Efile building / converting tutorial

[Major Heinz]

I will make three posts with my three diffenerent question because I find this more clearly arranged and hope that I will not get crapped on.

I am on a point on which I am considering to converting the PG2 Efile RSF to Open General. But there are so many questions for me that I think that I mess this up without helping. And I do not want to bother you with lasting questions. Is there anywhere a tutorial for Efile designers?
Like-
- how can I change units with missing icons
- how can I add new units to the efile
- how can I change datas like price or special attributes like z or q
- what I also have to change (difference between PG2 Efile and OG Efile)

[lvjtn]

generally speaking, if you have such a basic questions, maybe it's not worth to work on an efile right now. efile maintenance is not an easy job, and we saw so many guys (some of them being veteran guys with lots of experience in design) abandoning their efiles when they realized how difficult and complex task is this. i don't think you are ready to understand and apply improved opengen efile features like front/faction, transport/hangar weight, if you still have problem how to add a new unit or edit a field

otoh you can create a copy and practice a lot. and no, there is no detailed manual explaining the efile maintenance. Guille's pdf manuals focus on campaign/scenario making. and that's exactly what is the recommended way: create lots of campaigns and scenarios for an existing efile, and when learnt lots of things, you can try to make your own efile, if you still think it's necessary

[Major Heinz]

Yes, you are right. There are so many Efiles here and there were a point as I said to Randowe that I can not understand why everybody is making his own Efile
But now I know it and want to tell you why.
I had played 10 years with only one Efile and some things that I have seen in the OG Efiles that I have tested were really annoying to me. It is debatable what is historical more correctly or better, but it is more than an acquired taste to play and create with the OG Efiles if you have played 10 years the same PG2 Efile. (And I mean not the diefferences in the games and the new features in OG.)I have converted my soviet campaign into Atomic Efile and I am building an allied campaign with Randowe at the moment. I will build further campaigns in the future for non RSF Efiles if somebody will ask me. But for my new planned campaign I have something special in mind. A campaign consisting almost only pocket fights. This will be challenging for me as the designer, this will be challenging for the AI. If the terrain is also difficult it would be still more challenging. So it would be a nice idea to use a Efile in which I am familiar. Besides I do not know who will be interested in the campaign. I have the feeling that some Efile makers will publish only their own campaigns or maybe they won`t like it at the end and would not publish it. Therefore my time is too good. Also I play maybe 2-3 campaigns a year because more playing leads to losing interest in these games for a while. So to check out all Efiles to see which is my favour and which not will last several years. Also I have spend ten years in the Raiders Forum with over 1800 posts and lot of good memories. It would be really sad, if the Forum will be closed someday because it is nearly dead. In some way I can understand Rayydar why he never went with the RSF into OG himself. But with an OG version of the RSF and some converted RSF campaigns the Forum could become livelier again. I think these semtimental reasons are most important for me. Maybe someone can understand my feelings, why I want to make a new Efile even as a OG newbie.
Anyway, I will try learning by doing and hopefully learn something.
I will leave the Efile mostly well enough alone. Only change it to High-Price, add some units, edit the captured units, special abilities and stuff like this.

[lvjtn]

Anyway, I will try learning by doing and hopefully learn something.

that's the recommended way

if you want to learn the modern opengen features, just investigate existing efiles, try to change a few things and see what happens. you can't do anything wrong: you can download the original efiles from the repository anytime. these efiles have the most opengen features: basekorp, kaiser, lupo, lxf, nokorp, son

or i can recommend to use my test efile (see my signature, click on the button an dl the efile). it's very small, so you can easily investigate it, but it has 50+ test scenarios and a test campaign with more or less good descriptions, by editing the efile you can immediately see what's changed