so the all inclusive .xml is gone?

[PrideGroupIsEvil]

it seems that the base game data tables are no longer one file, but many. what does this mean for mod creaters?

[Lin]

It means less searching and a much easier job. ;)

[PrideGroupIsEvil]

Originally posted by Lin:

It means less searching and a much easier job. ;)

but essentially it changes nothing other than having to put a few extra files in the 0 folder?

what if i still use one file, does it cause any bugs?

[PrideGroupIsEvil]

do i have to do the same with the new content folder?

[Lin]

Don't think you have to change anything, all old mods are still supported. This[bluebottlegames.com] may help explain things a bit.

[Kaaven]

As Lin mentioned, there is nothing changed in the structure itself, and the game continues to load the old, complete, .xml anyway, so there is no need to change an older mod if one does not want to.

Originally posted by Lin:

It means less searching and a much easier job.

I would not say so myself ;) For me, it made it for the worse - before I had to have 3-4 file tabs opened in order to move around freely (admitting with a lot of scrolling involved). Now it's more like 10-12 and it really makes everything harder...

[PrideGroupIsEvil]

Originally posted by Kaaven:

I would not say so myself ;) For me, it made it for the worse - before I had to have 3-4 file tabs opened in order to move around freely (admitting with a lot of scrolling involved). Now it's more like 10-12 and it really makes everything harder...

my thoughts exactly

[Lin]

Hm. Goes to tell you not to make assumptions about things you aren't intimately familiar with. So, out of curiosity, any benefits to the split files?

[PrideGroupIsEvil]

Originally posted by Lin:

Hm. Goes to tell you not to make assumptions about things you aren't intimately familiar with. So, out of curiosity, any benefits to the split files?

i imagine it's both good and bad. the good is that you can find the section you want and then find something within that section without the rest of the stuff getting in the way of the search feature...the bad however...the bad is that more tabs open at once can be a problem and provides more chances for you to get turned around. this might be avoidable if you only open them when you need them and close them as you finish. with notepad++ searching multiple when you don't know what your looking for shouldn't be a problem because it's pretty good with that. so the Tab this is the only downside, but not to be underestimated. say you for some reason have multiple mods open, and you don't realize it yet but the mod your editing isn't the mod you wanted to edit. if you start your modding session with that in mind and prepared to open and close them as needed it might not be a problem.

[Kaaven]

It really depends - for a new guy, who only wants to make minor changes, and does not know the file structure or the Notepad well enough, the split files might make things easier, a little bit.

If someone if proficient enough with using the search function, and already knows where things are, it is completely unnecessary.

Plus, if the changes made are big and across multiple data files, it actually becomes a hindrance, since you cannot simple search across one file, and have to tab-jump.

For example, to mod new encounters one had to have 3 tabs open before - the "zero" overwrite mod, vanilla xml and the new mod xml. Now its more like 12: new, vanilla and overwrite file for encounters, conditions, items and treasuretables each. And that only if you're not doing anything fancy, like adding new graphics.

[Lin]

I see. I find this interesting, so I appreciate the answers, thanks. To play the devil's attorney, I may not be exactly new, but it still made everything much more readable for someone like me who basically only wants to occasionally dip a toe in to check something or make a quick raw edit here and there. So I'm extrapolating that it may be easier to entice someone to try out modding, because of how easy it all looks now. The fact that it can make the life of serious modders more complicated is really unfortunate though, and it might be worth some rethinking, at least for future reference.

[Daniel@BlueBottleGames]

Lin pointed me here, and I admit, I didn't consider this perspective. As someone who typically only works on the base game data, I rarely have more than 5-6 tabs open at once (and all are the same "mod"). Though, I tend to edit mySQL in browser tabs rather than XML, but the behavior is the same.

On the other hand, I regularly have 10-20 .AS files open at once in FlashDevelop while coding the game, and this makes me think the issue you guys are describing may be a workflow issue more than a file format issue.

There usually comes a point in coding when navigating by tabs is not sufficient anymore. Even if you can remember where they are in the row across the top, often times they're "beyond the fold," meaning one has to click the "..." to see the complete list of open tabs in the editor.

At this point, I usually switch to navigating project files in the IDE's project view. This shows a mini-window on the side that has a collapsible hierarchy of all project files (like Windows Exlporer would), and I just find the folder/file I need to switch to and double-click it.

E.g.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12341211/flashdevelop-haxe-import-createjs

This isn't to say that FlashDevelop is a better tool, but rather that it is designed to deal with a problem like what you describe. Perhaps N++ has a similar feature?

Of course, one need not use the split XML files if they don't want to. The monolithic XML can still work (and the game will try loading it first before trying split files). But for newbies, I think the split XML is way less daunting.