So far, I've (seemingly) sorted out the conflicts between the two creature_standard files. Working on the first set of entity_defaults right now. The latter is going
a lot rougher due to quite well actually, given the sheer volume of changes I'm looking at. Actually had to revert quite a few things in this pair because I got midway through and realized I'd loused up the beginning. Or rather, in the process of looking up a tag I didn't recognize, I realized I'd made the wrong changes earlier on and couldn't undo that far back.
Still, this is almost exactly the tool I was looking for! Thank you so much.
I wouldn't say it's a painless process, but it's not a struggle either. Just have to be more diligent in looking stuff up.Edit: Have both the creature_standard and entity_default out of the way-- finished the second one less than two minutes after I'd initially posted this. If progress thus far is anything to go by, things are coming together quite nicely. Just have to work the third file into the mix and it should be golden for testing.
Double edit: Alright, we're primed and ready to test this thing. i have the original files backed up, as well as a backup of each file I've fiddled with. I realize that what I should do is test them incrementally, but I'm feeling a bit like a mad scientist... think I'll just drop the final iteration in and fire it up. If I'm not back with an update in an hour, assume everything went swimmingly. Regardless, expect an update within the next two hours or so. Thanks again for pointing me in the direction of WinMerge.
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Initial results seem promising, if not exactly on target. I've experienced one or two minor oddities, but both were the result of my forgetting to transfer over one or two of the "minor" files to the DF directory before testing. That got sorted quickly enough, but it ate up a few minutes at a time and I'm just about at the end of my window for this morning.
Limited testing seems, as I said, promising. The only issue currently outstanding is that I currently seem to be missing nestboxes when playing as the goblins, even though I know I had them before I undertook the merging process. Maybe it's just a fluke of the world generation so far that I've been unable to embark with them-- I didn't think to try that until my last gen for which I had only a couple minutes and was busy testing other aspects to worry too much about trying to build them. That'll be part of my further testing, definitely. Final, in-depth failure or success report pending until then; I should have it by tonight or tomorrow morning.