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This new post will aim to clear up any confusion on how to active addons with STA3 CTA.

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Hello all,

I do not often post news but I feel this would be a good time to start.

I have noticed a lot of confusion regarding how to correctly activate add-ons so I will help to clear things up a little.

Lets be clear, addons MUST NOT be installed in the main STA3 CTA 1.2 folder otherwise you will more than likely break CTA and will have to reinstall CTA. They "addon/override" not "overwrite" they need to be installed in your main Mods-Rebellion v1.82 folder just like STA3 CTA 1.2.

Now thats cleared up lets get onto the addons themselves.

Addons change what is already in the main mod and the Enabledmods.txt will basically tell Sins what order to activate them.

Vanilla STA3 CTA Enabledmods.txt will look like this;

TXT
Version 0
enabledModNameCount 1
enabledModName "STA3_CTA_1.2"

Now lets use a simple addon which only changes a few files, lets say you have downloaded the Cardassian music submod. This mod mainly contains music files that share the same name as one's inside the main STA3_CTA 1.2 mod folder. We need to tell sins to overrides the files in the CTA folder.

So we need to have our Enabledmods.txt like this;

TXT
Version 0
enabledModNameCount 2
enabledModName "Cardassian-music-submod"
enabledModName "STA3_CTA_1.2"

As you can see we have increased the enabledModNameCount to 2 as there are two mods that need loading but the STA3_CTA_1.2 loads last. This is so the files in the add-on above overrides the main mod thus you will have different Cardassian music while playing as... you guessed it the Cardassians. If you add three mods you will need to change your enabledModNameCount to 3 and so on.

Oh and ALWAYS read the README with any addon you download, your less likely to come across issues.

I hope this has cleared up the confusion, remember some addons might not play well with others so best advise I can give is to try to keep similar addons to a minimum unless they were tested with the others, the mod author would usually state this if so. I must add also that if you have addons you will not be able to play with other players online UNLESS they have the same addons in the same load order as you.

If you are having issues with addons please leave the authors of the mod a messages in the comments of the respective addon as the STA3 CTA Devs will be unable to assist with bugs/issues with these community created addons.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and happy gaming.

El-Vi-Riachi



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masterdude94
masterdude94

Thanks so much for this El-Vi-Riachi! Luckily I had experience doing this before, but i know a lot of people didn't, as I have seen several people ask how to do this, both on Moddb and on Hitbox. So thank you for taking the time to do this!

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El-Vi-Riachi Author
El-Vi-Riachi

Your very welcome, glad it's helpful. I am surprised it makes sense considering i wrote it at 3am during a bout of insomnia. I don't feel too bad considering I've not slept in 24 hours hehe.

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mikey1871
mikey1871

thank you for stating the general theory as to what and how an addon is supposed to be organized and put out to players.

That being said, NONE of the following (Battlefield Refit, 2nd Dreadnaught, or Known Space) supposed "addons" are written as addons as of june 1.2015 1535 GMT. they are written as a Patch and will overwrite the 1.2 files.

also for those individuals who say... " well you just make a new folder and put the stuff you downloaded form the addon in the new folder and then put that new folder in the main mod folder.
NOT THE PLAYERS DAMN JOB EVER! I'm sorry if i'm gonna offend any maker of a supposed "addon" but their are creating conventions that all should follow, and when you write a bunch of code and you get permission from the mod's devs to Add you ideas as what is called an "Addon" then you DO NOT upload your creation in the form of a patch, that is a smack in the face to the devs, even if you are one of them cause your item not overrules whatever the team agreed for the latest published version.

So could the 3 nice people who created the 3 latest "Addons" go back and finish your job and put your work in the form of an Addon like it should be.
And if i stepped on anyone's toes, so to speak, remember you already stepped on toes by putting out your "Addon" as a patch that would overwrite other person's work.

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El-Vi-Riachi Author
El-Vi-Riachi

Unless you already have I would advise to feed this back on the comments section of each respective community mod. The other two addons are from dev members, one from myself and the other from Draconis.

These both follow the addon process detailed above. The mod creators for the other three were incontact with the dev's before they were hosted so this could be a simple error which could be corrected if they are simply folders alone.

I have never downloaded the new addons so I can't really comment on the issue fully, I will have to investigate further.

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mikey1871
mikey1871

yeah from reading what you had written i didn't think you had investigated what their actual file makeup was. I was just giving you a heads up.
i'll send a comment to each of the correct threads. thanks :)

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El-Vi-Riachi Author
El-Vi-Riachi

Well that's the thing we can support the community best we can but we have no involvement in the development of community modifications and so are unable to assist as this would be the job of the mod author if they want their addon to be successful

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martox
martox

The addons where sent to Bane so he saw exactly what where in them and he uploaded them to the addon page so if there was a problem with something I'm sure he would have told us about it, I can't speak for the others but I know he never told me anything was wrong so intill he or another dev tells me something is wrong I'm not changeing anything unless there is a bug.

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