Editing entity files

Converted or not, they're still .entity files. The difference is that it's in a text format that can be read by notepad when converted. You should be able to convert them back, but you can play with the text versions being loaded instead of the binary versions.

How do I do that? Just remove the original ones and put these in?

What original ones? You shouldn't really be modifying the GameInfo files in the install path, that's what the Mods folder is for in your user path. Just extract all the text GameInfo stuff from the mod pack into a mod folder, and use that

As an aside, ConvertData doesn't actually do binary > text, it only does text > binary.

BlackRainZ,

You could, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Instead, take any files you changed and put them into their own folders in the mod directory. (If you changed a file from the GameInfo, it should be in a GameInfo folder under the mod folder.)

Download a mod or two and have a look at their structure.
Mods go:

Okay, I got it, thanks. Now my question is, how do I make the gravity well larger? What values do I change? Is it in the gameplay file in gameinfo?

I'm not exactly sure. Gameplay.constants has these 3 lines:

OrbitBodyData
MinStarToPlanetGravityDistance 270000.0
MinInterPlanetGravityDistance 50000.0
MaxInterPlanetGravityDistance 100000.0

Which might be the size of the gravity wells, but on the other hand the outer ring isn't 2x the inner one. There's nothing in each planet type's entity files that defines their grav well size either. It might be hardcoded, but you can try messing with those values to see if it does anything.

Another thing you can do, however, if give every planet type a required bonus that modifies the grav well size. You might remember there are bonuses for +/- 33%. What you could do is make your own planet bonus, and then make it required for all planet types.

For example, PlanetBonusHighGravity gives +33% to grav well size:

floatBonus:GravityWellRadiusPerc 0.330000

You can make your own that gives it 100% (say, PlanetBonusDoubleGravity):

floatBonus:GravityWellRadiusPerc 1.000000

Then, you can make it required on all planet types. By default, you'll see this for each planet:

requiredPlanetBonusesCount 0

which you can change to:

requiredPlanetBonusesCount 1
bonus "PlanetBonusDoubleGravity" (using the same file name you created),

and every instance of that planet will always have that bonus.

I understand, I have to go to each individual planet file and edit it then? I see. Thanks a lot.

Basically, yeah. You'd create a new PlanetBonus file (copy one of the existing grav well size modifiers and just change the value to whatever you want), and then make that a required bonus for each planet type. If you want, you can make a planet bonus for specific to each planet type (like, gas giants would have much larger grav wells than asteroids), and attach each unique bonus to the intended planet type

I know SOGE (The Star Wars mod) has absolutely massive grav wells. Don't know exactly what was changed, and I can't look it up at the moment.

Looking as SOGE's files, it appears that these lines in the planet .entity file control the grav well and overall movement area size:

moveAreaRadius
hyperspaceExitRadius

Yeah I tried doing as the other person said as a bonus but that didn't work. I made the bonus entity and the planet in game says it has the bonus but it doesnt change the size of the grav well at all. I will try what you said Kitkun

Another question, are the jumpblockers hardcoded for their range? I wanted to make the range higher for jumpblockers

Ooh, I must've missed those lines in the planet entities, oops

The bonus should still work, but instead of modifying the physical appearance it should modify the density. Kind of like how the stars' grav wells take a lot longer to fly through even though they aren't much bigger physically.



You can do that.. just open the entity for the phase inhibitor and it will list which ability it uses. Then find that ability entity and it will have a range value in it

Yeah I was able to change that as well. I had another question. In game, I use the map editor to create a new map and the bars on the bottom which mention stuff like Orbit Radius, Phase lane length, Phase lane chance, Min distance, max distance. What do they all mean and which way is higher? Towards red or towards green?

Also how can I edit the map I am making to have only 1 or 2 players start in a given star system?

From left to right is increasing

Most of that stuff basically determines how the map is laid out. I haven't messed with it for a long time, but from memory:

Phase lane chance : how many phase lanes are on the map. The higher the slider, the more phase lane connections.

Phase lane length : how long it takes to fly the lanes.

Min/max distance : I think that's how much the planets are spread out?

Orbit radius : Not sure on this one, probably how spread out planets are from the star?

You can preview all the maps you make there before you play them, so you can mess around with the sliders to confirm/figure out what they do.

How about making it so only 1 or 2 players can start in one star?

You know that # of players box on the ingame generator? I'm pretty sure that's per star. So you can just add a few stars and set each one to 2 players, or something.

Ah, I see. I didn't know that. Let me ask you one more thing then. When I make my own map, it takes forever to travel to another planet. I put the phase lane down and all of the other things down to the lowest and it still takes forever. For instance, right now I have a ship traveling from my planet to the star my planet is orbiting and it has already been traveling for 10 minutes and it is only halfway there. 20 minutes to travel to my own star? that seems extreme. When I play one of the default maps, it isn't like that at all.

nevermind, I figured out why it was doing that, it is because I was setting players to 10. I thought that meant max players but it was players per star so I guess it was creating such large distances between worlds.

I heard that if the entity files are in text code it loads faster, or is it the other way around?

First of all, Necro.

Its the other way. Binary loads faster but its mostly illegible so you can't make changes. Text is what you actually mod, and while the game will run with it in that form, its more efficient to convert it back to Binary once you are finished modding that file.

I was about to answer questions here but now I see this is an epic gravedig. =|