Frustration.

[Thephedora]

I've recently purchased Xcom and happily played a good portion of it. Happy slaying aliens and launching satelites.

 

TLDR? Go to the bottom.

 

But due to my nature, as is most of the nature of modders, I have to know, what makes this game tick.

So I started messing around with .ini files, downloading mods, installing them and watching there effects.

However there's still quite a bit that puzzles me.

 

First will start with who made the game, 2K and Firaxis. (or 2K being the publisher, and Firaxis the dev, which ever order it is.)

These are the same people that usually make very moddable games. An example being another turn based strategy Civilization.

In Civilization, We were given a world editor in Civ 4 which could be used to change the land scape, give/take away Resources, units, buildings, culture and the like.

In Civ 5 we were given the Lua and Fire tuner very close to release. Which was great. It seemed the 2k and firaxis Weren't out to milk DLCs. They still have them which are actually rather nice bonuses to a original game, but from a few weeks into release we were given modding tools to create dozens of maps and mods, visable through the steam workshop at the moment. Everything from a LOTR style map to a Game of thrones map, even new religions, cultures, and everything else added into the game through the users.

 

Point being Civ 5 was moddable before and after the tools were given to use, a bit harder, but moddable. Which brings us back to Xcom.

 

I've stumbled along for the past 3 days tweaking .ini file settings (to have no effect), installing mods (to some effect but not quite what I was thinking of), and scouring the internet for a community that could give me the answers as to what I'm doing wrong.

 

Now I'm sure you'll agree this is probably THE community for modding and troubleshooting modding and nearly anything else that has anything to do with modding a game.

I'm also sure you'll agree that the forums here are quite... Large, and scouring the topics to answer how to make .ini s take effect while it's very early in this particular games modding life is rather... time consumeing, and may or may not result in finding the answer.

 

So what I'm asking is two fold. First if at all possible to index what this modding community has found out on modding this game, possibly either in a sticky post which I would be glad to create, or a central 'sharing' center.

AND

How in the world do you get those blasted .ini settings to hold so I can play the game the way I would like to.

TLDR? : step by step how do you make the ini settings take effect and keep said effect, AND is there anywhere that has a knowledge base of what we already know about the game? If not, can we make one?

 

EDIT: I know about The XCOM:EU DefaultGameCore.ini settings page and the stickies at the top of the mod talk forum.

Edited October 28, 2012 by Thephedora

[tbkiah]

You need to use the resource hacker, or the modpatcher to modify the XcomGame.EXE or else the ini stuff won't have any effect. Also if you make any changes to the Armor, or character, or weapons. you need to deal with the INI file that clears all those arrays and resets all them to default when you run the game with steam in online mode.

[PepprmintButler]

Short answer is

1. Use Resource Hacker to make your changes in the cooked ini or use modpatcher, if you're not doing that already

2. Put Steam in offline mode or your changes will be overwritten automatically (that's a new development)

 

I'm all for a central sticky or wiki page that indexes all sucessful modifications done by the community. They are starting to add up to the point that I, even after following this forum since the game release, start to have trouble following it all. I can imagine how it would be hard to get into for newcomers.

[Daemonjax]

The rest of the modding is done via hexeditor.

 

Or just wait till we finish the Mod Manager program.

[Thephedora]

The rest of the modding is done via hexeditor.

 

Or just wait till we finish the Mod Manager program.

 

About when in the ball park do you think the mod manager might be finished?

[dose206]

We're looking at a beta tonight or tomorrow