A Modding Guide

Thanks Cari for your efforts on this.

This will be my 1st 'modding' attempt of any game, which will keep me interested much longer than most other games I play. Sweet.

Thank you Cari, great guide!

I noticed Planet Improvements are not mentioned, perhaps those are in fact trivial to modify.
Is there anything we have to take into account when adding a new improvement so the AI will use it properly?

Cool, Handy

Thanks

PlanetImprovements arent' in there? I'll have to check.  I know I wrote that section...

Cari, you are by far the best! I love this, great guide and finally found out the values of all the numbers I had questions on! Can't wait to start trying to add in all the little bits I found throughout the game files that aren't being used like improvements!

this should go in the modding forum, yes?

Also, the universe section of scenarios seems misleading. It says they are 0-100 values with most of them having a range of -50% to +50%. That's not entirely correct. From my actual testing, the value range is much larger and even supports negative numbers. The percentage range is very misleading in that it's not a percent modifier like many would think. For example, a 0 value for morale does not reduce morale by 50% like you may guess from reading.

Question: For abilities, is there an actual reason why the Bonus Units are always aftter BonusOption2 and before any BonusOption3 (if it's available)?

Thanks for getting the planetary improvements info into the guide... Although it saddens me to find that I can't mod the Initial Colony to double as an Orbital Fleet Manager

Nice guide.

But I have one question. What is the purpose of the op-line under [EVENT#] in scenarios?
It is used in some of the campaign-missions.

Okay, a few questions:

Is there currently, or will there be a list or some sort of compliation that gets put out of things that just won't work when trying to mod? I know this is a big task to sort out, do to the fact there are many ideas that could come up. Also, and this ties into the first one, when 1.2 is released, will there be any type of files that say could provide a bunch of basic information for the moding, like this guide, say "Do's & Don'ts", I found that when working with Invasions you can not make the min and max penality the same or will result in a crash...Also that there does seem to be a max percentage that it caps at, I have set the paramater from 99 - 100, and also to 299 - 300 percent and still class ten planets go down to 4 - 6...
Is there a way to get an insvasion tactic to do its damage even if you don't win to planet buildings or quality? I know this could really suck because you could have basically suicide ships that will go after worlds just to ruin them, but if you don't have a ship protecting it, thats kind of your fault

CariElf:


I was wondering if you have, or could, write a guide on creating new weaponFX? Obviously they're .x models, but i can't seem to figure out the layout. what keyframes are used? where should the effect begin and end? I.E. for a missile effect, should the missile start at grid 0,0,0 and move to what? 0,0,10? And over how many keyframes? same for a detonation effect. And for a laser, should the effect model be 10m long? does it matter? where should it be placed?

Note:
I'm using lightwave to make my effects, but it really doesn't matter, as long as i know where to start and stop the effects and what not.

Yeah! Another Lightwave modder in the ranks!. What version ya running? I only have the 7.5d version though v9 is out there and doing great things.. I need the $$ to get that puppy..

I tried to recreate the Doomsday Machine from Trek and have it available for Huge ship size for Custom Race but it never shows up. hopefully CariElf's Guide will answer that question for me ( Thanks CariElf!!! )

With all the debate about the Terror Stars I am surprised no one has just made a .x version of the Deathstar and imported that..
it would be a start at anyrate. Plus I would love to see them start modding the styles of the Starbases. I find it hard to believe that every race would have exactly the same styled bases.
Hopefully that will show up in 1.3 hehehe..

i'm using LW 8.5, i've imported many ships into the game, no problems. I hadn't realized 9.0 was already released!? i thought it was a few months away. Guess i have to upgrade.

EDIT: i just checked, 9.0 isn't available yet... er, well more precisely it's available for pre-upgrade. Meaning it's not been completely released yet, as i thought it's a few months away.

I thought it was out been reading the Newtek Forums and they have a bunch of folks posting images with the nodes etc. Prolly beta testers I guess. No big deal.. hehe..

Still reading the mod guide giving me some nice insights on stuff. Still will have to figure out importing .x for custom race ships. Any chance of creating a quick LW tutorial on how your doing this. I'm saving .x out thru Modeler currently haven't tried to save it out with layout. will have to pull out that hardcopy manual again and see if I can put nulls in through modeler instead of through layout. I can't remember if there was a way to do that or not. It's a breeze in Layout.

This is the Doomsday Machine model that I did.

