MODS ORDER OF ACTIVATION

[muskie46]

The big mods before patches but what about the little mods? I can't seem to find a list of any kind. Who's on first, what's on second and I don't know is on third. :doh: Some go wiith RFB, some with TMO and some with the stock game. I get that!! But what about the others. Do i figure them out by trial and error?
I'm playing the stock game at the present, and have bigger better protractors, nav map make over v2.1, pacific sound mod, stock different smoke and sub class info which work. Crew rank fix stock and hull numbers DO NOT. I want to figure this out but where do I find the info?

I know someone out there can point me in the right direction. :up:

Those who are in the dark will never see the light. :)

[fireftr18]

As far as I know, it pretty much is trial and error. The small mods usually only effect one small aspect of the program. Having said that, you could very easily find two mods that have an effect on each other. Read the information that comes with each mod. Pay attention to what the mod does and how it may effect the game. Then try to figure out some order.

[Armistead]

Load your supermod first and any patches. After that it's reading directions and using mods claimed by the author to work with other mods.
Also search "what mods do you use" as there have been numerous threads on what mods people use.

[TorpX]

I can't seem to find a list of any kind. Who's on first, what's on second and I don't know is on third. :doh: Some go wiith RFB, some with TMO and some with the stock game. I get that!! But what about the others. Do i figure them out by trial and error?

Cooking Mod Soup is more of an art, than a science, I'm afraid.


...but I would go along with Armistead here.

[torpedobait]

My rule of thumb (not always perfect, mind you) is to load all mods with JSGME, Super mods and their respective patches first. Then I load the individual mods by some guessed order of the area they are supposed to affect (environment, skins, sounds, etc.). As long as a mod doesn't clobber anything above it (grays it out in the right hand column after loading) I assume it is ok. So far the only ones I've had a problem with are "Office Links, Info Boxes and .50 Caliber" and another one with a "Twin 40 AA Gun" - not the exact title. They crash my game when either is loaded and I never bothered to figure out why (although the idea of a Twin 40 mm AA gun is exciting! Anyway, the above works for me and I've got a pretty big mod soup. Good Luck. :salute:

[muskie46]

As far as I know, it pretty much is trial and error. The small mods usually only effect one small aspect of the program. Having said that, you could very easily find two mods that have an effect on each other. Read the information that comes with each mod. Pay attention to what the mod does and how it may effect the game. Then try to figure out some order.

Thank you for your help firerftr18.

[muskie46]

Load your supermod first and any patches. After that it's reading directions and using mods claimed by the author to work with other mods.
Also search "what mods do you use" as there have been numerous threads on what mods people use.

Thank you Armistead for "what mods do you use". :)

[muskie46]

My rule of thumb (not always perfect, mind you) is to load all mods with JSGME, Super mods and their respective patches first. Then I load the individual mods by some guessed order of the area they are supposed to affect (environment, skins, sounds, etc.). As long as a mod doesn't clobber anything above it (grays it out in the right hand column after loading) I assume it is ok. So far the only ones I've had a problem with are "Office Links, Info Boxes and .50 Caliber" and another one with a "Twin 40 AA Gun" - not the exact title. They crash my game when either is loaded and I never bothered to figure out why (although the idea of a Twin 40 mm AA gun is exciting! Anyway, the above works for me and I've got a pretty big mod soup. Good Luck. :salute:

Very helpful! Thank you torpedobait. :up:

[muskie46]

Cooking Mod Soup is more of an art, than a science, I'm afraid.


...but I would go along with Armistead here.


Whow! Now I feel very intimidated.

[Sailor Steve]

Trial and error really is the only way. If you just want to play the game you can steal somebody else's list, but you'll never learn anything that way. Also, that somebody else might have tweaked one or to things himself, and either not mentioned it or forgot it.

Load one mod with JSGME. If you get a warning message, read it. Study if. ask about it. It may change something important, or it may only change the readme, which affects exactly nothing. Try it out. See what happens. With JSGME you can always uninstall it again.

Sure, this takes time - a lot of time if you use a lot of mods. The good part is that by the time you're truly set up the way you want you'll know exactly how you got there. My SH3 mods list has more than 1/3 of the activated mods greyed out. I don't care, because I know they all work together. I know which ones overwrote what, and I know why.

