Basic Modding Help

I wouldnt mess around with creating a custom race until the final game is released, because the file formats, and other things could change at any given time during the beta.

However if you cant wait.. All of the entity files can be opened, and edited with notepad. Much of the entrys in the entity files are self explanatory. Other files in the gamedata can also be edited with notepad. Make sure you BACK UP anything you work with.

Modding sins is still in its infancy, and there is much we all still need to learn about the game. We just experiment as we go. Try different things to see if it works or not.

The forge tools "should" take out much of the notepad editing (least i hope so)

i want to make a new race...a race which can be selected...with other ship costs/weapons/size/mass/...

but HOW can i create a new race?
for example...
i plan a new race...the Shadows...short: SHA
how can i make SHA specified Buildings/Ships/Modules/Techs?
I dont want the AI to have that race...

as far as i can tell its all notepad stuff at the moment, you cant put new models in as we dont have an exporter, so were pretty much stuck at the mo lol.

as soon as i get my grubby hands on the mod tools though you will all see some nifty stuff happenin

Kenetor

Loki, due to the current beta state of the game the devs really haven't handed us much in the way of tools or resources to use to mod the game. ATM they really want to iron out the "core" game. I imagine (hope, at least) that in some future beta they'll release the tools (maybe half-way through beta 4?) to let us start playing with such things and find the engine-specific bugs involved.

I will admit, I would have expected them to want to work out modding-related bugs ASAP, during the normal beta cycle. Probably in the Beta 1 / Beta 3 stages, with beta's 2 and 4 being reserved for "core" gameplay testing.

This is very simple actually, although there are some issues:

As an example, let's create a new race with a different light frigate compared to the stock one.

First you go into your GameInfo folder. There you make a copy of the PlayerTech.entity file. Rename it to PlayerShadows.entity (this is not really necessary, but helps a bit in remembering which file does what. Quite important imho ).

Open it with notepad. Change the raceNameStringID "IDS_PLAYERRACENAME_TECH" to raceNameStringID "IDS_PLAYERRACENAME_SHA".
Strings are how you give descriptions and names to things. Basically they're just there for fluff. The corresponding lines can be found in the English.str file in the String folder.

So we now open the above mentioned English.str file with notepad (everything opens with notepad, btw.) and search for IDS_PLAYERRACENAME_TECH. Duplicate the
StringInfo
ID "IDS_PLAYERRACENAME_TECH"
Value "TEC"
lines and change the duplicate to:
StringInfo
ID "IDS_PLAYERRACENAME_SHA"
Value "SHA"
No we need to change the second line of the file
NumStrings 3499 which is the number of strings in the file. Because of our duplication we have one new string, so add one to the number displayed there. (The number may vary from mine, since I already did some modifications there.)

Now we come to the most important file, the GalaxyScenerioDef.galaxyScenerioDef file in the GameInfo file. Every important thing in the game needs a definition in this file to be placed.

At the end of the file, there is the following:
playerTypeCount 1
playerType
designName "Tech"
entityDefName "PlayerTech"
change it to the following:
playerTypeCount 2
playerType
designName "Tech"
entityDefName "PlayerTech"
playerType
designName "SHA"
entityDefName "PlayerShadows"
playerTypeCount needs an increase of one because we've got one more player. The entityDefName shows Sins the name of the new player file: PlayerShadows.entity.

Now, if I didn't forgot something, you should have a new selectable race.

Now let us add a new light frigate for your race. First, make a copy of FrigateTechLight.entity and rename it to FrigateShadowsLight.entity. Open it and change
NameStringID "IDS_FRIGATE_TECHLIGHT_NAME"
DescriptionStringID "IDS_FRIGATE_TECHLIGHT_DESCRIPTION"
to
NameStringID "IDS_FRIGATE_SHALIGHT_NAME"
DescriptionStringID "IDS_FRIGATE_SHALIGHT_DESCRIPTION"
go into the English.str file, search for IDS_FRIGATE_TECHLIGHT_NAME and duplicate the following lines:
StringInfo
ID "IDS_FRIGATE_TECHLIGHT_NAME"
Value "Cobalt Light Frigate"
StringInfo
ID "IDS_FRIGATE_TECHLIGHT_DESCRIPTION"
Value "A workhorse combat frigate that can be upgraded to efficiently defeat other ships with abilities."
Change your duplicate to the following:
StringInfo
ID "IDS_FRIGATE_SHALIGHT_NAME"
Value "Shadows Light Frigate"
StringInfo
ID "IDS_FRIGATE_SHALIGHT_DESCRIPTION"
Value "A pwning frigate of doom. Defeats entire AI fleets alone."
As above, add two points on the second line to NumStrings. (If you ever forget to change the counts (and almost everything is counted in Sins files, your game will crash. Thankfully the crash will tell you what is missing, so its easily fixed. Usually.)

Now we go in the important GalaxyScenerioDef.galaxyScenerioDef file again and duplicate
planetItemType
designName "Tech:Frigate:Light"
entityDefName "FrigateTechLight"
and change it to
planetItemType
designName "Shadows:Frigate:Light"
entityDefName "FrigateShadowsLight"
A bit up is another count called planetItemTypeCount. Add one to it.
Now last but not least, open your PlayerShadows.entity file and change the line reading
entityDefName "FrigateTechLight"
to
entityDefName "FrigateShadowsLight".

