FacEdit help needed

[Travathian]

Curious if anyone knows where I can get help files or explanations for the various options you can choose in the faction editor. I'm looking for concrete numbers here. It seems like most people who make their own factions dont make use of a lot of the more obscure abilities, likely because they dont understand them.

I hate seeing factions that are just plus to this and minus to that.

[Sindai]

1) Don't use the faction editor. It is horrendously buggy and unstable.

2) Learn how to edit the factions at their source - the .txt files. It is VERY easy to do. Just check out the tutorial in the faction.txt document, which even includes a full-length example of a faction's text file, as well as complete explanations of ALL the modifiers, even the obscure ones (robust, penalty, freefac, techshareing, etc.)

[Travathian]

Actually I found it now. Its at the facedit.txt

Not in a very good format, it just lists what all of the blanks in the FacEdit program are for, so you gotta figure it out yourself, but its not too bad.
[This message has been edited by Travathian (edited January 16, 2001).]

[Sindai]

Traviathan - I reiterate my first two points. While facedit.txt DOES help a little bit with the facedit program, it is still FAR easier and more reliable to edit the text files.

Oh, and you'll notice that the facedit.txt file STILL doesn't tell you what all the modifiers do. Look in the faction.txt file instead for all that.

[Helium Pond]

I must second Sindai's warnings in the strongest possible terms. Not only is the faction editor buggy and unstable, it will actually corrupt the original faction files if you should happen to load them into it and re-save them. The FacEdit program cannot save diplomacy sentences beyond a certain length, and many of the original factions have diplomacy sentences that exceed that length. The "extra" text gets discarded. Just one of many ways FacEdit will take your creativity and turn it into useless drivel.

FacEdit stinks like a rotting corpse.

FacEdit is vile, rotting, and putrid.

Stay far, far away.

Just edit the darn .txt files yourself. Easier, and better for you too.

[stuntman19]

Prolly the first thing you want to do is make copies of any text files you're gonna work with. Then if you screw them up you can always replace them with a copy of the original without reloading the whole game. The facedit is fairly bad, but take a look at it and get an idea of how to change the text files on your own as the others have said.

[Travathian]

Ok, who made the original Faction Editor?

Someone out there made a freeware version of one before SMACX came out, anyone remember this? Is it compatible with SMACX?

And yeah I know about everything you guys are saying, and I appreciate it, but I fat finger things a lot and would hate to have my faction crashing the game because of a misplaced letter or number.

[Sindai]

The original faction editor was made by firaxis and came with smacx, but was never fixed.

The one you're thinking of can probably be found in the files section of apolyton.net.

quote: And yeah I know about everything you guys are saying, and I appreciate it, but I fat finger things a lot and would hate to have my faction crashing the game because of a misplaced letter or number.

Trust me, it is NOT that complicated. Look for yourself, the text files are VERY VERY simple. It took me under a half an hour to learn everything I needed to on my own.

I've re-done half the faction modifiers from the ground up in the past month, and I have only mispelled something twice. If you're really THAT concerned about it you can just copy/paste the information you need from the faction.txt and alphax.txt files.

Oh, and if you misplace a letter or number, it doesn't crash the game! It'll just make the game ignore that particuler modifier.

Ie: If, instead of "Impunity, Green," you put "Impnity, Green," it'll just ignore that modifier but everything else will work out fine.