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[Greiger]

So with bugfixing versions coming out again, modders have to convert raws with every release.  When your mods are in your own file that's all well and good, but what about when something with your mod requires you to apply an edit to a vanilla object?  Or even worse an entire group of vanilla objects?  Sometimes you can just overwrite the vanilla file.  But sometimes there are new tags added and you can't do that.

So it sounds like a program that could look at the raw files, look for particular tags and apply changes based on simple predetermined rules without otherwise changing the file could be quite a timesaver for modders every bugfix release.

I vaguely recall there was once a program specifically designed to do this with DF raw files, but it was outdated even two years ago, and I can't seem to find it anymore anyway.  But really I can't imagine DF would be the only place where a text editor with functionality like that would be useful, so surely that can't be the only one.

Does anybody know of any programs that can do something like this?  Perhaps a Notepad++ plugin of some kind even?

[Darkgamma]

If you're on Windows, try WinMerge. You'll still have to do it manually, but it works

[Greiger]

That does indeed appear to be quite useful.  At the very least it can spot any differences between old raws and new and identify when it is perfectly safe to just overwrite.  Seems to be able to do something at least similar to what I want as well, just need to learn to use it.

Thanks much.

[Dirst]

Does anybody know of any programs that can do something like this?  Perhaps a Notepad++ plugin of some kind even?

You can do regular expression search/replace in Notepad++, which should get you 95% or more to any single tag change you wanted.  You can record macros to string together a bunch of those.

That said, a purpose-built tool for this sort of thing would be really, really helpful.

In my case, a mod I'm working on (very slowly) inserts minerals that are supposed to mimic the layer stones.  I don't mind making a different version for vanilla and a couple popular tilesets, but it is a pain to hunt down the tile character and colors for 24 different materials.

[BigD145]

Notepad++ can do comparisons. http://sourceforge.net/projects/npp-compare/

[Greiger]

I kinda figured Notepad ++ had to have that functionality, but I couldn't find it.   Good to know I can just use that as well.

[Cobbler89]

Question: If a creature is defined in file A.txt, is it possible by any means to add or modify tags to this creature in a second file B.txt? Because if it were, that would greatly simplify this whole issue... just put all the modifications in separate files instead of the vanilla raws and poof, the worst that can happen is vanilla adds something you need to modify, not that it updates something you're already overriding (since the updated version will be equally overwritten). I know that there's some interesting stuff going on with modifying an existing set of tags when one creature takes tags from another (e.g. giant and man versions), but I don't know if any similar functionality exists for modifying the same creature.

[palu]

Creature variations, though I'm not sure if they can do tiles. Would be a real pain making all those though.

[Cobbler89]

I thought (though maybe this just shows how little I know about modding) that creature variations would create a whole new creature based on the first one (if the first creature is fully defined and not a template of some sort)?

[Dirst]

I thought (though maybe this just shows how little I know about modding) that creature variations would create a whole new creature based on the first one (if the first creature is fully defined and not a template of some sort)?

You have the intuition for this correct: a creature variation is a separate creature.  A good example is the Olm Man (see the raws on the wiki).  It copies all the tags from the Olm, applies a couple creature variation templates to it, and then includes miscellaneous additional tags that override what was copied from the Olm.  Importantly, the original Olm is left unchanged and could appear on the map.

So, creature variations are a good fit if you want to create a slew of new creatures in a theme (maybe a "mutant" variation), but not a good fit for changing existing creatures.