Okay, I have a question. I am currently testing out changing up the events.xml file. First, I'm just changing up values for currently written events. However, I'm running into a serious problem. The game event screen shows up on one event as "+-6% Morale Bonus" and when I check the colony, the actual value of the morale bonus is -1. I've done this six times with the same result each time. I'm using the Pirate/Criminal event. Can anyone comment on why this is happening? I'm using the exact same terminology as it appears in other events yet it comes up all screwy.

To Starlost & LogicSequence

I've had a crack at modding Galciv2 with some success (for a novice) but wot i'm really looking for is a way to get into creating the ship models, skins etc. I found the lightwave website and had a look around, but I have no idea where to start or what to do.?

Can you recommend any sites that can help a beginner, with limited knowledge, to get into this sort of thing. I'd really like to be able to bring ship mods to Galciv2 without having to plead others to do it for me (and expand my brain a bit).

3 things I woul dlike to mod...

1) ability of minors to expand/invade
2) attaching some AI to custom races without substituting for existing ones
3) playing a game with 20 races.... all th emajors, some minors and some custom ones

To Starlost & LogicSequence I've had a crack at modding Galciv2 with some success (for a novice) but wot i'm really looking for is a way to get into creating the ship models, skins etc. I found the lightwave website and had a look around, but I have no idea where to start or what to do.? Can you recommend any sites that can help a beginner, with limited knowledge, to get into this sort of thing. I'd really like to be able to bring ship mods to Galciv2 without having to plead others to do it for me (and expand my brain a bit).

well for starters Lightwave is A. not free, it's very expensive, certainly not something u want to buy to play around modding with. and B. Lightwave wasn't what the stardock guys used to make GC2 ships, it just so happens that you CAN USE lightwave to do it as well. Lightwave has a pretty hard learning curve, so if you're just starting out, i'd try something simpler, and more... free. Light the 30 day trial of 3D MAX, or perhaps Milkshape 3D. The latter of which is available for free, the MAX version is a 30 day trial. But the important thing is you need a .X file export plugin for these programs, so you can turn your model into something the game can read.

Now if you're new to modeling completely, it's a pretty tall order, so u'll have to start out with some tutorials and figure out exactly how modeling in 3D works. you can get some 3D MAX tutorials here: Link. If you still want to try Lightwave and somehow get a copy, you can get some tutorials from the Lightwave Group: Link. basically you can just google for tutorials on whatever 3d program you end up with.

Skinning and texturing is all part of modeling, there's no use me going into all of it b/c i would be writing a tutorial and there are pleanty out there you'll be able to find. It's just gonna take some learning if you've never used 3d modeling programs be4.

Best of Luck to ya! hope this helped

Hmm.. I have a problem with modding music.. Just from sense I got my own music, made a folder in the mods folder based on the "Default" mod called Test, and so i put in replacement of Exploration in the music folder and MainTheme in event music, and they have their origiinal names.. But, it doesnt work (yes i do load up the mod..) could help me plz?

to LogicSequence,

thanks for the advice. It appears my bro has a copy of 3D max knocking about so I guess I'll start there

One more thing for the "Things I'de like to mod" list:

Could we make it so the game will read STARS.TXT from a mods folder first?

I think this has already been said somewhere, but it would be nice to have the tech tree screen be able to draw two techs leading to one tech nicely, because in function it works fine, but on the tech tree screen both required techs each lead to the tech they're both needed for individually.
Obviously not an essential thing though, and I see it could be quite complex if you had a lot of techs crossing over each other.

Also, is there any way to disable tech stealing either in the game or via modding of some kind?
And if there isn't, would setting espionage to a substantial negative modifier have any effect? Forgive me if this question has been asked before, but I couldn't find it anywhere.

I would make a new post, but the forum seems to be grumpy and won't let me make a new post.

Is there anyway to mod the probability of a non-choice event happening? Like the "[Race Name] will grow in strength 1% until it is strongest race" thingy, i like that one because it gives me a reason to genocide minor races
or the Minor race stealing techy thingy and the precursor ship thingy.

o.k. some one kinda asked this allready, but here goes. i would like to create new ship hulls for the game and im unsure how to do it. im a lightwave user (version 8). i made a basic model, exported it to .x with a third party exporter, for an initial experiment i copied the s0_tiny model with its texture map to the mod folder, then i just replace the .x file with the one i created, then hmmm nothing it not work the ship is on the list but no model no nothing. i guess im doing something wrong but not know what. how do the texture maps work? i got 3 png files 1 tex, 1 bump, and 1 luminosity. does the exporter convert them too? and what is the .dds file i got no idea on that. my ultimate goal is to add the the current ship hulls not replace exsisting ones but dunno how to do that lol. any help or tips or web addresses with guides?