doubleshadow's X3 ModManager

[doubleshadow]

It won't let me unpack the .dat files, infact I have't been able to do anything with the .dat files, any help?

Cheers
~Nightwind

Before I start to explain things - have you read the help? Clicking on the Help in the top menu and selecting the Content...

I agree that "How to open a catalog" is missing from the help but I thought that clicking the big Open button might inspire you

I will tell you how to do things step by step if you want.

[Nightwind]

I think there has been a misunderstanding, after spending an hour looking up the information etc, i think I understand how the .cat and .dat files relate to eachother. And now i realize may question may have been a dumb one...

However your reply wasn't very helpful, as most of it was merely an insinuation that I hadn't even bothered to try, when infact I have spent the last month learning as much about scripting X3 and 3d modeling as I can and have only just begun learning about X3's file structure, unpacking/repacking the various files etc. So I will admit my knowledge of this is limited but I am learning. I understand you must get alot of people who don't even bother to look at the help files but I did, along with aload of other things. And the information explaining the relationship between the .cat and .dat files isn't exactly easy to find... Or atleast it wasn't for me. And information doesn't just get magically implanted in our heads unfortunately.

I think the fact that I said the .dat files and not the .cat files would have been a clue I didn't understand the relationship between them (and yes it is rather obvious now that I know, but then hindsight usually is).

It was just that people kept saying that they had unpacked the .cat and .dat files as if they had unpacked the two sets of files seperatly which was confusing.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, your work is very much appretiated.

[Burianek]

I'll admit to being a bit hasty in assuming people haven't read the material before asking questions as well sometimes.
Hazard of being a moderator I guess.
Try not to take that personally (I know you didn't your post was quite polite and appropriate)
The fact is, it's really hard to organize information on a forum.
For people like me, that have read every single post in every thread, it's easy for me to know which info is out there. But it's even hard for me to find occasionally. There's unfortunately no help for that.
So I'm kind of guilty of telling people to go read the material a lot, since I know it's out there. But unfortunately, even though it may be out there, it's certainly not reasonable to expect someone to read every post in the forum before asking a question
That's why in general, people should try to be extremely logical and organized with how they post things. Post things in the thread that already discusses the topic rather than making a new post called something like 'I have a question about xyz' when the post called 'Everything there is to know about xyz' is two posts down.
I'm kind of rambling here, but I guess what I'm saying is, people feel free to help me moderate. Feel free to tell other people where to post information if they post it in the wrong place. Feel free to tell them to post their questions in the relevant topics. Feel free to pm me if you have a good thread you think should be linked in the tutorials sticky. etc. etc.
Whew, done rambling for the moment.

[doubleshadow]

I think there has been a misunderstanding, after spending an hour looking up the information etc, i think I understand how the .cat and .dat files relate to eachother. And now i realize may question may have been a dumb one...

However your reply wasn't very helpful, as most of it was merely an insinuation that I hadn't even bothered to try

Before I start I have to tell you that when I was reading your post I confused insinuation with insultation. I wrote down a looong post and just before I hit Submit I've noticed that the word is not insultation, so I checked my dictionary to find out what it means... That's a lesson about misunderstanding between different cultures

And now i realize may question may have been a dumb one...

Yes I really thought that it's a dumb question because it was like when someone tell you that he cannot paint in PaintBrush or write in Notepad

However your reply wasn't very helpful, as most of it was merely an insinuation that I hadn't even bothered to try

Yes pheraps it was, but even if I would answered step by step how to open a catalog, it wouldn't help you with your true qustion about relation between cat and dat files.

Your question was "I cannot open catalogs" (that's how I took it) - and I told you. If you found my reply as "not to the point" then you have to blame yourself for not asking correctly. If you wanted to know what's the relationship between cat and dat files, why didn't you asked so?

You are right that I have to reply to a lot of questions. Some of them are dumb, some are not.