You now have your own light frigate, congratulation. Just for fun, go in to the FrigateShadowsLight.entity file and change PreBuffCooldownTime 8.000000 to PreBuffCooldownTime 4.000000. Your frigate now shoots twice as fast. Pwning time.

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Issues:

If you got a crash, it's mostly because of some misspelling or because you've forgot to change a counter. Also there has to be an empty line at every file, or the game will crash.

If you're unable to play as your race, try changing selectablePriorty 2 in the PlayerShadows.entity file to 1. Although this may make the game to chose this race for the AI as well. :/

To add new models, you'll probably need 3d studio max, which I haven't atm. So I can't help you with that.

hmm...i did everything as u told me...doesnt work...but thx for trying to help me

and btw. i have 3d studio max v9.0
but i wanna wait for beta 3 or final before i start modding...
at this point of beta it seems impossible to create an own race...
are u playing beta 1 or beta 2?

I'm playing beta 2 and I've made some races for myself already, so it is possible.

Perhaps post your crash message. Could give me an idea what's going wrong.

When creating a new race make sure is well balanced compared to the others, or people will either ditch it or we will be all playing the same race once MP comes alive.

how would i create a 'flying gerbil' race?

do i need to edit vassari and human tec to make them look like small furry gerbils with butterfly wings?

about balancing issue's. is it best to study each race units 1 by 1? i mean like for instance, to balance a scout frigate, you have to give and take for what the other race already or hasn't got as far as upgrades, thrust speed, cost of unit, special ability and the likes?

say i.e..., vasari scouts is stealthier, so then tec scouts are stronger, and advent scouts are faster, so then your new race scout would be best if it where equaled with the other 3race? in this way your not giving any of the race an advance that regards to out weighing all of the other race units. "this is just an example"

i've edited few hw2mods before, like how fast a turret fires, speed and hull health bars are increased.

making a mod is one thing, but balancing that mod will judge a scale of over tipping towards a favorable race.

This is the cheap way to balance (the unholy way of WarCraft 1). Often making lots of very similar looking races.

The much better way (the way of the StarCraft masters) is to balance whole races against each other. Ie. balancing on a tactical level. Making sure that each tactic has a possible counter.

This is very hard, since the more diverse the races are, the more tactics are possible. But it's the only way to make truly unique and fun races.

Um, in WarCraft 1 (and 2) the races were exact clones of each other except for their spells.

SupCom is, to the best of my knowledge, the first game where you have races with very similar unit roles, balanced out by having each unit's stats changed to produce (vastly) different units.

there is no crash message...i cant select the race...thats all

maybe we can talk about in IRC or via ICQ...
myICQ number: 324442305

Ah, that's an issue I have too. I dunno how to make them selectable by the starting interface. Either it's very well hidden (I've searched almost all files accessible to me) or it's still hardcoded or not implemented atm.

But there's a workaround of course. I totally forgot it, since I usually play custom maps where I can force the race anyway, but here's how you do it for standard galaxies.

Open the file SinglePlayerGalaxySetup.setting located in C:\documents and settings\Username\Program data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting. (The path will be named somewhat differently, since I don't have an English windows, so my translation may be way off. )

There change the following from
name "Your player name"
actualRace "PlayerTech"
raceIfNotRandom "PlayerTech"
to
name "Your player name"
actualRace "PlayerShadows"
raceIfNotRandom "PlayerShadows"

Then start Sins and you'll play your own race. You can set the AIs race here as well.

But to make this work, don't change any setting when creating a new game, or your changes will be overwritten by the game to be PlayerTech again. If this happen, you have to quit the game, change the file again and then start it anew.

If you want to change something, do it. Quit the game, change the file to your race as described above, start Sins again and then start a game without making any changes. Or change the settings directly in the file. They're pretty much self explanatory.

It's not very convenient, I know. But it's the only way I know of.

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Don't press any buttons here, or it will change back to TEC.


It's alive!

Vandanburg you should write up a nice tutorial on how to do this so we can sticky it later on This is some good info.

The dev's didnt use 3dsmax to make the models for Sins. However word has it (correct me if i am wrong) They did manage to import a .3ds made with 3dsmax 5 into sins using an alpha of the forge tools (was it the one of the models i sent you tristan?). There was some mesh work that needed to be done to the model to get it to work with the tools, but if it can import a max 5 model then i dont see any issues with max versions 6-9 since most max versions are identical with a few new features. Perhaps the user of Max 9 can tell me the difference between that version and Max 5.

Me is sad.

I've got this absolutely amazing unbalanced Planet Destroyer idea that I would love to do but need a model for.

And now it looks like I can't.

Oh well, I could try making a ship out of the shield generator.

Which most certainly wont work, but hey, one can always try.

Edit:

Beware of my fleet of deadly planet destroying shield emitters!



Edit2:


This is madness!

No! This is me without a possibility to add new ship models.



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Edit3:

Look into my eye, baby!



Blue spheres of doom!

LOL those things remind me of the old Godzilla movies where they shoot lightning out of the dishes (now theres a thought)... Oh Noes! im being "shielded" to death!