Frossa said:

I see, that makes sense. I've never had any trouble finding other errors despite the text errors though, and I'm not planning on translating my mod, so there's no harm really. Thanks.

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Ah, there's also Lua formatting. If you want people to be able to insert your given text into anything from Lua (or make use of the substitution system for gender/plurality), then text keys are what provides that.