I doesn't care too much whether the qustion is dumb or not, what do I care is how complicated is the answer compared to the "skill" of the poster. If the question require a complicated (and thus long) answer, I'm trying to find some less time consuming alternatives. Of course that in this case I asked you wheter you checked the manual. Call on Microsoft help line (for a fee I'll bet) and try to ask "I don't see anythiing on my monitor". The first thing they will ask you (after verifying that you have legal Windows of course...) will be if your computer is plugged into power. Finding that inapropriate? Pheraps, but that's how it works.

Some questions are not stupid at all but they are complicated to answer. You can hardly explain to someone how to add a gun to a ship in a simple answer. Mainly if I know that he is a newbie. Although I will tell him the necessary steps, it will probably not help him much, as you must have knowledge of various aspects of modding to be able to do that. I can hardly teach everyone all these things and yet have some time for my own work.

As Burianek said, it is all matter of organizing the informations. We need more tutorials about basic modding tasks. I tried to write one of them (how to unpack your game with x3mm). I will also try to write some others but I'm not the only guy here who "knows the stuff". If you think you know something, then write it down and let Burianek know so he can add it to the stickies. Then we can redirect the people to there instead to still write the same again.

EDIT:
I realized that you maybe still don't know the real relation between the cat and dat files, so I will tell you

The cat file is an index file. It only contains names of files and their size. Nothing more. That's why the cat's are so small.

The dat file is where all the data are stored. Data of all the "files" stored in the catalog are stored sequentioally one after another.

So you need both files to access the data but the cat is the "master". That's why everybody is always using terms "catalog" or "cat file", but rarely "dat file".

That's it.

[Nightwind]

I thought that was the relationship between the .cat and .dat files... But confirmation is also helpful, thank you.

[-XTM-]

DS>

In your modding doc it says Ctrl + M should open up a filelist dialogue in Servent Salamander, is this stil valid for the latest version?

Whatever I try, I just can't get that screen to open

EDIT; Nevermind, I REALY should learn to check what version I'm using before writing down these kind of questions.

[DanishEagle]

I get an error message when trying to start the X3MM. It says:

Error staring program: ():
File not found: x3mmext.dll

The menntioned dll file is in the same location as X3MM is installed. Another thing that may or may not be worth mentioning is that the text in titlebar of the errormessage is: X2ModManager

Is this a problem that is solvable, or has my system just decidet to act strange for no reason at all?

[NZ-Wanderer]

Was looking into combining 3 mods and was reading up on how to try to do it and came across your post, so since you look like you know a lot I thought I would ask if you could maybe give me some idea on what order to unpack the mods I use...

I want to try to combine:
M6 Upgrade Mod (with cockpits) by Mehrunes
less asteroids/less enemy Mod by BlackRain
Deadly Ship&Station Mod w/Scripts by RS

I have a feeling I going to get a conflict between the M6 and Deadly mods, but until I try to combine them I not gonna know
Up until now I been renaming the mods to 06.cat/dat, 07.cat/dat, but have been advised this isn't the right way to do it, so thought I would have a go and see if I can maybe combine things..

So to make it you must unpack in this order:
Capital Rebalance, then Cockpit Callback, then Minimal HUD.
Once you unpacked them into the same directory, just pack the folders into one mod and it *should* work...

[DeadlyDa]

I want to try to combine:
M6 Upgrade Mod (with cockpits) by Mehrunes ...

Unfortunately, this one is going to cause you some serious problems,

There is a conflict with TShips, TCockpits., Dummies, and Components.

It can be done, but I wouldn't advise it. Even if you managed to merge each of the files correctly, the first time there is an update with more new ships...you're back to square one.

[NZ-Wanderer]

Thanks for the reply

Pity I just can't edit the Nemesis in the deadly mod to give me the guns and shields that are in the M6 mod..

[DeadlyDa]

Pity I just can't edit the Nemesis in the deadly mod to give me the guns and shields that are in the M6 mod...

Once the basic ship & station mod is out and stable, and assuming that Egosoft hasn't already addressed the issue in the next patch, I will look at re balancing the ships,,,which would entail docking on M6 & M2, shields, weapons...etc.

