The empires.fgd included in all of the 2.25x installers is not up-to-date. An updated version that was supposed to make it into the SVN on time before 2.25 never did, but it should be included in the next release of Empires by default. However, even in the updated one, I identified several problems. When Mark IIs were removed from the game, some of the chassis shifted upward, causing the Chassis IDs to become invalid. The same thing happened to Weapon IDs when Improved Standard Cannon was removed. I updated the emp_vehicle_preset entry so that the proper IDs and labels for both Chassis and Weapons are correct. I also fine tuned a few things to make them easier on the eyes when looking in the lengthy SmartEdit drop-down menus. There shouldn't be any issues with vehicle spawning now - you should get the correct chassis, engine, armor, and weapon every time. I have updated the Chassis IDs and Weapon IDs on the wiki. As well, some changes that didn't make it into the 2.25 installer have been re-added, such as parenting, fade max distance, and fade min distance for ammo crates and health crates. Feel free to download the updated/fixed fgd: http://empires.martinpace.com/releases/fgd/empires.fgd_225x-05162010_jshandy.rar After the next release, you should proceed with using the empires.fgd included in /SourceMods/Empires/mapsrc/, as it will be the most up-to-date version. I will continue updating this thread as changes are made that prove beneficial to mappers in the interim.
I would suggest that the devs simply comment things out instead of completely removing, as has been done with vehicle boosts or aircraft weapons and such. This will prevent things like the drop down menus I prepared for the FGD from needing to be rewritten every time you release a patch or version of empires.
I should note that the one I released yesterday still had some problems. I had made my fixes to an outdated FGD instead of the latest one (mostly due to how badly Keef fails at communication - seriously, a monkey with a pen and paper could do better). So I grabbed the one from the SVN, reconciled the differences & implemented some of the fixes & tweaks in the SVN one (which had numerous problems & a few entries completely missing). I updated the original post with an updated download of the FGD. Please use it instead of the one I released yesterday. I'll be giving this FGD to Keef or whoever to commit to the devs' SVN.
If they comment out the entire entry, it will still screw up the menus. Entries that are commented out are ignored completely and won't be assigned an index. Likewise, it would be impossible to avoid screwing up the menus if something is added.