That's a big part of the fun. And no, it's not intimidating at all, once you've done it a few times. I know, because I'm an idiot when it comes to this stuff. :sunny:

[muskie46]

Trial and error really is the only way. If you just want to play the game you can steal somebody else's list, but you'll never learn anything that way. Also, that somebody else might have tweaked one or to things himself, and either not mentioned it or forgot it.

Load one mod with JSGME. If you get a warning message, read it. Study if. ask about it. It may change something important, or it may only change the readme, which affects exactly nothing. Try it out. See what happens. With JSGME you can always uninstall it again.

Sure, this takes time - a lot of time if you use a lot of mods. The good part is that by the time you're truly set up the way you want you'll know exactly how you got there. My SH3 mods list has more than 1/3 of the activated mods greyed out. I don't care, because I know they all work together. I know which ones overwrote what, and I know why.

That's a big part of the fun. And no, it's not intimidating at all, once you've done it a few times. I know, because I'm an idiot when it comes to this stuff. :sunny:

Well, now I've got a goal. I know which way I'm going. All I've got to do is figure out how to get there. I do have perseverance!! As I play the 5-string banjo. :har: Thanks Sailor Steve. :salute:

[BigWalleye]

Cooking Mod Soup is more of an art, than a science, I'm afraid.



I must respectfully disagree. Using multiple mods successfully is not art and need not be done by trial and error. It is necessary, though, to understand the modding process, and what happens when a mod is installed.

The SH4 game consists of an executable (.exe) file and several thousand data files, which control the operation of the .exe. By changing the contents of the data files, you can, as Operation Monsun does, change the geography, the national origin, the submarines – both performance and appearance – and the “atmospherics” of the game, all by telling the .exe what you want it to do. The SH4 .exe (the “game engine”) is incredibly adaptable!

What a mod does is change the contents of one or more of those data files. The modder starts with a data file from the stock game, opens it in a suitable editor program, and makes changes to the contents to change those elements he wants to mod. The rest of the stock game file he leaves alone, since there is no reason to change it.

When you install a mod, JSGME (or whatever other means you use) overwrites the entire file in the SH4 game’s /data/ folder (or a subfolder). In effect, it changes the parts the modder rewrote, and replaces the rest of that file with exactly what was there before in the stock game.

Understanding this process is important when using multiple mods. If the mods overwrite different files, then they will not interfere with each other. If they both overwrite the same file, then the only copy of the file the .exe will see and use is the last version installed. There is absolutely no way to change this.

Let’s take a simple example: We want to change the keyboard mapping. Assignment of keys to commands is done with a file called /data/cfg/commands.cfg. It’s a text file, so you can use Notepad or any text editor to change it. So we change the dive and surface commands to CTRL-D and CTRL-S, making it harder to hit them accidentally. The rest of the file we leave alone, with the stock key mapping. We set our mod up so that it can be installed by JSGME. We play the stock game, with our mod loaded, and it works as we intended.

But we want to play TMO, not the stock game. And TMO already has changed the keyboard mapping, to something similar to the SH3 keyboard commands. If we install our mod before we install TMO, our mod gets overwritten, and our change never takes effect. If, on the other hand, we install our mod after TMO, all the TMO key assignments are lost, and we are left with the stock keyboard with our two changes. Either way, it’s not what we wanted to do.

The only way to make our changes work with TMO is to edit the TMO version of commands.cfg. We have then made a “TMO-compatible” mod. Great, but remember that it won’t work correctly with the stock game.

How do you know what files are being changed? Whenever, you install a mod using JSGME, the installer tells you when a file is being changed that has already been changed by another mod. (Remember, “changed” means “completely overwritten.”) If a file is being overwritten a second time, the first change will probably be lost, unless the second mod is “compatible” with the first. Every time you overwrite a file, only the last version written will actually be used. So you need to look carefully at that warning window in JSGME and make sure you know what is being changed. You have to know a bit about what all those files are controlling. And some of them control lots of different elements in the game.

If you find a mod that you really want to try, but you see that it is overwriting important files, files you don’t want changed or files you don’t understand, then you have a choice. You can experiment and see what happens. Or you can use a program like WinMerge to compare the two files and see what game elements each one is changing. You can even, if you are careful, merge the two files and make a “compatible” version.

