What in the world happened!?!?!?

[mr matt5432123]

Hello everybody, this is another question regarding my Edgewater modification. I truly have no idea how what I'm about to explain happened, or why. I was going to make a copy of the mod and decided to finally change the name of the mod file from LA modification 2.1, to Edgewater modification. so I did that and created the copy. And when I opened up the editor later to make some more progress on the mod It seems that the prototypes somehow reset themselves. By this I mean that when I clicked on my engine 1 that I put in, instead of seeing that mack engine I saw the original LA mod 2.1 engine 1 and it had it's own lights. It's the same with the other vehicles. I checked and my models are still there. so why is the mod showing the LA models instead? I am very angered at this and could really use some explanations and a solution. I really don't see why this happened or how its even possible it did happen. All I did was change the mod's name and make a copy of it. Any help and support would be greatly appreciated.

I checked and the map was reset too, how can that have even happened?

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OK, So something even weirder just happened, I checked my copy of my los Angeles mod, and for every vehicle the prototypes were missing, I looked at them because I was beyond weirded out now and found out their prototypes pointed to where my models were in the edgewater mod, So I copy and pasted the models to the LA mod file and so now everything is like it was, but I still would like an answer as to why this happened. it's almost as if my edgewater mod and LA mod switched their prototypes and maps, and I know that sounds crazy, but I just can't figure it out. I really hope someone can tell me what went wrong, because this is almost creepy. 

 

[itchboy]

Have you pointed the units.xmls to the approrpriate e4p files for edgewater? Is this ingame or in editor? If its bugged in the editor, its a sign of some issues in the copy/paste process when you made the sep folder. If its an ingame issue along with the map, its probably that problem. Now that you've got it solved, the only thing left to do is take steps so it never happens again.

Potential theory is you may have accidentally copy pasted the protos into the wrong place. Or made some clerical error when copying things.

When making any mod, it is advised to create a totally separate folder for your project so that it does not conflict with LA, or any other mod. Another thing to advise is editing the 'em4mod.info' file in notepad so that the mod appears as its own entry with your name on it.

Be sure to back up your files and relevant items. You've had a close call that nearly wiped your mod, it would be best to copy paste the mod into a USB stick, external HDD or upload it onto Dropbox/Google Drive and set it as private there.

[mr matt5432123]

So, you believe that I should create my own mod folder instead of using the LA mod one?

Thank you for your advice. 

[itchboy]

Its what I advise to all people, to make their own dedicated mod folder instead of relying on LA. Weird stuff tends to happen when using LA mod folder bc of that mods prerequisites not matching up to the edits you are making. Ive so far seen 3 mods go down the pooper due to that same incident happening to others. With those ppl, they overreacted and DELETED the whole thing without checking that they werent killing their own content. In one case, they copy pasted the right things but ended up getting so frustrated with the new set of problems stemming from not having LA, that they also shuttered their mods.

Its a weird quirk with Em4 it would seem. I never encountered this issue personally bc I always went in editor and pressed the 'new modification package' button instead of going directly into a mod and editing. Its what I advise ppl to do, and wished that ppl read Em4's editor.pdf (that is packaged with the default game upon purchase).

[MikeyPI]

Well, I know for a fact you can have duplicate versions of a mod on the same computer in the same game; I've done it before when modifying or tweaking an existing mod package for testing purposes.  In those instances I edited the xml to display a diff name in the game and gave the root folder a diff name... Chances are users experiencing problems confuse the two (the original mod which they tend to keep) and the clone of it, since both folders would have identical structures, folder names, and in some cases files it is rather easy to make such a mistake.

The advice itchboy is providing is the most prudent if you're creating a mod, even if you intend to use content from another mod within it, the logic behind it being that you would transfer only what you require for the functions/assets you need while leaving behind all the things you don't.  The time lost in doing this is more than made up later for a number of reasons which I'll explain further down.  It will cost you a bit of time in re-creating the package yourself but it will ensure that what you have in that package is exactly what you need minus things that might conflict or cause confusion later. Not to mention the fact you'll also be able to test each component you add piece by piece instead of potentially having 20 different items which have problems and being unable to sort which ones are causing the problems (seen many mods die because of catastrophic CTD bugs because they added too much junk at once and didnt know what was causing the problem).

