Decifering MTW Troopstats

[Khan7]

Well, having looked over the Unit info file for the demo.. I can say the following things:

(1) There is a whole lot of CRAP starting out the file. It provides info on the various unit stats, but it's pretty much all out of order.. to use it we'll first have to put it together like a jigsaw puzzle.

I don't know why it is this way.. if it's intentional, or the programmer working on it was just hopped up on something, or maybe very tired. Or maybe they were inspired by the lyrics page printed with with Nirvana albums..

(2) After it says "DATA START" unit data actually starts. It seems that they have combined what would have been many, many files in STW into this one gigantic thing. Each row is info for a given unit, and it drabbles on and on with all of the NEW stuff for MTW, as well as a whole bunch of factional/religious/blahblahblah info, and then near the tail end it has the regular 'ol TroopStats info. The TroopStats info appears to be declared like so: "CHARGE_BONUS(1)".. as a matter of fact many of the things appear to be declared in this way, so one must beg the question whether the order really matters or it's just a matter of declaring a stat and giving a value.

Anyway, I may eventually decifer and organize some of this, if I come up with anything I will post it here, you other guys may want to work on it too (I know Krae is already).

Of course, the BIG question is whether or not the file structure will remain more or less the same or if it will change with the final version. Given past history, and the fact that there are already portions of this file that are no longer used, it seems almost certain they will leave the file structure unchanged, which is good.

Matt

[Kraellin]

i already read your 2nd post on this and i think you've already seen the solutions for this, but one other way you could do is, open that main stat file in wordpad. first edit out all the white space at the end of the file. then take the info section at the beginning and make one file containing only this. edit out any text you want to remove and save it under a new name. this would organize it the way you could read it best. then take the actual unit stats portion and do the same. you could even make one file for every unit if you wanted to.

now, all those new files arent going to usable in the game, but, they might let you read the data a little easier and allow you to print out only that stuff you really wanted to use at the moment.

me, i just printed out the whole bloody file....46 tightly packed pages, but it's easier for me to read a hard copy than on a computer.

the best solution appears to be the excel solution though. load up excel, change the file extension of the stat file and load it into excel. tweaking numbers in a spreadsheet is much easier. save the file again, change the extension back and swap it out with the current version. pretty simple.

btw, i told you you'd drool ;)

K.


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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

[Khan7]

Yeah, the Excel solution sounds dandy. But we bought this fuffy POS Aptiva 3 years ago (and got suckered into 3 years of CompuShit Internet service, too!), and it has NO Microsoft things, only Lotus.

Matt

[Kraellin]

ummm, no comment ;)

K.


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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

[Fast Death]

Matt, dude !, what were you thinking! Sorry. I usally tell friends, who are thinking of buying a computer, to spend half as much and to buy new every two years.

I can relate, my first purchase was a nightmare.

[Gothmog]

Guess what? My 3 year old computer is still kicking some major arse.

Of course right now, I am thinking about updating it, but even brand new computer components are so cheap nowdays. A 256MB RAM only costs you 20-30 dollars, 20GB is just 80 dollars, internal CD burner about 40 bucks, Ethernet card 4 bucks ... so to make the long story short, for a total of circa 150 dollars, you end up with a beefed up system that can last another two to three years. After that, one can buy a new PC, but all the old components can be easily transfered.


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Pain is weakness leaving the body.
http://members.fortunecity.com/argus1000eyes/fighter.gif

[Fast Death]

Goth,

For "tech-heads", yes... I agree.... but remember, most people don't have the time or the desire. Kinda like cars and mechanics.

"I don't know, I just know were to put the gas."

My system is around three years old, but I am constantly adding more to it. So yes, if you have the time and desire, start small and add to it.