Default--ini editing or XCom--ini editing?

[LoneHP]

After poking around the default-titled ini files in the config directory, a stray click led me to find the XCom ini's under the Mydocs/mygames/XComEW directory that seems to work for edits.

 

Thing is, has anyone gone down this path for ini modding the game in general instead of editing the EXE to force-load the loose default files?

Edited December 7, 2013 by LoneHP

[Drakous79]

Problem is, that XCom ini files in MyDocs may be (and I think will be) overwritten by merged version of DLC inis and Default inis.

 

Also not all Default inis require modified executable, like DefaultInput.ini.

 

But in a case the executable is modified to load Default inis, XComGameCore.ini will be overwritten, if DefaultGameCore.ini is changed. Such behavior has huge impact on reliability and compatibility of mods.

 

Also here is some info Amineri posted:

Next -- the relationship between the /XEW/XComGame/Config/ files and the /My Games/XCom - Enemy Within/XComGame/Config/ files.

 

The files in the root XCom folder (XEW) are the "master" copies. These files all begin with "Default" (e.g. DefaultGameCore.ini, DefaultGameData.ini).

 

Whenever the game is launched, near the very beginning of execution it performs merge operations, creating copies of the config files in the /My Games/.../Config/ folder. These files all being with "XCom" (e.g. XComGameCore.ini, XComGameData.ini).

 

For the present state of Enemy Within these are simply copies (but with all comments stripped out).

 

However, once DLC for Enemy Within is released, these My Games versions will be merged versions of the base game + DLC config files.

 

These files are reconstructed (or are supposed to be) every time the game launches so altering the versions in My Games should be ineffective.

 

In EU there was a bug with some of the localization files in which the My Games merged version wasn't being properly overwritten.

 

There was also a bug in EU in which the XComEngine.ini config file was being improperly merged causing the file to load an additional copy of some DLC art assets every time the game was launched. This would lead to very long "dropship loading screen" times.

 

If you want to be safe, go with Default inis, but feel free to explore whatever you like :)

Edited December 7, 2013 by Drakous79

[Amineri]

To elaborate ...

 

There are three .ini config files that are stored in the XComGame.exe or XComEW.exe executable (at least on Windows platforms) :

• DefaultGameCore.ini @ RCData / 1020
• DefaultMPGame.ini @ RCData / 1030
• DefaultLoadouts.ini @RCData / 1040

All other .ini config files, and all .int localization files, are read from disk.

 

However it isn't safe to write to the game folder (i.e. the OS typically won't allow writing to Program Files), so to support DLC, merged copies of various config files are instead written to the My Games folder. During the merge process the files are renamed from Default______.* to XCom______.*

 

The game should be recreating these XCOM____.* files from the Default_____.* versions every time the game is launched. (But bugs happen...)

 

It is possible to force the three files in the Resource Cache to load from file. However for MP there's no reason as the game does checksums upon getting online anyhow. There may be some merit in getting DefaultLoadouts.ini to load, but so far I haven't messed with it.