Custom race animations, and other questions

from GalCiv2 Forums
Hey everyone,

I plan to make my own custom race from scratch. New protrait, icon, hulls, components, trade animations, everything.

First off, I just started poking around in GalCiv2 and added in some new portraits and logos, but is it possible to add new animations so that, say, if the computer was this race (can the computer be custom races?) and you were to trade with it, it would play a custom animation in the trade window?

Also, is it possible to have components, or hulls, that have animated components? Thanks.




-Stick
modding
5,312 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I've currently changed all the portriats in my game. Various human pics I've put together. I'm not a 3d person so I couldn't do animations, but what I did do is make three pics. One for happy, one neutral, and one for upset. You then you use the Bink tools to turn these into .bik files and replace the ones in your /movies folder. It works just fine for the trade windows, my only problem is replacing 1_Small.bik for use in the voting screen, every time I replace that, it crashes on a vote.

If your handy with a 3d package then yep you can do your own animations. Basically you just need to export your three seperate (happy, pissed, normal) animations as .avi files, and use Bink to convert them to .bik files. Fairly easy to do.

If anyone can mod the Vote screen animations I'd like to know. At best currently I just deleted the *_Small.bik movies so it defaults to the portrait pic instead.

The only problem you will have in modding the various races is their AI. Right now even tho I've changed all the Pics, animations, abilities, techs etc for a race it will still play as the Yor does. Make a race with nothing but trading and culture techs but if he's in the same spot the Drengin used to use, he will still be an agressive warrior race.

You need to take care with where your custom races go. I made two custom military type empires, so I made sure they used the Drengin and Arcean spots for example.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hey Sicjake,

Thanks for that info. Now I know what I'm dealing with to an extent heh

Now all I have to do is try and figure out how to add new components and hulls. Should be interesting!

Also, does anyone know if it's possible to add a completely new race that even the computer can use WITHOUT replacing one of the existing ones?


Btw, here is a little something I threw togeather last night (I tried to post it in the modding forums but I have no idea what happened to my thread )









-Stick