Help with Mod versus Scenario in Extras Screen

Hello All,

I've been very quiet on the EoC Forum for several weeks while coding some experimental things that I hope will be useful both in US and notional future mods/expansions of the original EoC world/story.

I'm having difficulty getting my EoC mod folder to show up in the

"AVAILABLE MODS"

section of the extras screen. Instead, my package is showing up in the

"AVAILABLE SCENARIOS"

section.

I'm sure that it's something simple that I am overlooking, but I would appreciate any help the Forum can provide.

Thanks,

SRC

Well, I have got past this problem, but I'm not sure which of the several things
I tried is responsible.

The "compiled help" file of the Pog Scripting SDK does not give a lot of guidance
about what distinguishes a "mod" from a "scenario". And, in fact, as written, it
suggests that mods do not have compiled .pkg files, while scenarios do (which is
not correct). Certainly, if you want to create a scenario, you have to have a compiled
script that implements the mission(s) of the scenario. But some mods alter aspects of
game-play with compile pog functions.

So what distinguishes a "mod" from a scenario? I don't know.

But what I think made the difference was that I noticed that the "Unleashed"
mod has several .pkg files. I copied some not-used .pkg files into the "packages"
folder of my mod (the mod is called vEoCPOGlearning -- vanilla EoC POG learning;
it's intended to be a tutorial in POGging that can be put up at the US Forum
and linked here in the hope of drawing any players still out there into experimenting
with POG and perhaps helping with EoC or US development).

This seems to have done the trick. I speculate that the EoC top-level menu code
reckons that scenarios do not have more than one .pkg file while mods can have
many. This doesn't explain why mods such as the "custom_Jafs" mod, which has only
one .pkg file, is considered a mod rather than a scenario. I wish that PS had
made a scenarios folder distinct from the mods folder.

It appears to me that the way that you name the mod folder matters, too.

vEoCPOGlearning or tEoCPOGlearning as folder name ends up in the "AVAILABLE MODS" section
EoCPOGlearning or iEoCPOGlearning as name ends up in the "AVAILABLE SCENARIOS" section.

And once a folder is recognized as a MOD, I seem to be able to delete those extra
unused .pkg files and the folder will still be recognized as a MOD (sometimes, not
always)

It would be nice to see the source code.

Well, with my fiddling to test which conditions that lead to my mod being
perceived to be a mod versus a scenario, I am back stuck as a scenario.
If any reader has a clue about this, I would appreciate help.

Thanks

SRC, Just so you know, someone is reading this and thank you. I am an inactive player, soon to get back. Most appreciated

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your encouragement. I feel a bit sad that I did not get into EoC modding/pogging years ago when the community was more vibrant. At the time, I was intimidated by POG coding -- needlessly so

Cambragol and I have been discussing the idea of setting up a "pull-downable" POG coding tutorial to give people who are, like I used to be, intimidated by coding an "easy stages" introduction to POG so that they can experiment with adding new features to their own local EoC installations. This is surprisingly easy to do. And at some point I hope to translate at least some of the Unstable Space packages back into a vanilla EoC usable form that will go into a new EoC mod that can be downloaded and run (with accompanying enlargement of the EoC/configs/default.ini keybinds) with any of the current mods, or simply used for game-play enhancement within the as-distributed game.

If you have never player Bineshi's Unleashed mod, I encourage you to try it. And if you'd like, I can put up to the EoC Forum a basic set of enhancements that make it easier to use the Pinguin player ship (a very cool ship -- it's an "armed merchant ship cruiser" with a flight of robot drones that you can deploy as wingmen) as a merchant raider in its own right; you don't have to rely on that coward Jafs who won't come near a fight .

Most welcome and I currently, cannot get past the first part of the game on my computer. I have put it away for a bit. Some of what I read is over my head, but I do my best. Gonna pull the game out and give it another go. I will post what I am stuck on.