[MERGED] Soldier Diaries 1.0

[ivandogovich]

Just chiming in here:  You guys are doing awesome!  I love the analysis and thought that is going on!  Its going to make a great mod even better!

[DracoGriffin]

Just chiming in here:  You guys are doing awesome!  I love the analysis and thought that is going on!  Its going to make a great mod even better!

Hey Ivan, Shoes said you did a lot of the UFOpedia work; did you happen to look at the suggested changes I made? You just have to change the compare.txt to .htm, as not able to upload .htm here, and it's just a WinMerge report (makes it VERY easy to read the differences, if you haven't tried WinMerge before!).

I'd love your input since you put so much sweat into the entries.

[Shoes]

I was trying to slim down the variety. It looks odd to have many categories with few items in them, ideally you have a medium number of categories with a medium number of entries. I'm not entirely sure how it looks for number/category right now though.

Thinking more about it now, we might want to replace commendations with ribbons, actually (I think there is only one with the name commendation right now). Commendations is already the name of the mod/UFOPaedia section and kind of the general term for all of these. Ribbons would fit well between citations and medals.

Badges.. Actually we could keep badges for certain "role" things. Grenadier, field surgeon, maybe a breacher badge for close range kills and a sniper badge for long range. Kind of a way to make the different soldier roles more official.

Ribbons replacing commendations sounds great, and badges being for roles sounds great too.

I wouldn't want to cut out cool commendation names for the sake of categories, but I also don't want a million categories. For example, I would like to see a Crux peppered in with all the Crosses. That's really the only example I can think of ;p I would also be on board in "Titles" being changed to fit the categories; some of the names are simply an example of my lack of creativity!

[ivandogovich]

Hey Ivan, Shoes said you did a lot of the UFOpedia work; did you happen to look at the suggested changes I made? You just have to change the compare.txt to .htm, as not able to upload .htm here, and it's just a WinMerge report (makes it VERY easy to read the differences, if you haven't tried WinMerge before!).

I'd love your input since you put so much sweat into the entries.

Looks good Draco!  I did all my work in EN-US, so those entries are often copied over to EN-GB.  Not sure if that is an impact or not.  I also, could Anglicize the spellings etc, properly, because my brain refuses to work that way. XD

[wsmithjr]

@wsmithjr: Alright.. I think I know what's happening here. It's not that you have an old ruleset lying about, it's that you have too new of a ruleset! You have downloaded the Nightly for July 13th, but you have Commendations for May 25th. That's almost two months of updates in the Nightly that aren't in Commendations.

Particularly, on June 21st, SupSuper changed how languages are handled and, amongst other things, moved STR_MODS_TOOLTIP, STR_1_5X and STR_GAME_TYPE from bin/standard/xcom1/Language/en-US.yml to bin/common/Language/en-US.yml. So when you put the "old" Commendations executable in your folder, it looks in the wrong file and can't find what it's looking for.

Honestly I'm surprised the game managed to work with this setup The good news is that Shoes just updated Commendations to July 22nd. I suggest you grab the July 22nd Nightly, the July 22nd Commendations and give that a try

Thanks so much for the help.  Got the new version and everything seems fine -- no errors in the .log file.  I had the right idea by trying to get an old nightly, but the oldest I could get was still 7 days too new.  I think it might have actually been less frustrating had it not worked at all.

Maybe once we get a new standard version, these kinds of issues will not be a problem.  In the interim it might be really helpful for mod authors to make sure the proper nightly is available for their mods somewhere, but I'm certain that would be a lot of extra work for everybody so I guess we just need to live with it.

Anyway, I appreciate all the time and effort everybody has taken to help.  Think I can take a pill and relax for a while and take my frustrations out on some Sectoids.  Though, knowing my skill level at the game, it'll probably just add to them.

Again, thanks.

[Arthanor]

Ribbons replacing commendations sounds great, and badges being for roles sounds great too.

