n00b questions, please dont ignore

Sat Jun 14, 2003 5:02 am by Darth Worm

i have been around games and game editing forums for a long time, long enough to know that most users are going to skip right over the topic, and i could curse them right now, and they'd never know. but i aint gonna do that

. i have had an interest in modding games for many years now, and even have a couple C++ books sitting on my desk next to me, even though i havent gotten very far into them.
I have decided now is as good a time as ever to begin trying to mod and this is as good a game as any to try and mod. They only other game i have tried to "mod" has been unreal tournament. which brings me to my first question...
In UT, you can open any .ini file and change variables (this is the extent of my above mentioned "modding"

. as i gaze through the tutorials in the forums section, they all tell me to open .ini files. when i do this however notepad displays them all as bunches of unreadable blocks and odd shapes. how do i open this an have a document i can read and change?
My next question is pretty broad and that is what programs/utilities do i need to mod? i know milkshpape and 3DSmax fom my time with UT. for FL i am not that interested in making my own models. but i know, or at least suspect, that i need other programs to mod this. One tutorial mentioned a "UTF edit" program. didnt mention what it did, where to get it, etc, etc. i know most people that are interesting in modding probably know enough already to get going, or what these programs do. but i am clueless. Even tutorials written "so that even n00bs can understand it" can easily confoose "n00bs" when you dont tell them what programs they need or where to get them at least.

i have more questions, but its senseless asking them now, since they may very wel be revealed when these q's are answered and i go back to the tutorials with a little more idea what i am doing.

thx for any help, and a big thanks for not ignoring the topic/ flaming me.

Sat Jun 14, 2003 5:25 am by dr del

hey dude,

the programs you need are in the editing utilities section of this forum here

and the tutorials that tell you what you need and how to use them are here

basically you need bini or the gui version just to be able to change the ini files but i think youll find its quite addictive and you start looking to see what else you can tweak

dr del

im sorry hamish but "smell yur ma" is not considered an acceptable battle cry in this day and age... and no " im gonna cut yer tonker off" wont do either

Sat Jun 14, 2003 5:35 am by Darth Worm

/me sigh. i saw those forums. i browsed them quite a bit. but that doesnt answer my questions. i read every tutorial marked as an actual tutorial and i went through maybe a dozen or two topics on the editing forum trying to find what utilities/programs i needed. the tuts require the programs, and the util forums dont list them much less where to get them.

Sat Jun 14, 2003 6:06 am by dr del

ok

to edit the ini files you need bini , this is the command line version just drop your ini file on top of it and it prints out a text file. notepad wont do to read it though - use wordpad or any other hex editor you like.its important to remember to remove the ".txt"from the end of the file once your finished though - no need to recompress it and not all ini files are compressed to start with.its trial and error mostly.you will also need these editors to read and make xml scripts if you decide to make your changes into a mod compatible with flmm (i strongly recomend it) the beta version of which can be found here

utf edit can be found here and can be used to modify ships and icons and things.

these progs ARE actually hosted here on the site but im giving you links to mine for speed not out of cheek

as for tutorials its probably better to go for the specific ones relating to your desires but the best general ship modding ones (i know your not that interested but you might be one day) are the killermatrix one for actually modeling the ship and the zen one for getting it into the game with all the flashy bits.a great deal of modding is done with the ini files but sometimes you have to think out of the box to find a solution to your needs.

to modify the dll files youll need res hack

the information IS here but you might have to word it several different ways in the search function before you find exactly what your looking for.id never modded anything till a month or two ago and i made it so you should have no problems

hope this helps you get started

dr del

i appear to have run out of ciggarettes and coffee and its hours before the shops open - son, fetch daddys sniper rifle. honey! ill be on the roof if you need me

Sat Jun 14, 2003 1:35 pm by Darth Worm

well it doesnt matter much if the files are hosted on this site or not if they dont tell you that you need them

. the tuts just say open the .ini, not how to convert it to .ini.

thx for the help and the speedy servers

.

when you say that you started modding a month or two ago, is this your first game you have modded? how much did you know before you got started? b/c i am going really from nothing.

Sat Jun 14, 2003 3:09 pm by dr del

np dude,

well id made a baby module for neverwinternights but basically i was a total noob (nwn comes with a nice gui editor so you learn nothing).

im still glowering at the xml trying to get it to understand what im talking about

i can hold my own in the battle against windows most of the time through my practice of "BRB" computing (see sig) but basically i started from nothing and read my way up to the dizzying heights of 1.5 on this forum.

dr del

what happens if i do this?... oh crud!... now,, how do i fix it?

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