[Discussion] Generic X3TC S&M questions III

zanex09 · Post by **zanex09** » Mon, 4. Aug 14, 05:24

well that kinda sucks, only like steam for about a year when it came out. i have origin but thats only for battlefield and if i could i would get rid of it. i think i will look into this non steam exe and see how i like it.

last question, is x3 tc/ap the type of game where you can install and update it then just copy the folder onto a hard drive and play from there or does x3 have to be installed? im just wondering if im going to have to keep logging into steam to install tc/ap when i do or back up the installs or game folder and use them without steam

jack775544 · Post by **jack775544** » Mon, 4. Aug 14, 06:17

X3AP is an addon to X3TC and is installed inside your X3TC folder (in the addon directory), so you have to download both even if you just want to play AP.
Once you have both games downloaded you can copy the installation out of the steam directory and paste it where you like.
Then download the latest patch for X3TC from here and install it into your copied game location. This patch will remove the steam dependency from that installation of X3TC.
Then download the X3AP no-steam exe from here and extract it to your X3TC directory (where X3AP.exe is located).
Check to make sure it runs and you should be finished.
You can now uninstall steam if you so desire (or get wooed over some ridiculous sale that is on and keep it

)

zanex09 · Post by **zanex09** » Mon, 4. Aug 14, 06:59

Awesome thank you very much gentlemen

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Mon, 4. Aug 14, 07:52

Once you have TC and/or AP, there are Egosoft Bonus Packs for each. Due to the advances of time, some of the scripts they contain have been subsequently updated and you can find those updated versions in my signature (as well as the Universe Trader fix). Enjoy!

boran_blok · Post by **boran_blok** » Sun, 17. Aug 14, 16:00

Is there a method to get the script callstack from a subscript?

I am extending a library a bit, and I'd like to include debug info about the caller.

Post by **X2-Illuminatus** » Thu, 21. Aug 14, 11:29

From a subscript you cannot find out the caller script. This is unless, the caller script itself provides information you can check for. What you can do though is checking, whether a script is on a stack of a certain task and if a certain task is in use at all. See the General Commands -> Script calls section for reference.

BlackArchon · Post by **BlackArchon** » Tue, 26. Aug 14, 20:33

How can I extract the modified game files from a .spk file?

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Tue, 26. Aug 14, 20:55

A fiddly (only?) way is via one of the Plugin Manager.

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=265915

After installing it, one of the shortcuts it creates is for a tool that lets you unpack them into an archive that .RAR can open for you.

Sorry I can't be more specific - I cannot remember the exact steps off the top of my head.

BlackArchon · Post by **BlackArchon** » Tue, 26. Aug 14, 22:36

Thanks for the hint, I found the SPK Explorer 1.20 within the Plugin Manager. But if I open the .spk file (from here, Pirate Starts V1.3), I get a readme and 23.cat and 23.dat. The author said in his thread that he only changed the gamestarts.xml and starts.xml files - so my question is: How can I view these both XML files when I only have the .cat and .dat files?

There is also a .zip version which contains the mentioned readme, .cat and .dat file. But I want to view the XML files which the author claims to have modified. There must be a way, am I correct?

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Tue, 26. Aug 14, 23:16

Nice one and thank you.

I have zero experience with extracting dat/cat stuff. After a quick google, X3 Editor 2 might help but I'm not sure. Good luck.

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=244283

jack775544 · Post by **jack775544** » Wed, 27. Aug 14, 01:06

Use the X3 Editor 2 that Sparky linked above to extract the files from the cat/dat folder.

You will see that there are two files in a certain file structure
addon/director/start.xml
addon/types/gamestart.xml

This folder structure is important, so make sure you remember where the files are placed.

A start mod such as this one always edits gamestarts.xml and start.xml.

gamestarts.xml is the location where the game gets the lists of starts for the main menu, and it tells the game what ship and sector to start you in. You can see this for each entry.

start.xml is the folder which tells the game what to do after the game starts. This includes credits, reputation, weapons for your ship and any other ship that you own. This file is just MD code so anything that you can do in MD can be done here.

BlackArchon · Post by **BlackArchon** » Wed, 27. Aug 14, 23:06

I just tried to open the .cat file (from the ZIP version) with the X3 Editor 2. There is an addon directory within, and then a "director" and a "types" folder. However, the first one contains only a "start.pck" and the second one only a "gamestarts.pck". If I open these files, the X3 Editor shows only an empty page, here is a screenshot: https://imgur.com/DFYT0gw

So what's the problem here?

jack775544 · Post by **jack775544** » Thu, 28. Aug 14, 02:09

Drag and drop the .pck files out of the cat file using the x3 editor 2 and onto your desktop/other folder.
This will convert them to xml files which you can edit using a text editor.

A pck file is a compressed txt or xml file. In this case they are both xml files.

When you want to test the files in your game you can make a new fake patch with the same folder structure inside of it or you can make a director and types folder in your addon directory and simply drop them there.

Joelnh · Post by **Joelnh** » Tue, 2. Sep 14, 11:08

I have noticed that some xml files even when extracted from a pck file are not text files. could they still be in pck format ?

jack775544 · Post by **jack775544** » Tue, 2. Sep 14, 12:24

As far as I know, all extracted pck files are either in the xml or txt format. Then again, I could be missing something.

What is the file that didn't get converted?

Joelnh · Post by **Joelnh** » Tue, 2. Sep 14, 19:32

jack775544 wrote:As far as I know, all extracted pck files are either in the xml or txt format. Then again, I could be missing something.

What is the file that didn't get converted?

I just checked and it was an XML extracted from a spk file that is not text format. Not a pck file, sorry for confusion.
Any idea how to view that?
The xmls are from the cheat package, I was curious what it looked liked.

Joubarbe · Post by **Joubarbe** » Tue, 2. Sep 14, 20:26

Click right on the file, extract. Or use the plugin manager to do it.

By the way, the Plugin Manager is incompatible with LU.

jack775544 · Post by **jack775544** » Wed, 3. Sep 14, 01:07

Joelnh wrote:
jack775544 wrote:As far as I know, all extracted pck files are either in the xml or txt format. Then again, I could be missing something.

What is the file that didn't get converted?
I just checked and it was an XML extracted from a spk file that is not text format. Not a pck file, sorry for confusion.
Any idea how to view that?
The xmls are from the cheat package, I was curious what it looked liked.

Use the package explorer (included with plugin manager) to extract the files from the spk file.
If you are trying to edit a script, use X-Studio, since the raw xml isn't meant to be edited by hand.

Joelnh · Post by **Joelnh** » Wed, 3. Sep 14, 01:18

They are already extracted from the spk. And I am not using plugin manager with LU. I am checking out scripts that I am not using. I have about 6 x3 directories. Xtc, xrm, LU, vanillas, etc

jack775544 · Post by **jack775544** » Wed, 3. Sep 14, 14:08

Small question
What is the difference between

Code: Select all

do if $Value == [TRUE]
    * command

and

Code: Select all

if $Value == [TRUE]
    * Command
end

Because they look the same to me.

@ Joelnh
I have no idea then