oy!!!! i am so lost, do you think you could help me out here. Mind if I send you the zip folder of what ive done and you could change them for me lol..
Still cant get it, do I need to use the convert.exe file that comes with the sin mod package?? and lets say I have this file:

abilityhowto.entity

what would I type to be exact. And as well do I go into my dos
cmd in run.

Yes, go to Start > run, type in cmd

Then navigate to the directory that has the convertdata.exe (and the files you want to convert), then type in "convertdata.exe abilityhowto.entity abilityhowto.entity"

Basically, the exe takes 2 parameters: input file followed by output file. The above command will tell it to convert the file with the .entity extension into binary and save it with the same name (overwriting the previous).

You can batch convert all your files by using convertdata.exe *.entity *.entity, for example.

Hrm, I'll take a look at the usage when I get home, there might be another parameter to use.

And yes, the files need to be in the same folder, unless you want to manually type out the exact path (not recommended since it's long )

It's explained in pdf file that comes with the mod tools. You missed 1st argument - 'entity' in this case. Also using the same name for source and destination file is probably not the best thing to do. If the converter can handle such situation nicely, you will lose text file.

I.e.

convertdata.exe entity AbilityAntiMatterDetonate.entity AbilityAntiMatterDetonate-bin.entity

Then of course rename binary version, before putting it into game's mod directory.

You should write some simple script to automate things.

Also, if you spent time in console (which under win nt line is incredibly pathetic), I'd suggest looking for some replacement of sorts - like i.e. Far Manager, or if you prefer unixish approach - msys/mingw or cygwin.

wooohoooo, it worked!!! yes yes yes

THANKS

I'm having a problem where I can get it to convert but then windows says that the program stopped working and I end with an empty .entity file.

bump, does no one know why it may be crashing the command prompt?

Hey all,

The blank .entity file may be caused by you not putting in a filename for the output.

I discovered that when trying to get the damn thing to convert a bunch of files at once

using the * wildcard does not work for me when trying to batch convert.

I really dont want to have to convert them all by hand...anyone know how to get it to convert all of the .entity at the same time?

http://nickciske.com/tools/binary.php

lol might help id dont know

Or you could use the batch converter i made on this thread.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/308863

patriotmining, sins WILL WORK with TXT entity files, it just loads a bit quicker and uses a bit less ram loading BIN files, and if you want to convert entire mods to/from txt/bin there is my text-bin gui to help.

harpo

 

As far as I remember they were using txt files in the beginning, but went to bin to reduce the loading time.