[rudewarrior]

Originally Posted by 3catcircus

So I've been trying to figure out your install instructions too. The problem I see (as apparently do others) is it is just too confusing for anyone but advanced users.

See first post:

**THIS MOD ULTIMATELY IS NOT DIFFICULT TO IMPLEMENT, BUT THERE ARE SOME CONSIDERATIONS THAT MAKE THIS SOMEWHAT OF AN ADVANCED MOD.**

I gotta manually edit an .ini file (not knowing what the actual x/y positions should be) and manually move some .tga files into a certain folder? I gotta figure out whether I should use JSGME or SHCommander or do both or run the JFO executable or all three? What if I already have JSGME installed somewhere else? Now I gotta install it a second time into SH3Commander? And then I gotta exit the game and re-run it or something?

This is why. It takes time and research to understand how the menu_1024_768.ini file works. We (as in the modding community) can explain it to you, and we will be happy to assist you in understanding it, but it takes time and patience to learn how to edit it. There are many resources on this forum to help with it. You can start here. Ultimately, it takes research to figure out how it works and it takes time to implement the changes and make sure they are working correctly. Every mod requires some alteration to your system and takes time and patience to implement properly. In fact my menu.ini file is actually overwritten 4 times in my particular "mod soup" and each iteration has several different edits to that particular file.

Between the readme and the forum thread, there appears to be at least three (possibly) four different ways of activating this mod (and thus, at least as many ways for an inexperienced user to screw it up).

And experienced users as well. Now think about how many times I screwed it up trying to write it.

Is there a fool-proof method of activating the mod, given the following boundary conditions:

GWX3 installed with the Integrated Orders and Contact Color mods
SH3Commander installed
A single JSGME install, not in SH3Commander

Yes, I have it set up that way, but the key is to install SH3 Commander directly into the GWX folder. This allows you to use one JSGME install, and thus you can title your mods things like: SH3 Cmdr_Insert Super Cool Mod Title Here. That way everything is in one place and you can take care of it all at once.

I took a very long time to write a very long readme on how to install this mod. In fact I would say that the ratio of the size of the readme compared to the actual size of the mod may actually be the largest on this forum. I knew it would be complex, so I wrote the readme as explicitly as I had to when I was writing up experiment procedures when I was working on my Physics PhD. However, it still requires a certain amount of base knowledge which you will have to acquire before you can implement it. I suggest that you should start becoming very familiar with the menu.ini file, since the vast majority of the more complex mods work with it.

Hope this helps!