mergefile for DefaultStats.xdb

[Sir_Toejam]

Ok, something i notice is that Nival got sloppy when it came to defining how pretty much every skill, ability, neutral stack sizes, bank sizes, costs, and general issue wrt to difficulty level.

all of these things (and many more) are contained in a single file:

DefaultStats.xdb

while some might consider this a good thing, since you don't have to go searching over the entire data.pak file to locate what you are looking for, the problem is that there are so many things contained in this file, that any mod that changes one thing will be overwritten by a later mod that changes something else.

I recall that with Neverwinter Nights, the guys at the PRC (players resource consortium) came up with the idea of creating a little proggy that would "merge" changes made to the same file by different mods.

I am posting this to note that we will quickly need something similar to manage mod changes to this file.

cheers

p.s. this also brings up the point that we need to identify the files that were modified in the readmes for each mod, so others can know if their mods need "merging".

[Sir_Toejam]

On a related note, the elrath mod manager can detect conflicts between different mods that try to change the same values in the same files.

It's thus easy for the end user to see which files need "merging" and they could then do it themselves.

this tool is open source, free and seems to do the job quite nicely:

http://winmerge.org/

I tried it out and it does an excellent job of comparing the data files inside of pak files.

you have to make sure to install the 7zip plugin for it to be able to compare files inside of pak archives.

it would be nice if we could figure out some way to add this kind of merge capability to the mod manager.

[Ravachec]

I actually don't think they got sloppy, because I think DefaultStats.xdb is actually the main mod/update file rather than the orignal stats file.

For example, if you look at the Swift Striker speciality for the ranger, <Waylayer_ATBShift>, the entry doesn't appear in the first two patches. But after the 3rd patch, that entry appears in DefaultStats.xdb as well as in types.xml. If you recall, the Swift Striker ability was nerfed in the 3rd patch from 2%/lvl to .5%/lvl. So the question is, where was the stat controlled from before the patch?

DefaultStats.xdb just have too many "stats" missing to make it the be all and end all file.

[Sir_Toejam]

no - you missed the point.

for every other ability, there is a single file controlling it; defaultstats.xdb IS slop, because they just threw everything in there they didn't feel like creating separate control files for.

sloppy/lazy, take your pick.

[Gaidal Cain]

ST: I thought there were one humungous file that controlled all abilities with prereqs and stuff as well, despite tehre being separate files in addition to it (files that doesn't do anything). Anyway, I agree that there's way to much stuff in defaultstats.

[Sir_Toejam]

I thought there were one humungous file that controlled all abilities with prereqs and stuff as well, despite tehre being separate files in addition to it

are you referring to skills.xdb?

yeah, and Nival realized in the HOF version that there were overlapping files (the "separate" files you mentioned), and eliminated the need to mod both; you only need to mod skills.xdb now.

of course, they should have gone the EXACT OPPOSITE DIRECTION, and eliminated skills.xdb and gone with the separate files for each skill instead.

so, yeah, we are now presented with the same problem in skills.xdb as we are with defaultstats.xdb.

like i said, in the game company I used to work for, this kind of programming decision would have been scrapped at the very start.

still, it does little to help us work around the current issue wrt these files in H5.

any suggestions?

[Gaidal Cain]

Make a small program that allows merging several files with changes into one?

(BTW: I had the impression that the separate files didn't do anything at all even before HoF. I didn't check very carefully though).

[Sir_Toejam]

well, it can be done manually with the program i listed in second post on this thread, but I think ideally merging should be, uh, "merged" into the elrath mod manager.

Unfortunately, I'm beginning to suspect there isn't even enough interest to update the mod manager to be compatible with HOF at all, let alone adding new functionality to it.

it's simply beyond my programming skills to do this myself.

If you happen to know someone who would be interested in adding that kind of functionality, I would certainly be supportive of the effort.

[Ravachec]

You're right. The whole file structure for the data is such a mess. I've done some novice modding for both Rome:TW and GalCiv2 and they're a whole lot more intuitive than HoMMV.

The RefTables directory is particularly strange. It seems like files like spells.xdb and skill.xdb are dublicates of the stuff in the spells and skills directory. There's also RPGstats.xdb which looks completely useless since defaultstats.xdb in the RPGstats directory seems to override it.

And for further annoyance, it seems a lot of spell and skill effects that are not damage related can't be modded at all. Things like ATB effects or movement bonus for things like haste and logistics. Something as simple as changing the amount of luck the Four Leaf Clover gives can't be done as far as I can tell.

[Sir_Toejam]

it seems a lot of spell and skill effects that are not damage related can't be modded at all

yup. It seems pretty random as to which aspects of any given skill or ability are moddable, too.

spells are more consistent, in that so far the only thing that I haven't figured out how to do is change the shape in combat of any given spell.

However, i also can't figure out how to get the game to recognize new spells created from old ones either.

it seems like you should be able to just add new references to the reference tables, but it just don't work that way.

of course, I have yet to see any contributions to the modding community from Nival, so I'm guessing that it will be a while before all the gory details are worked out by modders themselves.

[Ravachec]

a little OT, but was there a discussion on why Nival change the names of spells and races? It's kind of weird seeing all the original names in the .xdb files. I can forsee at some point that someone is going to go in and mod all the names back to what we've been used to in the old HoMM.

[Sir_Toejam]

yes, that sounds familiar. I think there was a bit of discussion on the issue a couple of months back.

can't recall what the consesus was off the top of my head though.

you might try searching the archives.

I can forsee at some point that someone is going to go in and mod all the names back to what we've been used to in the old HoMM.

IIRC, somebody already did that, soon after Homm 5 was released.

I saw the mod over on Elrath.com if I'm not mistaken.