The benefits of creating a new package and setting it up yourself:

• You control the file structure for the mod since you're setting it up - Means you can make a more "logical" structure for you to understand where your assets are instead of relying on other people's sometimes confusing structures.
• You can go through and sort out any potential bugs/conflicts when doing this because you can (and should) add each component piece by piece testing them in between of adding more functions/features to the new package. - This game is very sensitive; as such adding tons of stuff at once usually results in at least one fatal flaw existing and if you add too much at once it's nearly impossible to hunt down the cause (especially if there is more than one cause).  Always go slow and add piece by piece, it might be slower but it'll save you tons of headaches later if you do encounter a crash since you *know* from previous tests that everything else before the latest thing worked fine and stable.
• You can eliminate excessive/un-required files from the modification, thus improving performance (load times in particular) and mod file size. - When people create "sub-mods" they often times leave behind tons of files from the original mods which they don't use, particularly when they just merge pieces from several mods they tend to have massive mod sizes which in turn hurts the performance of the game/mod.  The more crap the game has to load the more resources are being chugged for things that it won't even use, coupled with the longer load time and mod filesize it just isnt a good practice.  Far better to make your own pack to ensure there are not such files cluttering the thing up.
• You don't have to go through later on and "clean" the modification up, since you setup the structure and added only what you needed, in theory adding things in as described above will save you tons of time/effort since every file you have is required and every file is neatly stored in the same structure; Also you won't have to remove un-required files later which takes a ton of time to do later (which is why many sub-mods never do it and still in their latest releases continue to have the "core" files from the original mod). - Having everything neatly structured means less effort when it comes to modding the scripts, finding files, etc; You know where you put fire stuff for ex, so it's simply finding that one folder instead of possibly 4-5 of them and figuring out what is where.  This fact also means you're less likely to encounter errors in said scripts because of invalid/incorrect paths since the directories used would be universal and logical for each grouping of assets.
• Problem solving with a "clean" logical structure is much much easier since you know everything you've added, and if you add them piece-by-piece you're ensured that you can say "well it worked yesterday before I added XYZ" so you know where you should look for the problem, and could remove the offending item(s) to verify that they were the problem.  This alone would save tons of time for you in development of a mod.

Even if you make a new structure with a new package it would still be a sub-mod if you're using a good chunk of another mod within your package, so it should still be considered/treated as the sub-mod it still is.  The good thing is though, as you progress if you continue to make it more it's own mod, and give it custom content unique to it and it alone you'll already have the structure in place and all the "core" work sorted out so as you "phase" out the sub-mod content and become your own mod, you won't have to go through doing all that later.  That in of it's self saves a massive bit of time.

Just my advice and the reason I think this way, it's up to you if you wish to invest the time in doing it.  From my experience the invested time in the short-term is more than made up for in the long-term from not having to do it later when the mod tends to get more complex and has far more assets to have to manage.  Knocking the "tedious" stuff out early just tends to make more sense when it comes to development in general as opposed to after you've made a ton of content in various places and have a really complicated mod to try to "Clean" and sort.

Goodluck to you.

[mr matt5432123]

Thank you both for the info, I think it's really gonna have a very good impact on my mod and will make it much more enjoyable!

[mr matt5432123]

 

Well, this problem continues to happen no matter what I try, it's as if whenever I copy&paste the prototypes and map just reset. I wasn't able to create a mod in the editor so I created the folder externally, could that be the source of the problem?

 

[MikeyPI]

Are you running the editor as an administrator?  It seems extremely unusual that you cannot create the new mod in the editor... Creating a new mod makes the "basic" package for you, what you're doing basically is to create the folder but in order to have the required files I'm guessing you've sourced them from an existing package?

Do yourself a favor and try this:

Download another mod (not LA and not your custom mod of it).  Install said mod, try to load it in the editor and verify that one loads properly and correctly.  If it does then chances are unfortunately you probably replaced the files in your tgt mod with the original files somehow (most likely thanks to having identical structures in the original LA and your custom mod of it).  If that's the case hopefully you have a backup elsewhere rather than just the modification as you're working on it in the game folders... Always remember to keep at least 2 copies of a mod you're tinkering with, one which you're screwing with, and at least one other one in a package (rar/zip) whatever stowed elsewhere just in case you have a massive disaster.

If you happen to have a backup for the mod somewhere if I were you I'd trash both the LA mod and the custom mod you've made on it, delete them completely out of your game folder;  Once this is completed use the backup copy and install only the modified custom mod  from the backup you have previously created.  If that custom mod loads fine and works fine then you've lost a bit of work but not the whole thing at least.  From there you can reinstall the original la mod back in and ensure they don't cross one another again but since idk what caused it I can't say for sure it won't re-occur.

[mr matt5432123]

yes, other mods load fine, and when I tried to create the mod in the editor it did create the mod, but it did not show up in my mods folder. Though I do not think I was running as admin. I will try that. But I know for sure I did not overwrite my mod files with the original LA mod because I did not have a copy the LA mod on my pc at the time other than the one I was making out to be the Edgewater submod. I hope running as admin solves the problem, but if not I suppose I will have to restart the mod as I deleted my backup right before I originally made the copy of the mod that started this whole mess, that copy was going to be my new backup.

Either way, at least I didn't finish the mod and have this happen then. I now know what it means to "learn from our mistakes." 

[mr matt5432123]

ok, finally I believe it's fixed. thanks. I will post here again if the problem happens again but I think it's fixed now.