I wouldn't want to cut out cool commendation names for the sake of categories, but I also don't want a million categories. For example, I would like to see a Crux peppered in with all the Crosses. That's really the only example I can think of ;p I would also be on board in "Titles" being changed to fit the categories; some of the names are simply an example of my lack of creativity!

I've started listing alternate names for some commendations on the spreadsheet, using badges for roles, ribbons instead of commendations, etc. Keeping some variety is good indeed, and I am having problems with the names too! So anyone who's up for it, feel free to make a column in the spreadsheet.

[...]
Again, thanks.

Hehe! I'm glad that worked! It is hard to keep on top of all the updates, yes. You have to get in the habit of grabbing the nightly when people release their mod. This is mostly true for mods like this one or OpenXCom extended that actually change the executable code. "Normal mods" usually are good either for the nightly or the 1.0 release and don't break very often.

[ivandogovich]

I haven't looked at the spreadsheet, but just something to be aware of when considering names. 

Most of the Medals in the UFOpedia (by this I mean the devices hanging from the ribbons) are designed around the title of the award.  Therefore if the name changes too much, a new medal would probably need to be redesigned (i.e. Athena Citation:  - designed with a nod to the goddess of wisdom and the medal uses the owl that was symbolic of Athena).

[Arthanor]

Good point! And you've done an awesome job tying the medals and their ribbons to the name of the award. Especially for crosses which are often actual crosses! I will make sure to retain the link.

Unfortunately, it kind of conflicts with the idea of having badges for roles as the graphics are not badges, but medals.. hum..

[new_civilian]

I know it has been asked before, but let me do it again for the heck of it.... Is there ANY chance to see this merged with the Extended Exe by Yankes? 

[Solarius Scorch]

I know it has been asked before, but let me do it again for the heck of it.... Is there ANY chance to see this merged with the Extended Exe by Yankes? 

FudgeDragon did it already. Apparently there were some minor technical issues, but the entire mod is still in the making, so I think it's fair chance that the merged version will be updated regularly.

[ivandogovich]

Unfortunately, it kind of conflicts with the idea of having badges for roles as the graphics are not badges, but medals.. hum..

The other thing is that all of the medals start from the ribbons.  The ones that show up on the Soldier's Record.  So any "badge" will have to include some sort of ribbon to display there properly.  So the classic "Jump Wings" of a parachutist badge would not really work. 

That said, the medallion could be redesigned for the badges to be more distinctive and look like a "badge."

[hellrazor]

I am wondering in which UFOpaedia section are you putting the Medals?

[ivandogovich]

I am wondering in which UFOpaedia section are you putting the Medals?

The way the mod currently works, it uses the HWP section with the HWPs combined with Craft above.  Shoes has recently added code to create a new "Commendations" section at the bottom of the list.

[Arthanor]

And as far as I understand it, that section only shows up if you have a ruleset that requests it. It's a nifty piece of work

@Ivan: That's true too.. Difficult.. I think all of your work should remain (because it is excellent and we need to use it all!) but maybe with some tweaks in names where graphics allow, in order to follow a "prestige/rarity" scheme, or tweaks in the conditions to obtain the medal.

For the badges, the ribbon part could be a simple pattern or monochrome that feels appropriate, but the badge graphic would be harder to come up with.. I certainly do not have your talent in making graphics.

[wsmithjr]

I've upgraded to July 22 version of Commendations.  Just noticed something with the UFOpedia.  If I click on the first line for "XCOM CRAFT, ARMAMENTS & HWPS" and then click on "Canon" and then click the Right Arrow, the next entry up is Military Cross.  However, on the UFOpedia menu, the next section should be "Heavy Weapons Platforms".  'Course, as I'm typing this it dawns on me that HWPs are not included in the first section anymore but as still labelled in that way.

Anyway, is it intentional that the order is different from the menu?  It's obviously still a work in progress, but thought I would mention it.