Modding: Where and How?

1. Any changes made to the base game.

2. There are a variety of places. ZombieRus5 has a nice list.

3. There are various types. Total Conversions and Enhancements are the mainlines with various subcategories. What are good depends on what you are looking for.

4. Downloading is like any other downloading. Placement involves going to the mod menu in Sins and pushing the show mod path. This creates the path and shows you where to place the mod. After you place the mod, go back and activate it. myfist0 has some nice threads explaining things.

5. No

6. You do need to know what version of the game you are playing as each version has its own mod style. Both version (1.04) and type (Rebellion) are important.

To start:

1. Mods can entail many things such as new races, planets, and almost everything ingame can be changed.

2. You can get them on the Sins Forum or Moddb, those are the places to get the good ones.

3. There are only 2 types with Sins, first there is TC( total conversion) which is a mod where all or most of the items ingame are removed and replaced. There are also addon mods which add extra things to the game to improve it

4. Downloads are really simple, just download it and place it in the mod folder, to find the mod folder, use locate mod folder while ingame and it will show where the folder is located.

5. If you install the mod incorrectly you can mess up the game, which can be fixed by reinstalling.

6. All mods are made for a specific version of Sins, whether it be for basic Sins, Entrenchment, Diplomacy. Most are made currently for Rebellion or are being upgrade to work with it, it all depends on the creator of the mod which version they make it for.

Mods vary greatly in what they can do....some do very little, such as simply removing superweapons....some do a lot, completly changing all graphics (including the UI), effects, strings, factions, music, sounds, etc...

The best way to get a mod is to find its associated thread on the modding section of the forums...each mod team (or individual) has their own way of making the mod available to others...I am not aware of any Sins mod every having the issue of giving people viruses and what not....

"Good" is relative...if you are a diehard fan of Star Trek, then a Star Trek conversion mod may be the best thing in the world even if it isn't balanced or polished....conversely, even the slightest problems in a Star Wars conversion mod may irk you if you really don't have a thing for Star Wars..."Good" is also subjective...Volt's "Rebalanced Races" may appear absolutely awesome or absolutely pathetic depending on your perception of what makes for good balance...

I suggest you look at Zombie's list of mods...it will provide links to the threads/pages associated with each mod...it will also indicate which mods are for Rebellion and which ones are for Trinity....note that some mod teams are still in the process of converting from trinity to rebellion...this thread by Sinperium should help you learn how to mod and/or properly "install" mods (which by no means permanently affect your Sins Installation)...finally, this thread by GoaFan will help you utilize the dev.exe, which can be a quick way of seeing all the new content of a mod...

Mods---------------> www.RicksGalaxy.com

Seleuceia, do any of those links provide intel about how to move a mode from the downloads menu to the mods menu in the game.  I understand about showing mod path.  But what do I click and stuff?

Its a basic download like any other download you would get from the internet. You do often times have to us an unzip program (recommend 7zip) to unzip the files but other then that its basic computer knowledge.

How do I move it, though?

Click and drag?

Like any other file movement in the Windows environment?

Or are you talking about something else? Like the files being hidden (Pre-Rebellion)?

You're going to be downloading mods as compressed files like .zip or .7z. You'll need to either extract them directly to your mod folder or cut and paste the zipped file to the mod folder and extract there. The game sees mods as individual folders in the mod folder.

Once you have the mod extracted like in that picture, go in game and you should see the mod listed on the left in the mods section of the main menu. Select that mod, hit enable mod, and then apply changes. Note any mod that adds content, rather than just changing music and textures (which is almost all of them) will have a checksum that is not zero. If your checksum is zero, your extraction program probably made an extra folder when extracting the mod.

In my downloads, I see the folder.  How do I get it into my game?  I know about the mod path.  Just assume I have no knowledge whatsoever about this at all.  Please explain to me how to do this.  I did the mod path thing, and searched for what was pulled up.  Nothing.  What did I do wrong?

Cut the file you download and paste it into your mod folder, then extract?

I can't find my mod folder.

I really need a step by step walkthrough of how to do this.

Hit the show mod path button, which should give you a path of "My Documents" "My Games" "Ironclad games" "Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion" "Mods-Rebellion v1.04"

I did that, but What do I do with that information?  All this is meaningless.  I have no knowledge of any of this, at all.

You put the mod you downloaded in that folder. Make sure you extract it so it appears as a normal folder with winzip or whatever. Then you go in game and enable it. That's it.

How do I put the mod into the folder? 

Also, I don't think the mod neede unzipping, because 7-zip would only let me compress it, so I assume I was automaticlly unzipped?

No you need to unzip the mod. Its odd that it will only compress it. What mod did you download?

As for moving the mod into the mod folder you use Windows Explorer and click upon each folder that you see in the order specified.

Then you (after unzipping the mod if need be) click and hold down the left mouse button and drag the mod into that Windows Explorer window.

Then active the mod in game.

I finally moved it into the mod menu in the game.  I can now use it. 

Thank you all for your support, especially Ryat and GoaFan.

+1 karma for both of you.

New problem.  I have two mods in the mod menu, but when I enable them, they do not work.  It says something about no checksums.

Help?

Probably an issue with your folder nesting...for example, there is the Mods v1.04 folder, and within that should be a folder "Mod A" and "Mod B"...within those folders should immediately be the mod assets (folders with names GameInfo, Galaxy, Windows, etc)...if there is a second level of folders (folder "Mod A" within a folder "Mod A") then the game won't see the mod's assets...

It is also possible the mod assets weren't unzipped...the game can only read extracted files...

First of all, unless they are designed to work together, you should assume two mods will not be compatible with each other.

Second, make sure that from you mod folder, there path goes like this, "The Mod" -> "GameInfo, Mesh, Textures" etc. Your extraction program map have added an extra folder, I.e. "The Mod" -> "The Mod" -> "GameInfo etc.". This will confuse the game, so cut the bolded folder, and paste that into your mod folder to get it all into the right place, and delete the now empty folder it was in.

A screenshot of your path where the "GameInfo" folder of the mod is might be helpful if that doesn't resolve the issue.

I couldn't find a folder called "The Mod"  and I saw no duplicates.

Oh, wait, it is the name, right?

No, the order is fine.