Making a player-usable custom ship style

from GalCiv2 Forums
In order to make a custom style for your own use, where all (or some) of the core ships are replaced:

1. During a game, design enough templates to make up the new style. You'll need at least one template of each hull size if you want it to be useable by the AIs. If you won't ever use it for an AI race and don't build core ships, you'll really only need a Cargo (preferably two) and a Medium template to cover the colony, miner, and survey ships you start with.

2. In AI race customization screen at game creation, pick the style you used when you made your templates, edit it, and save it under a new name.

3. Go to My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar\ShipStyles and open your style's xml file in a text editor.

4. Change the <Prefix> value to something unique, with no spaces or special symbols. Check through the file for any instances of the original style name you copied yours from and change them to your new name.

5. Go to My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar\ShipTemplates, and rename the .shipcfg files for the templates you made in step 1 to match the prefix value you set in step 4.

6. Once renamed, copy at least the three starting ships' templates to GalCiv2\DarkAvatar\Data\ShipCfg as well (this is necessary to make them appear when you use the style for your own race), and rename them to match their roles in the same format as all the other files in that folder. So prefix_ColonyShip.shipcfg, prefix_SurveyShip.shipcfg, prefix_SpaceMiner.shipcfg, etc.

7. Start up the game, and go edit the style via AI race setup. Pick each item on the left and double-click the template on the right to assign it, then save.

Your style should now be ready for use. Whether you use it yourself or for an opponent, the three starting ships (and any future core ships or AI designs if you replaced more) should use the templates you made yourself.
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Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Nice. I've been wanting to ask this, but here's the answer already!

Bookmarking...
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
When I try this all my ships just turn invisible.


Did you rename the shipcfg files correctly and move them to the stated folder?
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Lol,this is why directions should never be writen by people who know what their doing-only people who know what they're doing can understand them. Examples within each step would help alot. Change the
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Change the value to something unique? Of what part of the xml?


Like it says, the value of Prefix to something not already used. That's easy enough, since the base game just uses s1, s2, s3, etc. So you'd change this:

<Prefix>S3</Prefix>

to something like this:

<Prefix>bob</Prefix>

Then go through and replace any occurence of the original name to your new one. So if you made yours a copy from Arcean style, you'd replace anywhere in the xml where it says "Arcean Empire Style" with "Bob's New Style".
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Lol,this is why directions should never be writen by people who know what their doing-only people who know what they're doing can understand them. Examples within each step would help alot. Change the


I just wanted to say thanks for making this guide. I got it to work, but like The Blindman said above, it was kind of tricky to get working. I'm going to see if I can't use these same instructions as a base, but update them with screen shots, etc to make it a bit easier.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hello,

I am new to the forums and the game in general. I Attempted the above instructions and hit a problem. Basically in the AI race set up the ship design appears in the window on the 'appearance' page. When I go back and select my custom race for me to play and attempt to use the custom style the ships become invisible.

Why is the style working if it is for the AI but not when I want to use it? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Seriously though, why is this not an automatic feature of the game? It seems obvious.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Or at least a feature in the editors - maybe a 'Race Editor', where outside of the game, we could define looks, styles, abilities and also edit the descriptions (possibly the dialogue as well) of a race.

Generally though, the process remains the same with TA?
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Generally though, the process remains the same with TA?


TA allows you to access the style customizer from player race design, but using that only affects autodesigned ships. You'll still need to do this stuff if you want to replace the starting ships too, AFAIK.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This works with TA. Instructions were perfect (well for me anyway).
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
So by doing this then, you can have the templates for your custom designed ships show up in the custom ship feature in TA? Also, im assuming this works just the same for any custom race you create?
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hey, is there a way to make it so only one copy of each template appears?

This is in my OCCR mod, which is currently pending approval. For some reason or another, under the Templates tab in the Shipyard, two Colony Ships appear, two Constructors, etc. but not all of them are duplicated. One of them was my own design, the other the default Terran design (although I used the Altarian style when I made templates). Then I renamed all my templates and shipcfg files to match those, to hopefully override them, and now I get two copies of my design. So I have Colony Ship, which says unknown hull size and "default colony ship design" as the description. The other says cargo hull, and has no description.

And it isn't just that each is seen by the game as being two different templates with two different hull sizes. The Star Fury template is duplicated as well, but both copies say tiny hull (though only one has the description).

Also, I cleared out my My Games/GC2TwilightArnor/Ships and ShipTemplates folders, so that isn't where it's coming from. There are no duplicates in the mod's folders, so far as I can see. I noticed that MrKorx's Asa Race Mod (version 1.8) also has this problem.
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
When the game starts what three starting ships do you have on screen. The Terrans or yours?
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Mine. The ships work fine, but for some reason, under the templates tab in the Shipyard, a number of them are duplicated. Not all of them though.
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
What is the prefix for your ships?
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I use "s12" as a prefix. Again though, it isn't that the style doesn't work. It works fine. There are just a number of duplicated templates in the templates section.

I have tried just deleting the extras (which, BTW, look exactly like mine, not like the Terrans' or one of the other races), but it is only a temporary fix. They all come back when you start a new game.

Maybe you're on to it with the prefix though, perhaps the game automatically adds in some templates for the custom race?
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have a lot of player usable ship styles and I stay completely away from the "S#". In the library I have several ship sets posted and each has a separate prefix. So instead of S0 for Terran mine is FED.
S0_UD_Sampleship would be FED_UD_Sampleship. And my Romulans use ROM and so on.

Here is the interesting bit. I used the Thalan shipstyle as a starting point to create my Romulans. After I set up the Romulans as a seperate player usable ship style and started a new game only my Romulan ships were accessible. But the hulls that were available to create NEW ships were all Terran.

This happened with every ship style I created. The Terran ships don't appear but their starting hulls appear in the shipbuilder. Perhaps during the process of creating your personal ship style the ship set resets to Terran.

But if you follow Kryo's directions right, only your ships and not Terrans will appear. Works for me every time.
Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You're not really understanding me. None of them are Terran ships. They are all mine, both the normal and duplicates.

I'm not sure what causes this, it's rather strange.
Reply #24 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks for helping anyway.

Actually, I just played a game as the Iconians, and they have the same problem! A bunch of their templates are duplicated. Now I think this is a glitch with the game itself, and hence unfixable by we the modders.
Reply #25 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'd be curious if anyone else is having your problem.