Mod has no effect

[peteandbill]

I've made two mods now based on Kael's guide and neither of them do anything in the game. One is supposed to add a civ and the other just is supposed to change America's civ name. I see them both in the list of mods, I enable one and then go to set up game and look at the civs but the change never takes place. I can even start a game and in the start menu it says that my mod is running. I made actions for both.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Pouakai]

Have you made sure that all the XML has got a specific action in the actions tab of the Mod's properties?

 

[peteandbill]

Ok i just got some of the stuff to work. I can change text now and delete a civ, but i can't succesfully add a civ. I have an action for each xml, does the order matter?

 

[Pouakai]

Does all the art have VFS set to true?

 

[peteandbill]

I'm not sure what that means so i guess the default. I figured most of it out now. Turns out my tags weren't exactly right so i copied an existing civ and replaced the tags so now the civ appears in the game.

The Civ appears but the text doesn't work. The names come up as TXT_KEY_... The keys exactly match my text file (i copy pasted them). I double checked the format against one of the game's text files and it was the same. When i go to see the list of civs though the scroll bar isn't there. Does that mean there's an error when it's creating the list? maybe another typo somewhere?

Thanks

 

[Spatzimaus]

The names come up as TXT_KEY_...

This means that one of the text keys in your mod duplicates one that's already in the game. This is very common with custom civs, since they'll often add a city name that'll be identical to one the game already has in its lists. The Database.log file should tell you which key is the one conflicting.
If you don't know where the logfiles are, or you haven't turned them on yet, then go do that first. In Windows 7 it'll be in My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization V/Logs, and a similar place for other OSs. To turn on logging, go into your game's config.ini file (in the same place as the Logs directory) and turn "LoggingEnabled = 0" to a 1.

What happens is, the game ignores the entire XML file containing the second conflicting entry (which is yours). If you put those text keys in the same file as some of your other XML changes, then all of them are being lost.

As for the VFS question he mentioned, this is one area where Kael's guide is very out of date. If you're adding any kind of custom artwork (like new icons), then the default will NOT work and you need to change the VFS setting on that file by hand. In ModBuddy, right-click on the file and select Properties. The bottom line will be "Import into VFS", defaulting to false. You need to set it to True for:
> New artwork files (.DDS)
> Non-GameData XML, SQL, or Lua files that replace one of the game's existing files in its entirety (mainly for UI changes)
> Lua files that are intended to be included in other files, instead of tied to an event directly.

Basically, if you're loading the file through an OnModActivated or InGameUIAddin command, then you leave VFS set to False, and for everything else you set it to True.

 

[peteandbill]

That fixes everything! Turns out I had a repeating city name. Thanks!