Having trouble with MultiMod

Hello All,

If there are any old EoC modders paying attention to the IW2 forums, I'd appreciate some help.

I'm coming very late to this -- was very (and unnecessarily) intimidated by POG for a long time -- but am quickly coming up to speed.

I'd like to port aspects of US functionality back into EoC to improve game play and am thinking of a stand-alone mods package that could be combined with other EoC mods. As this package would be code only, it probably would not have major compatibility issues with other mods that mostly modify ship parameters and the like.

This seems pretty straightforwad to do -- the MultiMod package permits multiple mods to be activated simultaneously.

But for some reason I am finding that my first attempt at a standalone utilities package is not getting activated. I

* created a new mod folder in the "mods" folder under the main game folder

* put a .ini file in the newmod folder with an initialization script to be run on "enter_space"

* wrote and compiled a .pog file containing the utilities, and included an initialization function that activates the keybindings for the new functions. Put the .pkg file in the packages folder of the newmod folder

* modified the configs/default.ini file to define the keybindings

* started a new game and selected my mod in the EXTRAS section of the top EoC menu

But my keybindings are not being created, and I don't know if the mod is ever activated at all.

To this point, I;ve been developing code and testing it by tacking it onto the end of Bineshi's excellent "Unleashed" mod. I will continue to do this for the time being, but it would be helpful to be able to have these functions stand on their own for others to use, if there are any EoC modders left, or if others may show up in the future.

I'd appreciate any help that the Forum can offer.

It's a shot into the blue, but do you run Vista or Win7?
Don't install the game into the default path, but into C:\games or whatever if you want to run any mods.

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There is no safe distance

Hi Tarcoon,

The machine on which I'm having the problem is an old XP machine, but I'm pretty confident that the problem is not OS but rather is something I'm missing in setting up the mod files. I'm thinking of copying Unleashed, gutting it, sticking my code into it, getting it working as a mod, and then changing the name and running it alongside Unleashed. That's a gruesome way to make code work, but I'm not sure what else to try.

It might be something silly like mis-spelling of function names or something, though I've tried to be careful.

I'm hoping that others might have had similar problems with MultiMod and could enlighten me as to how they solved them. Maybe the population of modders (or of modders who still look in on the Forum) is too smaller for others to have had this problem. Will keep plugging away; eventually something should turn up.

I've never directly done anything with Multi-mod, so I don't have any insights to offer. Maybe take a look at another mod using it, to see if there is something they've set up that you missed? Maybe 'Gold Rush'? Though...I don't know if that uses Multi-mod.

The problem appears to be resolved. I was doing a number of things wrong.
These details are probably somewhere in the Forum, but I did not find them
easily with a Search, and stumbled across these rules by trial/error:

a) For a mod to appear in the "Mods" section of the "Extras" menu, its name
must not begin with "i" (perhaps also not capital "I"). If the mod folder
name starts with "i", the mod will be listed in the "Scenarios" section of
the "Extras" menu. I'm guessing that this has something to do with the acts/scene
scripts all beginning with lowercase "i".

Note that the .pkg file name can begin with lowercase "i".

b) The mod .ini file which specifies what is run at which game events (within
the [MultiMod] section of the mod .ini file must have the same name (before
the .ini file extension) as the folder that contains the mod.

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an interesting question which I will explore is whether one could have a
collection of packages, some of which reference others within the collection,
within a single mod folder. This is of interest as I would like to port some
US functionality back into a general "utilities" mod for EoC. It is certainly
possible to have multiple .pkg files within a mod, each of which has functions
that are invoked at different game events by Multimod -- this happens in
Bineshi's Unleashed mod.

As a first trial, I'll try to move the US PodUtil mod back into EoC and
try to reference some of its functions from within iDockingUtil, and see
if it works as a combined EoC mod.

A further detail, which I have not made the effort to determine whether
this is already noted in the Forum.

It appears to me that one can group any number of separate .pkg files together
within a single mod directory. I do not know whether the [MultiMod] section of
the single mod.ini file allows one to execute functions in multiple .pkg files
at the same game event (for example, "Enter Space"), but if not, there appears
to be a simple workaround. It appears to me that one can create a "top level"
package that contains only functions that are executed at game state changes
(the state changes listed in the [MultiMod] section of the mod.ini file. These
functions can in turn call the corresponding functions within the multiple
package files.

I have this working in a very simple mod structure:

mod folder (and .ini file) name: vEoCUtilities

packages: iEoCUtilities.pkg
iDockingUtil.pkg

vEoCUtilities.ini invokes, at game event "Enter Space" the
function iEoCUtilities.EnterSpace()

which in turn invokes the function iDockingUtil.EnterSpace().
This last function does the key bindings for the iDockingUtil package.

I see no reason why I could not include arbitrarily many package
initialization commands within the iEoCUtilities.EnterSpace()
function.

This suggests to me that it will be straightforward to back-port substantial
US functionality to EoC.