All of this may be much too much for some gamers. If so, you are probably better off sticking to a few mods – one of the megamods and its patches, for instance. And you can always try mods that state they are “compatible” provided you install the “compatible” mod after the mod it is “compatible” with. If you want to use a lot of additional mods, then you need to determine what is being changed, what it does, and what changes will be lost. Then you can decide which changes you want to keep.

As I said above, it’s not art, and it need not be trail and error. But it does involve learning something about how SH4 works, how the mods you want to use work, and how they will interact.

[muskie46]

I must respectfully disagree. Using multiple mods successfully is not art and need not be done by trial and error. It is necessary, though, to understand the modding process, and what happens when a mod is installed.

The SH4 game consists of an executable (.exe) file and several thousand data files, which control the operation of the .exe. By changing the contents of the data files, you can, as Operation Monsun does, change the geography, the national origin, the submarines – both performance and appearance – and the “atmospherics” of the game, all by telling the .exe what you want it to do. The SH4 .exe (the “game engine”) is incredibly adaptable!

What a mod does is change the contents of one or more of those data files. The modder starts with a data file from the stock game, opens it in a suitable editor program, and makes changes to the contents to change those elements he wants to mod. The rest of the stock game file he leaves alone, since there is no reason to change it.

When you install a mod, JSGME (or whatever other means you use) overwrites the entire file in the SH4 game’s /data/ folder (or a subfolder). In effect, it changes the parts the modder rewrote, and replaces the rest of that file with exactly what was there before in the stock game.

Understanding this process is important when using multiple mods. If the mods overwrite different files, then they will not interfere with each other. If they both overwrite the same file, then the only copy of the file the .exe will see and use is the last version installed. There is absolutely no way to change this.

Let’s take a simple example: We want to change the keyboard mapping. Assignment of keys to commands is done with a file called /data/cfg/commands.cfg. It’s a text file, so you can use Notepad or any text editor to change it. So we change the dive and surface commands to CTRL-D and CTRL-S, making it harder to hit them accidentally. The rest of the file we leave alone, with the stock key mapping. We set our mod up so that it can be installed by JSGME. We play the stock game, with our mod loaded, and it works as we intended.

But we want to play TMO, not the stock game. And TMO already has changed the keyboard mapping, to something similar to the SH3 keyboard commands. If we install our mod before we install TMO, our mod gets overwritten, and our change never takes effect. If, on the other hand, we install our mod after TMO, all the TMO key assignments are lost, and we are left with the stock keyboard with our two changes. Either way, it’s not what we wanted to do.

The only way to make our changes work with TMO is to edit the TMO version of commands.cfg. We have then made a “TMO-compatible” mod. Great, but remember that it won’t work correctly with the stock game.

How do you know what files are being changed? Whenever, you install a mod using JSGME, the installer tells you when a file is being changed that has already been changed by another mod. (Remember, “changed” means “completely overwritten.”) If a file is being overwritten a second time, the first change will probably be lost, unless the second mod is “compatible” with the first. Every time you overwrite a file, only the last version written will actually be used. So you need to look carefully at that warning window in JSGME and make sure you know what is being changed. You have to know a bit about what all those files are controlling. And some of them control lots of different elements in the game.

If you find a mod that you really want to try, but you see that it is overwriting important files, files you don’t want changed or files you don’t understand, then you have a choice. You can experiment and see what happens. Or you can use a program like WinMerge to compare the two files and see what game elements each one is changing. You can even, if you are careful, merge the two files and make a “compatible” version.

All of this may be much too much for some gamers. If so, you are probably better off sticking to a few mods – one of the megamods and its patches, for instance. And you can always try mods that state they are “compatible” provided you install the “compatible” mod after the mod it is “compatible” with. If you want to use a lot of additional mods, then you need to determine what is being changed, what it does, and what changes will be lost. Then you can decide which changes you want to keep.

As I said above, it’s not art, and it need not be trail and error. But it does involve learning something about how SH4 works, how the mods you want to use work, and how they will interact.


:hmph: Very interesting and informative. This is the stuff I've been looking for. I have modified a few files (cheats), in a couple of games like Medieval ll Total War. This is just much more in "depth", no pun intended. I will work at this. I think I can get it. Thank you Big Walleye. :salute:
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Kinda' like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time!! :har:

[BigWalleye]

Awfully wordy! Hope it helps.