It is necessary to the utility and longevity of Cortex Command that higher-level content is automatically loaded after its dependencies. Higher level content in this case being defined as scenes, scenarios, missions, editors, and activity lists. This relatively simple change to the way the game loads would streamline content creation and save untold labor in the usage of that content.

While I'm asking, support for multiple activity files would kick ass.

Soooo, you're asking modders to either not use anything Vanilla in their mods, or copy what they need into their mods to make them bigger, and ultimately accomplish something stupid and unneccesarry? By all means, correct me if I'm wrong.

I believe he means change the way the game loads data, HK, IE, something that Data does on the source

Can you explain this, because it still seems like a pointless change to me.

Perhaps I have it backwards. I think he's asking for content to automatically load dependencies, IE, activities could use multiple RTEs without having to modify the indicies of each mod to include them in Base.rte or the .rte with the activity in it.

Duh is correct. Currently the game loads everything alphabetically (with the exception of a few hardcoded RTEs). If the game loaded basic content (actors, weapons, etc), or just had a list where it could load specific RTEs like the vanilla entries, and then compiled the content lists (scenarios, activities) we wouldn't have to worry so much about modified index files.

Spoilers: the game would have to compile the list in order to compile the list

you can't declare the contents of variable based data files without fully interpreting the file

I can make an Index.ini that contains no includefiles yet also contains every single part of a faction, up to and including a scene and mission.

Perhaps the current system could be modified to simply load everything into memory individually, then check for missing links and throw an error then.

IE
Cortex loads an index containing 5 objects:
Actor "Jay"
Attachable "Chest Plate 1"
HDFirearm "MGL"
MOSRotating "Grenade"
MOPixel "Grenade Fragment"

Throws all the names and the names of what they depend on into memory.

Sees that "Jay" and "MGL" require "Chest Plate 1" and "Grenade"
Those are in memory, so checks out.
Sees that "Grenade" requires "Grenade Fragment"
That is in memory, so checks out.
However, "Grenade" also calls for "Grenade Fragment Fire", which is not in memory, so throws an error.

I am talking from my dearth of technical knowledge however, so all of this could be pointless BS.

Which is, coincidentally, exactly what the game already does

Oh. I meant the checks after it had loaded all .rtes.
I'm pretty sure it doesn't do that already.

That means that if there's a problem, it takes longer to realize it, and it also won't give you as clear an indication of what mod causes the error. I really just don't see any reason to change anything. If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.

While this would be a good way of doing things in terms of keeping errors down, it would really slow down the already crawling loading process a fair amount. Files would have to be read multiple times.

Yes. This is why I suggested only performing the function for higher level content. To do it for everything would be unreasonable. The added benefit would be that failures would be unlikely (scenes etc are pretty reliable) unless you were missing content, in which case you would be wasting extra time but at a worthwhile trade-off.

As for Grif's particular concern, poorly organized files: the game already knows when it is loading scene or activity data; adding an additional instruction for that data would not be a challenge.

"Higher level content?"

Scenes?