[V3.0] What Changed in entitygroups.xml — Text Format Becomes Proper XML Elements

entitygroups.xml has had its entry syntax completely overhauled from a text format to proper XML elements (a diff of roughly 58,000 lines).

Main Changes

• Entry notation changed from text → XML elements
  • Old: zombieBoe (probability omitted) / zombieBiker, .3 (probability given as a comma-separated value)
  • New: <e n="zombieBoe" /> / <e n="zombieBiker" p="0.3" />
  • There are only two attributes: n (entity name) and p (probability, 0–1). A shorthand like .3 with a leading dot is normalized to 0.3
• The header comment legend was updated (e = entity / n = name of entity / p = probability)
• A UTF-8 BOM was added at the start of the file
• The <entitygroup name="..."> group elements and group names are unchanged (only the way the contents are written has changed)
• The old format is described as “backward compatible for the time being,” but the file itself has already fully migrated to the new format

Impact on MODs

• Any xpath that appended or modified text nodes (text()-based approaches, inserting bare-word lines) will all miss. You need to rewrite them to append <e n="..." /> child elements.
• While backward compatibility remains in effect, appending bare words may still work, but since it will break when compatibility is eventually dropped, we recommend migrating to the <e> format.

Reference: Example Diff

    <entitygroup name="ZombiesAll">
-       zombieBoe
-       zombieBiker, .3
-       zombieJanitor, .2
+       <e n="zombieBoe" />
+       <e n="zombieBiker" p="0.3" />
+       <e n="zombieJanitor" p="0.2" />

* Based on an investigation immediately after applying the experimental version (equivalent to B252).

---

Related: List of MOD-making articles