Guess what's back?

[DCoder]

I just successfully forced the game to load my custom dialog instead of an existing one. This technique can be used to improve other dialogs as well, so yeah, fancy UI additions can happen in the future (Crap Engineers? Harvesters Immune? Destroyable Bridges? A checkbox for the AI Unit Cloning Bug fix? Who knows?)

What already works:

• The checkbox does control the generation of Urban Areas, as it says on the tin.
  
• RMGMD.ini → [General] → GenerateUrbanAreas=y/n is read and used as the initial value of the checkbox. If it's not set, the checkbox starts unchecked. This didn't work before, and is the reason for a couple RMG IEs that the testers got. The checkbox's state is loaded from the ini only the first time you open the RMG, after that it saves its state until you exit the game.
  
• The strings used for text/tip are obviously CSF'd. The GUI: vs STT: separation is all over the game, it's not something I came up with.

What doesn't:

• The list of buildings/units used for this is still hardcoded to the TS stuff and causes IEs if they don't exist. This will be rectified in the near future.

[Marshall]

Awesome.

Slightly off-topic perhaps, but as Ares will be including gui additions that are automatically included, I'm guessing that it's up to the modder to include the string labels for such gui additions. Would it be of benefit for Launch Base to automatically add such string labels where the modder has forgotten to do so?

[MRMIdAS]

Ares can bypass the CSF alltogether anyway (or it will do) so the extra CSF is unnecessary.

[DCoder]

I'll probably use expandmd02.mix or Ares.mix to bundle whatever additional resources are necessary. Also, I think I should make additions like this hidden by default and rely on the modders setting an INI flag somewhere to display them.

[Marshall]

If you need to add extra resources, it would help LB if you used Ares.mix (assuming that a mod using the standard Ares will want the standard Ares.mix included automatically as well).

[Renegade]

...on the other hand, we have taught newbies for years to keep the lower range of mixes open for community projects.
It'd be kind of silly to bail out and choose something different now that we actually have something that qualifies for that range.
Not to mention that choosing 02 or 03 would mean no or little need to rewrite the mix loading routines.

My vote is for an expandmd.

[Blade]

I agree with Renegade, a vote for expandmd is a vote for progress!

[pd]

I say call it Ares.mix so it's one bunch of files.
I mean... Ares.dll, Ares.dll.inj, expandmd02.mix? blargh

The programmatical effort to realize this approaches zero.

[~Guest~]

Ares.mix is the shiiit ffs

[Renegade]

@pd: That may be true, but both Ares.dll and Ares.dll.inj are "foreign" to the game, whereas .mix files are not. (i.e. there was no traditional way to name them, whereas there is one for the mix.)

Naming it expandmd02 also has the additional effect that it's more noticeable.
expandmd02 will sit right under 1.001's expandmd01 and above any TX or mod mixes, making it very clear that next to YR 1.001, TX and SomeRandomMod, Ares is installed as well.
If you put it as Ares.mix instead, it'll be sorted elsewhere, far away from the normal stuff, ready to be forgotten.

On top of that comes an even simpler issue: Windows.
Default (read: most) Windows installations don't show file extensions to the user. Which means, if you name it Ares.mix, normal users will see

Code:

Ares
Ares.dll
Ares

While that should not be an issue for normal users, remember how Launch Base created 0 byte Syringe .exes.
Imagine a similar issue with Ares - do you really want to have a three-day-conversation with a newb because he's checking the file size of the wrong "Ares" or "Ares.dll"?
Or want them complaining that Ares.mix is corrupted when they try to open Ares.dll?
Telling you that no, they are not trying to open Ares.dll, because they can clearly see "Ares.dll" in the file listing?

Ares.dll and Ares.dll.inj are parts of the Syringe injection system.
The mix holds traditionally loaded game content.
The files serve totally different purposes, and, as such, I don't think it's really all that bad that they have totally different names.

expandmd02.mix is the way to go.

[pd]

Ares.mix is the shiiit ffs

Thanks for your argumentation.
Register and post that again with your name.

The mix holds traditionally loaded game content.

Which only gets loaded when Ares runs.
The vanilla game couldn't care less about a CSF placed in a mix file.

Default (read: most) Windows installations don't show file extensions to the user.

Gotta admit, I never think of people having file extensions OFF. >.<
I think that option should be scrapped forever.

But I get ya here, I've had such problems in the past (explaining things to people). >.<

[Marshall]

For Launch Base the only reason for requesting Ares.mix was so that mod authors could include their own version of it without there being any confusion and LBMC/LB mistaking it for a plugin MIX.

But really the mod author should be adding stuff as if it were part of their mod instead so it doesn't really make a lot of difference for LB.