Ruff's Cobbled SG Modpack

[Kikinit]

ruff. Would installing this give you problems with playing the GOTM?

I downloaded the GOTM and try to load it but it give me a message "The save file you have selected is protected to ensure the assets in your mod folder have not been changed".

I was planning on reinstalling anyway as the autologger is not working for me. I get the right messages and popups and it writes the first line as I said in a previous post but it doesn't do any more.

I will try the GOTM before I install your pack and then after to see if it works. Assuming it works after the reinstall of course.

 

[Bede]

It will not work with the GOTM if they have protected the file. What I do when playing "protected" games is stuff all the mod's .ini files in an "ini" folder, then rename Custom Assets to "Custom Assets Mod".

When I want to play a game with the mod just pitch the game created Custom Assets, rename the Custom Assets Mod to Custom Assets and copy the .ini into the root folder for the game.

Also I noticed you use the scaled text which modifies a .xml file in the program files. You may have to reset to the original using the scale tool.

 

[Kikinit]

Right.. thanks Bede. I have reinstalled and not installed any mods and the GOTM works fine.

That renaming the directories seems troublesome. I wonder if I can do a dual install like the dual patch install with one version having the mods like Ruffs, Blue Marble and Civscale while the other has nothing except the latest patch for playing GOTM files. I presume the SGOTM file will be protected the same way.

 

[Bede]

Actually I was wrong.

At least on my machine The GOTM protected save ignores the RuffMod.ini files so the game loads fine but the RuffMod's are ignored, so logging doesn't work nor any of the other mods.

The dual install will also work I should think and might not be a bad way to go.

 

[ruff_hi]

The other option is to see if you can get a GOTM that is build using the HOF mod. That will give you a logger and some other stuff. That does depend on the GOTM people proving a save created under the HOF mod.

 

[ruff_hi]

The opening turn (4000BC) is turn 0 if you want the turn counter to be consistent with the in game turns.

Thanks for the prompt reply, editing now.

Edit made, but now for some reason the year number is off in the logger. The clock display is corrected.

The logger has two parts for the turn and the date. One is when the logger is first activated where the game turn and the required logger turn are correct. The other location is the one that logs the turns as you play. This gets complicated because there is no event 'onturnstart'. However, there is an event 'onturnend' (or similar). So, the logger posts the new turn message as the very last thing of the previous turn. Hence the turn counter needs to have '+1' (or '+2' if 4000BC=1) and the year needs to be adjusted too - yes, confusing isn't it.

The upshot is that if you want to adjust it, you will need to adjust it in two places.

 

[Kikinit]

It seems the problems were with my old setup somehow.

On this install, I was very cautious and am following more along Bede's guidelines. That is, when I unpack your files, they are in "CustomAssets v1.1.0". I renamed the original CustomAssets to "CustomAssets.Original" and then then removed the v1.1.0. This seems to have worked for me now.

I can load the GOTM file now with no changing directory names or anything. In a normal game I would press Alt-L to log but pressing Alt-L in the GOTM does nothing.

The log file is working fine except the turn 0 is 4000BC and then turn 2 is 3960BC. Other than that it's looking perfect.

Great job ruff_hi.

 

[ruff_hi]

I can load the GOTM file now with no changing directory names or anything. In a normal game I would press Alt-L to log but pressing Alt-L in the GOTM does nothing.

The log file is working fine except the turn 0 is 4000BC and then turn 2 is 3960BC. Other than that it's looking perfect.

Great job ruff_hi.

Locking the assets (or the old 'no cheating' option) stops the loading of mods under the customassets directory - thus no logger as you found out. The 4000BC as turn 0 or 1 is under discussion here and I will update the logger when a consensus is reached.

 

[Kikinit]

I saw that thread and voted for 4000BC to be turn 0.

What I was saying in the logging is that it reports 4000BC as turn 0 and then reports 3960BC as turn 2. It skips turn 1 altogether.

 

[Bede]

@ruff,

I have attached the two files I modified to get the turn numbers reported correctly, or at least so they match the turns as reported in the game Victory screen.

Spoiler sample :

----------------------------New entries----------------------------
Turn 0 (4000 BC)

IBT:

Turn 1 (3960 BC)

IBT:

Turn 2 (3920 BC)

IBT:

Turn 3 (3880 BC)

IBT:

Turn 4 (3840 BC)

IBT:

Turn 5 (3800 BC)

IBT:

Turn 6 (3760 BC)

@K, this should fix the issue you reported above as well.

I have not documented the changes, unfortunately, but someone with beyond compare could

 

[Kikinit]

Thanks Bede. Looks good.

It's late here tonight so I'll give it a go tomorrow night.

 

[RobH]

Hi Ruff

Great mod, thanks . Although it does not work for GOTM games, I have read previous posters ways of getting around this with naming conventions, etc, and can still run an autolog using my previous approach, even if it is a somewhat hit or miss event now under v1.61.

