Strangely enough, i can write too.
In fact, everyone else has an interpretation of even numbered articles in such a blog. Once you've learned how to type your favorite alphabet and can identify text from words, instead of speaking you can express sounds by letters.
Education is a process that gives the power to share your thoughts with others. This game is no different. It tries to tell you something - you listen or you look.
STR; The cultural difference between Anglos & the rest of the world is that they think communication isn't necessarily localizable. There's more to strings than meets the reader's eyes, it can be subtle or straight, it can be wrong or bad, it can be quality or junk. Basicly, do as i did - figure out what Empire or planetary wide ability Bonuses (etc, btw) represent. But -- if you really know the game, you'll have it soooooo easy that even i can't read for you.
Why? You speak and understand and prefer another language.
ERR; A code has bugs. The only way to track the situations causing it, is to take a trace of relevant data.
Why? Don't. Submit it to the proper individual at StarDock and give them a chance to fix their own programs.
TXT; Do you know what an ASCII table is? And what the term UTF implicates? Sometimes, procedures require differently managed formats for text. These "values" are kept in a state of flux, they are dumped into a code function and processed when it matters only. Readme has been around for soooo long, nobody can resist to drag and drop a clear message for consumers in the usual root installation folder.
Why? You want to change the Star names and/or credit yourself along with StardDock staff.
TIPS; Yellow bubbles hovering around ever since comic books were invented and drawn. Hints about UI elements as a form of tutorial for reference. For example, once you known what a button does, any supplemental tip becomes worthless. Perfectly essential for real noobs.
Why? You're altering the STR files above too.
INI; Programmers nicknamed this file the boot-time configuration caller for a few good reasons, some of which; access to the externally controlled items necessary to link an OS to active routines BEFORE an executable starts, control over specific features employed at the user level, wrapping procedural (but linear) activities WHEN the code has defined where it goes for the current state of defaults (as in menu options) registered or where it was while it did the same. Some of us could loop it on declaration regions and slap it on modular functions but last i checked, the root of the problem is Unix and the alterations necessary would send Microsoft & plenty more on a spiraling fall into bankruptcy.
Why? You know exactly what each of these tags mean.
SAV; Uneditable, and if you do i'll be the first to watch and laugh when you fail or succeed. Oh, but there IS a structure, i even have it right here. Without the source code mind you. It's proprietary in a sense that ALL editable files are saved into it in such a manner that every game you played is replayable. It's packed and compressed enough to encrypt even the header itself. Mnemonics & hexadecimal encodings are, by definition, read by a machine and spoiled by humans.
Some people are engineers and they jmp at registry locations and memory slots. Some people are hackers or crackers and they peek or poke at values. None compiled GC games.
Why? You want to cheat your way into better results.
Upcoming -- in threads 3c,d... DDS, FX, ShpCFG, GC2**, XML+!+, etc.