In the X2 world, I used Mauzi!'s re balancing specifications. He took a fairly scientific approach to it, with lots of formulas and spreadsheets, rather than just cranking up the odd value...and it was an awesome enhancement to X2.

If I do undertake this sort of effort in the future, I seriously doubt I will put that kind of effort into it...but I would at least attempt to apply some rules and structure to keep things rational.

[Trevelvis]

Was wanting to use BlackRain Rebalance with Galaxy613 Capital Rebalance but it comes up with a conflict in types\Tships.pct. Will this cause problems as dont know much about Mods ETc as its all new to me.

[vorius]

I get an error message when trying to start the X3MM. It says:

Error staring program: ():
File not found: x3mmext.dll

The menntioned dll file is in the same location as X3MM is installed. Another thing that may or may not be worth mentioning is that the text in titlebar of the errormessage is: X2ModManager

Is this a problem that is solvable, or has my system just decidet to act strange for no reason at all?

I'm having the same problem...

Windows XP Pro ... had the installer automatically download & install any required libraries

[doubleshadow]

I get an error message when trying to start the X3MM. It says:

Error staring program: ():
File not found: x3mmext.dll

The menntioned dll file is in the same location as X3MM is installed. Another thing that may or may not be worth mentioning is that the text in titlebar of the errormessage is: X2ModManager

Is this a problem that is solvable, or has my system just decidet to act strange for no reason at all?

I'm having the same problem...

Windows XP Pro ... had the installer automatically download & install any required libraries

Just download the C runtime and zlib1 library installation from here and select "System directory" when asked where to install. Yes, the installer "should" install it automatically but apparently it doesn't do it always...

The wrong caption is just leftover from X2MM

[doubleshadow]

New version. Check the 1st post.

Fixed possible bug while extracting files.

[D3m0n14k]

(First Post !)
Hi there ! I've installed the Mod Manager (and the associated VB and C runtimes). When I drag my modified TShips.txt file into the new MOD that I've created, it displays types\TShips.pck 21.0kb in the gui, but when I look at the file (the mod.cat file in the mods directory it only has a 1k filesize. When i try to edit the file in the X3 Editor it then states "Error loading file. File is empty"

Am i doing anything obviously wrong ? I this something that you have heard of before ? I'm running XP Pro.

Cheers

[doubleshadow]

(First Post !)
Hi there ! I've installed the Mod Manager (and the associated VB and C runtimes). When I drag my modified TShips.txt file into the new MOD that I've created, it displays types\TShips.pck 21.0kb in the gui, but when I look at the file (the mod.cat file in the mods directory it only has a 1k filesize. When i try to edit the file in the X3 Editor it then states "Error loading file. File is empty"

Am i doing anything obviously wrong ? I this something that you have heard of before ? I'm running XP Pro.

Cheers

Sorry for the problems. The 0.0.4 "bug fix" in fact caused even more serious problems

EVERYONE: Grab the version (0.0.5) - this should fix it all (works with either 0.0.3 or 0.0.4)

Sorry

[D3m0n14k]

Excellent, downloaded the latest patch and we're all systems GO ! )

Thanks

[Officer Dibble]

Hi all.
This is my very first post so go easy on me.
Just installed Doubleshadow's X3 Mod Manager version 0.0.3 installed the runtime files and updated it with the "mod manager patch_0.3-0.4 to 0.5"
When i come to run X3 MM it throws up a error box saying

Error starting program:():
File not found:x3mmext.dll

now i really want this to work as i've been using MOXY's excellent M7 MOD
but i want to merge it with the "minimal Hud Mod". I know this can be done with no conflict issues as my Bro has done it for his game with no resulting problems.

[doubleshadow]

Although you are saying that you've "installed the runtimes", you probably didn't installed the "C runtime and zlib1 library installation". It's located at the download page as well. Or maybe you've put it to wrong place. You have to install the libraries either to the same dir there X3MM is, or to your system directory.