I'd be grateful to anyone who could help me out. I've started dinking around with a small mod I made for B23, updating it to B27 and such. It has a few new units and a mission featuring one of them I jury rigged off a template.

The problem is that I've gotten the mod updated as far as making Cortex Command load the mod and successfully execute the units and such. However, the mission I made is refusing to appear on the Scenarios menu. I've looked at Base.rte and even the Prison Escape Ep 3 and UniTec missions and everything seems to match up as far as what I need to declare in the .ini files.

Is there some kind of format change from when Activities were implemented or some kind of standard I'm supposed to follow as far as where files are located? Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Post your mod and we can have a look.

Mehhh, I was hoping I wouldn't have to do that, but sure. I'm gonna warn you in advance, though, that it's a badly organized hodge podge of files. When I first started it, my top priority was getting it to work, and then organization afterward. And then I fell out of it for a few years. I have every intention of sprucing it up once it's working again.

Also, one of the two missions rips off a Menou mission another modder posted on here without their permission (hence, I did not distribute it). Any Lua code in the mod is also copypasta'd and tinkered with to make both missions as I wanted to flow.

TL;DR: First mod, disorganized, everything self-taught, privately made with others' work and complete disregard for permissions.

As long as you're fine with that, any advice is very much appreciated.

I guess since I'm posting it on here now, I may as well also mention that I'm having great difficulty with the walking animations on the Oompa-Loompa and Whoopsie-Daisy units. Offsets are giving me a lot of grief. Or maybe it's the limbpaths, I know next to nothing about those. Any help there would also be extremely appreciated.

The forum is being cranky about uploading my mod, so here's a mediafire link:

BaronSyndicate.rte

Well...

In Activities.ini "AddActivity = GAScripted" isn't properly tabbed.

In Index.ini "IncludeFile = BaronSyndicate.rte/Miscellaneous/Misc.ini" had two spaces in front of it instead of a tab.
When tabbed it failed to load, so you probably meant to comment it out.

In Menou Revisited.ini "MetagamePlayable = 0" isn't properly tabbed.

Then it crashed while loading assassination.ini, most likely because it contains references to PresetNames in Base.rte (or other vanilla stuff) that is no longer existing in B27.

Then I gave up.


My tip: Start all over with a clean mod, copy the files from this mod over, one at a time, and check if they all load.

Oh, crap! I had forgotten all about the importance of tabbing vs spaces!

Thank you very much for the help. I'll keep working on it. Thanks again! I'll probably do just that, revamping the organization of the files so it's not stupid. I'll be able to test the files on a granular level from there.

Argh, this is getting very frustrating. I'm sorry for this double-post, but I feel the express need to bump this topic.

I've followed Gotcha's advice, but to no avail. I fixed the tabbing problems you mentioned, went through and organized the files a bit better... I've been using Prison Escape and [Ronin] Nest as a source of inspiration. Everything seems good, but the stupid scenes aren't even appearing in the Scene Editor. I have even attempted pulling Cortex Command out of Program Files after reading Win7 gets grumpy about that stuff, but nothing short of perhaps shooting my computer is making the Missions appear in the Activities menu.

Hours of Lua debugging isn't nearly as bad as the hours I've spent fighting with this. What am I doing wrong?

Also, since this is mostly about my activity problems (and I don't want to start a new thread on an existing topic), could a mod please move this thread to the Scene Making sub-forum?

Here is the revised version of the mod.

EDIT: Removed revised version, added a newer, less broken, prettier version in later post.

In your main index.ini you have "IncludeFile = BaronSyndicate.rte/Media/Index.ini" but that file doesn't even exist.
Meanwhile B27 loads the game like normal, completely keeping you in the dark. No error messages that tell you where to look.

The line "IncludeFile = BaronSyndicate.rte/Media/Index.ini" doesn't even get loaded. I typed all kind of crap in that line that the game should definitely crash over.
I have no idea what the hell is happening here.
Tried loading your mod in B26 and it's the same story there.

So somewhere after "IncludeFile = BaronSyndicate.rte/Actors/Index.ini" is called and before
"IncludeFile = BaronSyndicate.rte/Media/Index.ini" is called there's an error of some sort that stops the mod from being loaded.

I'd dig a bit deeper for you, but the mod is so unorganized.

The only thing I can suggest is starting over and keep the mod simple and organized. One index.ini for starters. >_>

Bahaha, I completely understand. I'd feel the same way. I sat down and pumped some effort into the organization, shooting for simplicity as you advised. Somewhere along the line I think I was under the notion that one index.ini was needed for each folder (and I wasn't even consistent with that, it seems).

I have only one index.ini, I moved the folders around in a fashion that seems more logical, and for whatever reason Menou Revisited started appearing on the Activities menu. This is good-ish, and Cortex Command barked about older build-related issues. I have them all fixed, but now it's giving me a no-explanation crash after loading all of the data modules unless I comment out my mod's activities.ini. Scenes work so far, but still no activities. It must be something simple, but the game isn't offering any clues this time.

Do you have B26 installed? Try running the mod there.

I've noticed B27 stopped giving error messages, but B26 mentions it could not match property in BaronSyndicate.rte/Missions/Menou Revisited.ini at line 7.

I didn't but I downloaded it and tested it out. B26 gets cranky with the MetagamePlayable parameter in Menou Revisited.ini at line 7. I tried commenting it out and even changing the value to 1, but it's giving me the same mysterious crash from before. As long as Activities.ini is not loaded, no crash occurs.

I also tried looking at Activities.ini again for possibly redundant parameters. Tried removing a few, but no change. I'm encountering the same thing in B26.

So I guess the mystery at this point is what the game dosn't like about MetagamePlayable and/or Activities.ini.

Believe it or not, but it crashes on the "LuaClassName = MenouMission" bit.
I changed the LuaClassName to something else and the game loaded.

This is so weird. I managed to figure it out to this point: if LuaClassName and the declared function in the Lua file match, the game crashes after the inis are loaded. If I change either the LuaClassName or the function name in the Lua file, the game will load.

Now if I change the function name and get the game to load, the mission will (naturally) generate an error, a nil value for the Lua class name. So with the game running I can change the function name back to match what the ini is looking for and the mission will load.

What in God's name could be causing this problem?