Mod showing up, but not working

[Shade1982]

Hey all,

This is my first real try at a mod, and not just a map . As far as I can tell I've done everything right (used Kael's ModdersGuide too, awesome guide), but for some reason it won't work correctly. It will show up in the modbrowser, I can also activate it. But when I start a SP game (my mod is for SP only), neither the civilization nor the map shows up (the map works perfectly, as I designed it separately and have played it before in custom games). Can anyone take a look and tell me what I've been doing wrong? Because I don't know anymore .

Thanks to you all in advance .

 

[Shade1982]

Nobody?

 

[Spatzimaus]

It's the VFS error. You need to set it to True for all of your art assets. This is a change that came after Kael wrote his tutorial; before the December patch the default was True, and now the default is False (along with some other minor differences in how it interfaces).

In ModBuddy, right-click on a file on the right side, and it'll bring up a small Properties window. Look for "Import into VFS".

Set this field to True for:
> New art assets (including anything with .dds in its name)
> Any file that completely replaces an existing file in the game's directory. This means modified versions of existing Lua or NON-DATABASE XML. (Like the XML files that are used for the UI, nothing with <GameData> in it.)

Keep it at False for:
> Any XML GameData updates, which you used OnModActivated for.
> Any newly-made Lua files, which you used InGameUIAddin for.

I can tell you did this because you'd see a bunch of "import=1" entries in the .modinfo file if you did it right. It should look like:

 <Files>
    <File md5="B06323AD71ED378697B3B19C2E7305F1" import="1">Art/BW_SMAC1024.dds</File>
    <File md5="E9A075732FEE4CA18807867931CB87CC" import="1">Art/BW_SMAC2048.dds</File>
    <File md5="94C7F8D0AD97D96E979611784B8446CD" import="1">Art/BW_SMAC256.dds</File>
    <File md5="90C00F2FE4D514ACEDC1C368FBB69C5C" import="1">Art/BW_SMAC360.dds</File>
    <File md5="3FB97B9599FECA3A464AEF8732E079A5" import="1">Art/BW_SMAC512.dds</File>

I'm not saying the rest of your XML is CORRECT, but you should try fixing this first and see what happens.

As for the delay in answering: there aren't many people on this board in general, it's a weekend (which means the serious modders are generally LESS active on the boards and are spending more time playing), and going through someone else's files looking for bugs generally isn't a whole lot of fun. (We'll do it anyway, so don't feel bad about asking, but it lowers the priority a bit.)

 

[Shade1982]

Ok, I may be stupid, but I can't find what you are talking about. Am I using an old version maybe?

This is all my properties window is showing for any of the files in the mod... Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place?

Oh, I apologise if I seemed impatient then , wasn't trying to be rude. It's just really frustrating to have your first mod fail for no apparent reason...

 

[Spatzimaus]

Yeah, that window doesn't look right. The "Misc" block should have a third row, Import into VFS, just below the ghosted "Full Path" line, and I've never seen that Advanced block (although you're clearly in a different OS than I am, so who knows on that one). Let me guess, you've got Steam disabled so that it doesn't auto-update your software? The SDK gets patched periodically just like the game does, but it doesn't generally get patch notes for players to decide whether they want the changes. If you're using an old version of the SDK with a newer version of the game, then yes, it'd fail.

You could also fix it the hard way, and put
import="0"
or
import="1"
for every file in the .modinfo file yourself. Not a good long-term solution, but you'd at least be able to see whether that's the problem.

 

[Shade1982]

Unfortunately, manually entering the import tag did not fix the issue, so I'm guessing it's something else as well...

I use W7 btw.

 

[Shade1982]

Still no fix on this. If anyone has any suggestions, by all means

 

[markusbeutel]

Still no fix on this. If anyone has any suggestions, by all means

The only thing you can really do at this point is update your SDK.