Short rant about the modding tools

[Future]

Hi everyone,

So for the past week i have been working on, i guess a half conversion mod?

My plan was to keep the map, most of the biomes, the ruins and all the graphical side of things the same but change basically everything else. Now then, i know what i am doing when it comes to the FCS and the in-game editor but they are very frustrating to work with (mostly the in-game editor)

I don't know if it was my fault or a bug with the in-game editor but here is what happened, i removed all buildings from Okran's Pride, that was fine, i then set up the roads going through it, also fine. Afterwards i built a wall all the way around Okran's Pride and split it into 3 sections (since the mod would be about a massive city that covered Okran's Pride)

Everything was going great i was setting up the buildings in the noble section but i had to check something in the FCS so i saved the mod, came out, checked what i needed then loaded the game back up. Lo and behold a big chunk of wall and i think some buildings had just disappeared.

In conclusion, am i an idiot for trying to make a massive city and the game reacted to this? or is it a bug with the editor?

Rant over, thanks for reading.

[Lhama]

If you're really talking the entirety of okran's pride, then yeah, you went a little overboard. I don't think that's a fault in the mod tools or the engine so much as it is you pushing it past it's limits. I'm not sure about other people's experiences, but when i come upon a even modestly modded town, the game tends to chug.

Couple questions
1. Were the town sections each individual towns themselves?
2. Are you extra super duper positively absolutely 100% certain you clicked "save mod" before closing?

[LyranRenegade]

Game is still buggy, and modding tends to bring more bugs to the surface.
This is my experience.
So, better take small steps, backup your mod-files a lot. [I once had a mod became corrupted in which I'd put a lot of work. Which made me depressed for a week, but I'm feeling better now. ]
What you seem to be planning to do might be possible but I think it will take a lot, lot of work.

The ingame-editor has a few things that aren't entirely clear you should watch carefully.
- If you click building on the top-bar it's different from if you click the normal build-icon at the right-side of the normal panel].
[That might be the problem].
- Interior-editing goes of course with clicking a building and then 'edit interior'. It only works if 'show interior' is on. If you hide the interior, but are in the interior-editing mode, you can create an exterior for said building-type. [Watch out to first type in a new name and save that one, if you accidentally overwrite an existing one you can corrupt the entire game... which can't be repaired other than restoring the overwritten interior/exterior manually..]
I don't think you can place buildings outside when interior-editing is on, but if you can in some cases, that might be the problem as well..
- You can enable item-placement by clicking items on top, I always make sure item-placement is off when placing building and vice-versa. Even though both can be active at the same time, otherwise things can go wrong..
- Some of the misc items you better not place anywhere, I found a lot of them don't show up but are still left in the mod because the log shows the engine is attempting to render it. You can't remove them if they don't show up, so, cause for more bugs perhaps.

So, best advice I can think off, work in small steps, make backups of every stage. And be prepared for a lot of work