Vectorial1024
commented
4 years ago Hmm, to be honest, I started modding X Rebirth with a bit of programming experience, but on top of that, I basically crawled the source files by myself to see if I can get anything interesting... (rip me... lol) this is definitely not healthy, but I think there are automation for writing scripts for easier lookup, e.g. code hinting. Perhaps you could ask the Mules for how to set up the MD/aiscript editor, I feel like they know how to do that.
And, quite some documentation are only available for X Rebirth modding but actually applies to both X Rebirth and X4, so you may want to go search for X Rebirth tutorials sometime and learn a thing or two. For example:
- Tutorial of the XML Patcher for XR and X4: https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=354310
Learning how the XML Patcher works is very important, because it allows you to really modify how some parts of the game works.
And speaking of the Patcher, having a copy of X4 source files is gonna help a lot. Just when I was thinking where I found the info on extracting the source files, I found this: https://github.com/enenra/x4modding/wiki/cat-and-dat-files . Wonderful resource, it tells you how to extract the cat/dat files of X4.
Having a copy of X4 at some handy location (I bookmark the location of the extracted source files), I can look them up, and think about how I may want to modify them using the patch operations.
It's good to know the categorization of scripts.
- AI-Script: how ships behave: e.g., how should ships with AutoTrade find and execute trades, how should ships fight, etc
- MD Script: how everything else behaves, ranging from setting up the correct global variables at game startup, to spawning more black market traders, NPC interaction dialogues, etc etc
There can be a lot of things attached... e.g., UI modding, the obscure and not-so-known part of the game. I only got my hands on UI modding when making this mod, so I can't say I am experienced there.
And stuff and stuff... the scope can be large, maybe pick something interesting and specialize on that at the moment...
FormBurden
Hey again, great work on squashing all these bugs alongside the Mules team. A few things I want to ask since I want to start contributing and/or create my own Mod soon. Where can I find references to learn everything I need to for X4? Because I know on the forums they have: https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=402382 But unless I'm blind from all those links I can't find what certain line-items even mean.
Essentially what I'm saying is what are your resources that you know of when you started coding X4 or just what you use on a daily. Would love to see it so I can start reading it and experimenting myself. I've got a very basic understanding of code such as variables, etc. And even the Devs of the game state you don't need to be a coder, yet I can't find any information on what certain lines of code even do. Haha.
Anyway, thanks for your time, I'll continue finding bugs/features and such for you to make your job easier, and when I get enough info in this dumb brain of mine, contribute.