Data\Interface\KnowledgeMap.ini

Moonhead

In all those years of modding, I never did much, if anything, with Data\Interface\KnowledgeMap.ini

This tutorial informs me there is a certain importance to it: not setting it up properly causes errors in FLSpew. But then Adoxa says (in the same thread) his plugin fixes/blocks these errors in FLSpew, and there don’t seem to be any other consequences.

Anyway, does someone know what this file actually does? Is there any vital reason why I should bother to edit KnowledgeMap.ini?

With custom factions, and a bunch of star Systems (featuring Asteroid Fields and Nebulas) it seems a lot of extra work. So if ignoring it doesn’t lead to instability, or to cosmetic ugliness (like names not showing up etc.) I’d be happy to just do that.

Thanks in advance!

robocop

I thought this was where the NPCs got their information when selling you the location of a jumphole, base, etc.

for example perhaps it updates your visits entries in your player file by adding the following information

Map = 133262, hi02_to_ew03_hole, 1 <== what the npc is selling
Map = 133262, hi02, 1 <== visit for the hi02 hole in ew03??
Map = 133262, ew03, 1 <== visit for the ew03 hole in hi02??

Just a guess, i’ve never really messed with it either other than to experiment. I don’t remember the results of my experimentation.

DwnUndr

Good info here: http://freelancercommunity.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=355

Moonhead

@ Robocop: thanx for refreshing that part! I actually found that out years ago, but it sunk into my unconsciousness. Now I still gotta find out the part about the factions.

@ DwnUndr: thanx, reading now… [EDIT] I read that yesterday. Good stuff, yet I had already found out that Field names need to reoccur, and where (unless, iirc, the vignettes are of the ‘open’ type - but I’m not sure whether this was just a hypothesis or an established fact) but I never involved the KnowledgeMap.ini in it… Well, it’s good to know it just might be necessary.

The sad thing about all these recurring ids_names (factions and fields) is that it is just to decide whether the should be capitalized or not Rather a lot of work, imho. It’d be better if there would just be a some flag in FactionProp to settle this; something like:

0 = never use ‘the’
1 = use ‘the’ before the name, and ‘The’ if it’s the forst word in a sentence
2 = always use ‘The’ (like in ‘The Order’, where ‘The’ is part of the name)

Back to KnowledgeMap.ini: why are the factions mentioned in this file?

There are lines like:

Map = 196846, li_n_grp, 65
Map = 196847, li_lsf_grp, 65
Map = 196848, li_p_grp, 65
...
Map = 196895, li_n_grp, 65
Map = 196896, li_lsf_grp, 65
Map = 196897, li_p_grp, 65
```Note that the second set consists of the short names. I'll be relocating these, in order to create space for more factions… I never bothered to fix these entries when I added factions in earlier mods, and I never saw it addressed in tutorials either...

Oh well, I guess I'll just stick to the conventions.