I wanted your autolog file to be an html, as opposed to txt, file since you have the option for html formatting in the Ruff.ini file. As this did not work, I had a look at the code. In the autologEventManager, about 60 lines down where you process the FormatStyle, you have a number of lines commented out, presumably because you did not get html working.

The error line appears to be:
if (ziStyle = 0 or ziStyle = 2):

If you change this to:

if (ziStyle == 0 or ziStyle == 2):

and remove the # comment marks from the surrounding lines, then for me at least, it does generate either a txt or html file extension depending on the FormatStyle requested in Ruff.ini.

Not sure if there may be another reason why you commented out this html file creation, but it seems to work fine for me now .

Rob

 

[ruff_hi]

In the autologEventManager, about 60 lines down where you process the FormatStyle, you have a number of lines commented out, presumably because you did not get html working.

The error line appears to be:
if (ziStyle = 0 or ziStyle = 2):

If you change this to:

if (ziStyle == 0 or ziStyle == 2):

and remove the # comment marks from the surrounding lines, then for me at least, it does generate either a txt or html file extension depending on the FormatStyle requested in Ruff.ini.

Not sure if there may be another reason why you commented out this html file creation, but it seems to work fine for me now .

Rob

Ahhh - stupid bl$$dy python. I was trying to get it to work but all I was getting were syntax errors. It was driving me nuts. So, why / how is '==' different from '='?

I'll update this so it will appear in the next version.

 

[RobH]

Ahhh - stupid bl$$dy python. I was trying to get it to work but all I was getting were syntax errors. It was driving me nuts. So, why / how is '==' different from '='?

I know how you feel Ruff, but ours not to reason why about programming languages ! I don't know python but I do know in JavaScript you have to use a double equal sign as the operator to check for operands being equal and scanning through the module, I saw a couple of double equal signs in places. I do agree with you though, if something is equal to something else, one equal sign should quite good enough to determine that. It certainly was when I learnt 'rithmatic !

Rob

 

[GreyFox]

<Off-Topic>
From a C programming perspective, it has always been the case. "=" is used for assignment, and "==" is used for equality comparison.
</off-topic>

 

[Rex Tyrannus]

It goes further back than C. Let's say you write

if ( X = Y ) then...

the order of operations is to work from inside the parenthesis outward, so the first thing the programming logic will do is to assign the Y value to the X variable because the first thing it looks at is "X = Y".

Only then will the if portion be evaluated. Since X now equals Y, your if statement will always be true.

You don't want either of those, so a new operator had to be invented. The comparison operator.

if ( X == Y ) then...

"==" is a comparison operator, not an assignment operator, so the compiler or parser never has to see "X = Y" and perform an assignment. The if statement will only evaluate to true if Y actually equals X.

Hope that helps. Again, Ruff, thanks for this assortment of working mods. My apologies for my first comment in the poll. I didn't know this is why you wanted to know the turn 1 or 0 consensus.

I'm off to try this out.

 

[GreyFox]

Yeah, good job, ruff. And Bede's patch was great too!

I especially like the fact that I can turn off some mods in the modpack. One reason why I tried and then abondon Alerium's modpack is because I never liked some of the mods included (and I am too lazy to dig through the python codes myself), such as the foreign advisor etc ...



--

<off-topic> I can't resist picking on rex ...

Since X now equals Y, your if statement will always be true.

Not always ... Y could be 0.

</off-topic>

 

[Kikinit]

Um.. not to throw a dampener on the party or anything, but I tried the latest HOF mod which includes a number of the same things as ruff's pack and it worked flawlessly. The autologger is working fine and you get the options in game from the option screen. And this mod will probably be necessary for future GOTM's from what I see. May be reading too much into that though.

What I would like to see is ruff's mods to the autologger bought into the HOF mod.

 

[ruff_hi]

I had included some changes to the original autologger but that stopped working with v1.61. I also really liked the *.ini aspect of the HOF mod. So, I started with the HOF mod as my basis and worked from there. I was thinking of leaving in the option screen but that was a little hard. I have also been adding stuff and it would mean updating the option screen too much. I'm thnking that I might put the 'turn on/off' part in the option screen and all the other options in the ini file.

 

[Bede]

@Ruff, can you point me to the places in the python code for the formatting and auto text portions of the autologger? I would really like to truncate some of the entries, removing the colons for example, and changing the header text.

Also, the new keyboard command for the "reminder" interferes with the activation of "Flying Camera", so I would like to change it back to Alt-R or Alt-some other key, as I occasionally use the Flying Camera to add interest to screen shots, and I miss it. Keyboard string for Flying Camera is Ctrl-Alt-F and with reminder running the application doesn't see the Ctrl for some reason.