So whenever I want to modify parameters in a scenario I have to restart the scenario for my change to take effect. What was the thinking behind that? If I want to debug a scenario playfield, I need to restart fresh, teleport to the playfield I want to debug and then make a change, and rinse and repeat every time I want to change a playfield? Do you always have to start from fresh?
Well, if you want to check out changed deco and other visual stuff, you can try the pf command in console, which will reload the active playfield. It won't reload and change position of POIs, resources and such, but for visual changes, pf might be enough. Other than that, I personally use a minimalistic test scenario just for testing and debugging playfields, where I set up a player start in the playfield to test (FixedPlayerStart set up by 'Position', so I don't have to go through the escape pod sequence every time). That works quite well and does not take too much time to load, because there's mostly just one or two playfields in there. When the palyfield is basically done, I copy it over to the real scenario and delete the fixed player start. Hope that helps. /jmc
lpf you mean https://empyrion.fandom.com/wiki/Console_commands_loadplayfield . Would love to get whoever maintains that site to actually update it all, very erratic. That does help. What is curious is that until you ask a question you are never sure that your approach is optimal. It's like a guessing game. I don't make playfield changes often at all, it's far too complicated, but this will make it loads easier, I suspected you needed to do that kind of hack, but nobody explained how to do it in detail yet. Do you have any steps on how to make a galaxy with only one playfield (for people like me who don't know how to get started) - Can I use EPD to make a single moon playfield for example? is that a good way to start and get faster loading?
No I actually meant pf (playfield), although lpf can also come in quite handy instead of teleporting to another playfield. lpf loads another playfield. pf refreshes the playfield you're currently in, but as I said, only visual stuff. Regarding Scenario: I'll get back to you with details in the evening, if I don't forget. Quite busy atm... /jmc
You don't really need a galaxy for just testing. Basically I just copy the old 'Default Akua-Omicron' scenario, which only consists of just a bunch of sectors and solarsystems. I delete all but the one solar system in the 'Sectors\sectors.yaml'. I just kept the one where Akua (TemperateStarter) and its orbit are set up, here by default 'SpaceOrbitStarter' template. Don't forget to delete the .hide.txt, otherise it won't show up in the game's scenario selection menu. Here is a prepared little test scenario based on 'Default Akua-Omicron' scenario you can use: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dblg0zw9y25h8sx/EPDTest.zip?dl=1 I copied both playfield Templates (TemperateStarter and SpaceOrbitStarter) over from the vanilla playfields folder into this scenario's playfields folder, so that the game does not use the vanilla one's anymore, but those in the scenario's playfields folder. Whenever I have to test a planet, i replace everything in the scenario's TemperateStarter playfield folder with the playfield template I want to test. Don't forget to add a player start, before testing. Here i've set it up for a fixed position start to avoid the Escape POD sequence. I just used coordinates 0,70,0, which should be anywhere above surface (70) at pos 0,0. But as far as i know, the game places you on surface anyway, if you set it up too low or too high. Code: FixedPlayerStart: - Mode: Survival Pos: [0, 70, 0] RotY: 160 Items: ['SurvivalTool#Drop, Flashlight#Drop', 'SurvivalTool#Drop, Flashlight#Drop', 'SurvivalTool#Drop, Flashlight#Drop', '#FreshStart: SurvivalTool#Drop, Flashlight#Drop'] Status: ['Food:500, Health: 500', 'Food:300, Health: 300', 'Food:150, Health: 150', '#FreshStart:Food:500, Health: 250'][/FONT] In EPD you'll find this under tab POIs -> FixedPlayerStart -> Survival You can basically ignore the food and items stuff and leave it out, if you're not planning to use this playfield as a player start playfield. Whenever I want to test a space playfield, i rename SpaceOrbitStarter to something else, and copy my test space playfield folder over to this scenario and rename the folder to SpaceOrbitStarter. Then the game uses this one as the orbit for akua. That way you can quickly test, if it works or not. If ther's some bug in one of the playfields, you can be sure, it's in one of the two playfields. Hope this helps as a first step. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I'm a bit rusty in scenarios myself, and I have never played around with the galaxy setup, so I won't be much of a help there. For the playfield command I mentioned earlier: That one's only really helpful if you're working with the old static playfield yamls instead of the newer planet_dynamic/planet_static playfields, because refreshing the playfield only works if you change the playfield in the current savegame folder, but here the dynamic files already got merged into a static playfield.yaml. You can't bring that back to the random/dynamic form. /jmc
This is helpful. Some of us have super busy lives and never learn all the tricks. (Also been so bloody hot that my games room is almost inacessible, and when it is livable, it's too hot to concentrate hard and long on this stuff. Global warming is just summer, I'm a nuclear winter person I guess.) Aaah, this example start is much more making sense to me now. I'm making a change to the ECF files and then restarting the scenario and this will speed that loading up a lot. I'll have to spend some time in EPD, its looks like it makes some of what I am doing easier too, I been doing manual edits until now. I have found that after about 50 reloads, that EGS actually crashes out, so someone has a memory leak there I suspect. But that's acceptable for testing out changes to all the ECF files. I'm busy writing chapter 2 of 8 on how to set up a the ECF stuff in custom scenarios, and I never wanted to cover playfields at all, but I'm thinking I will ask for you to review and correct me when I am ready @jmcburn . The implied meaning of random/dynamic/static and the workflow are still a bit vague in my mind. But This will speed up debugging things a load and that was my goal, faster debugging.
Go ahead and try it. It might be helpful in some cases. But editing in notepad is just fine as well. Only thing to keep in mind is that EPD is - like the game - in constant flux. So it might introduce errors itself sometimes on save. But EPD creates backups on every save, so save often. if you encounter a bug there are online yaml diff editors where you can check, what has changed between your file and the last backup. Makes finding bugs a lot easier. https://www.yamldiff.com/ btw.: new EPD version is out: https://empyriononline.com/threads/...ion-v1-8-compatible.37581/page-56#post-455947 /jmc
