Arcen Games

General Category => AI War II => AI War II - Modding => : rogerbacon April 29, 2020, 11:41:05 AM

: Simple mod question on building the AIWarExternalCode.dll
: rogerbacon April 29, 2020, 11:41:05 AM
I made a simple change in Hacking_GrantShipLine.GetCanBeHacked to allow MobileSupportFleetFlagship fleets to hack ARS. I compiled and the code went into AI War 2\GameData\ModdableLogicDLLs. However the change does not show up. I even tried a simple change to the rejection text to see if my change was showing up but I stil saw teh default text for the rejection message.

Is there something else I have to do? Manually move the DLL? Build in release mode? Anything?
: Re: Simple mod question on building the AIWarExternalCode.dll
: Draco18s April 29, 2020, 02:30:47 PM
I'm unsure as to the extent of what modifications can actually be made with the external project (I've only messed with mapgen).

But to answer this part:
Is there something else I have to do? Manually move the DLL? Build in release mode? Anything?
Nope, just do a clean build and it should load up just fine.
: Re: Simple mod question on building the AIWarExternalCode.dll
: BadgerBadger April 29, 2020, 08:57:48 PM
Go look through your steam install for all the copies of the external data DLL and make sure they are replaced by the new copy you compiled.
: Re: Simple mod question on building the AIWarExternalCode.dll
: rogerbacon April 29, 2020, 09:12:45 PM
Go look through your steam install for all the copies of the external data DLL and make sure they are replaced by the new copy you compiled.

That was it. Thanks.
For others reading this, there is a second copy located at AI War 2\ReliableDLLStorage\ArcenDLLs. That needs to be manually copied over. The modding tutorial didn't show that. It was probably changed at some point and the video wasn't updated.
: Re: Simple mod question on building the AIWarExternalCode.dll
: BadgerBadger April 29, 2020, 11:52:10 PM
The tutorial videos are extremely out of date at this point, unfortunately
: Re: Simple mod question on building the AIWarExternalCode.dll
: x4000 May 05, 2020, 09:58:55 AM
Yep, sorry about that.

The game does only read from AI War 2\GameData\ModdableLogicDLLs during runtime.  However, the extra copy in AI War 2\ReliableDLLStorage\ArcenDLLs is what is compiled-against.  It would be how your external visual would be compiled against your regular external one.  If you made a change that vis requires, then that would cause basically the main external to compile, but not vis. And that's probably what happened in your case.