some beginner questions / patient people only ;-)

Sat Mar 08, 2003 5:11 pm by Twycross448

Okay, folks, don't come whining I didn't warn you.

I should first state that I am a total beginner with the whole editing stuff... so you really need patience with me, I fear.

With that out of the way, here are my questions:

1. Is there, hidden away in some obscure nebula, a Search function in this forum? I hate having to comb through dozens of threads with hundreds of posts to find the info I seek (if it is present at all). A search function would help much.

2. Does anyone have the time and inclination to collect all vital data and put it in a single thread or even write a comprehensive beginners guide? Of course that one should then be made sticky....

3. What program would you suggest me on getting for editing the dll's?

4. For my first project, I thought it would be nice to fool around with my two most favourite ships, the Anubis and the Eagle (they just look the best). I want to make two new ships based on these, for now labeled Anubis MK2 and Eagle MK2. Mind you, they should just be upgraded versions of the originals, not some over-the-top super thingie. This would, as far as I have understood, include editing the shiparch.ini aswell as some dll's I don't know at the moment. Correct?
Then, I want to add a new system that connects to the New Berlin system and create the Osiris there as a dockable base. This should become the place where you actually buy the Anubis MK2. As to where the new Eagle MK2 would be bought, I still have to ponder on.
Question is, do you think this is, with the proper help from you nice guys, possible for a beginner? Or aimed way too high?

5. If possible, which files need to be changed to do this stuff? I know of the shiparch.ini, but that's it.

6. Thank you for your patience. You read the subject after all...

First time poster T448, out.

Sat Mar 08, 2003 5:15 pm by ludder

you should go for the ini files.. to edit them you must download bini.exe (can be found in download forum). but once your in a ini file it is not as easy to mess around with compared to other games.. there are many things you can do with the ini files so it is hard to write a complete newbie guide..

-You should clone yourself!
-Why?
-So you can go **** yourself!

Sat Mar 08, 2003 7:18 pm by ExoCraft

actually do like this, this is how i learned the most, un-encrypt ALL the inis you can find, then just sit down and read trough them (um might skip all the systems exept 1)

Then you will most likley learn about the connections between the 'files'.
Then get some kind of good editor, one i like is EditPlus2 (http://www.editplus.com)that actually makes a .bak file automatically when u save a file, this is good if u screw up and dont know what u changed that destroyed your plans of mod domination

Sat Mar 08, 2003 8:52 pm by Twycross448

First, thank you so far for participating in this thread.

Second, let me ask a few things more.

Right now, I have the Anubis MK2 upgraded with better armor, made it slightly lighter and upgraded all weapon slots to level 8. But the better weapons have a higher energy need, so I need to highten the energy output, too.
Question is, where do I have to look if I want to change the energy output of a ship to acommodate higher level weapons? What file?

And what dll are the string referrers for ingame ship descriptions and names in? Not to mention that I still need advice what program I could use for dll editing.

That's it for now. Once I have the new Anubis ready, I'll do the Eagle. Then, I'll advance to making the system. So I kind of take the slow approach as you two suggested.

T448 ... out.

Sat Mar 08, 2003 9:01 pm by ludder

i recomend lowering the weapon power demand insted (weapon_good.ini)

Sun Mar 09, 2003 1:46 pm by Twycross448

Well, I upped the power output (finally found it), so it is fine now. Now, I'm facing the following problems:

- changing the ingame descritption and name (needs dll editing)
- actually getting it in the game...

Let me elaborate on this a little more. I decrypted the ini's and changed them. Now, if I put the changed, uncompressed ini files in the corresponding folders (after backing up the originals, of course), i start FL and load a SP savegame (I already finished the story, and right after that, I saved). The Anubis MK2 should now be available from the Manhatten ship dealer instead of the Rhino. But it isn't. Same goes for the added "Order Shield Mk2". It should be available on Manhatten, but isn't. Just to try out, I quit FL, and then changed the costumes.ini by swapping the info of Trent and Kress. Saved, copied into folder, started FL, loaded game, went into bar. Now Trent should look like Kress, no? Well, he didn't. It was still the old Trent. Which makes me curious. Either I'm doing something really wrong here, or could it be that modified files are only relevant to MP games? First, I thought FL couldn't use uncompressed ini's, but I read in another post that it should work fine, so I rule that one out.

Any insight is very welcome.

T448... out.

Sun Mar 09, 2003 9:09 pm by Twycross448

Feels a little dumb to reply to myself, but I wanted you to know that I have successfully implemented the new Anubis MK2 (it even works the way I wanted, woohhooo). Only downside is that I still cannot edit the ingame name and description of it... still looking for the dll that needs to be changed. So far, I didn't find it, sadly.

I also played around with weapons, shields, thrusters ect., everything works as intended, except for my inability to change the ingame text's. (Which really bugs me, but I'll figure it out sooner or later. *crosses fingers*)

My next step was to create a new system. For the time being, I stuck to the tutorial (great one!) almost to the letter and got it working. Now I wonder, how can I find out the exact coordinates to write in the ini if I, for instance, want my base at location D6/D7 in the game ? And how do I add tradelanes?

Oh, is it just me or behaves the game a little .. "odd" if you use the Osiris for your base? For me, it crashes... sad. I so wanted to use this thing. For now, I have exchanged it with the Missouri.

T448 ... out.

Mon Mar 10, 2003 7:48 am by Hardeyes

As for the dll editing I would try ResourceHacker (freeware):

http://www.users.on.net/johnson/resourcehacker/

Or PEexplorer (pretty expensive, however has a 30 day trial to see if you think it's worth it):

http://www.heaventools.com/overview.htm

Also, check out my post in the thread "which dll has what?" I talk about another free utility pedump.exe which will extract the strings, dialogs, etc from the dlls for you to easily search through.

Mon Mar 10, 2003 8:01 am by Hardeyes

More info. I just noticed that PEexplorer also has a cheaper cousin that is just a resource editor -- ResourceTuner also available at:

http://www.heaventools.com/download.htm

The big difference between the PEexplorer tools and Resource Hacker is that PEexplorer is much more polished, and it recognizes more resource types. For example Resource Hacker just lists HTML (i.e. all the xml stuff in the dll's) as resource type 23 and give you the generic hex edit. Whereas, PEexplorer lists it as an HTML resource and shows the xml in a more readable form.

Mon Mar 10, 2003 9:19 am by AlphA

thanks for the tip on the resource program

@ Original poster. the dll with (i think) all the names in teh game is nameresources.dll.

-------------------------

Mon Mar 10, 2003 2:52 pm by Twycross448

Thanks for the input, you two. Once I have the time on my hands, I'll give it a shot.

So far, I have successfully implemented the Anubis MK2, the Eagle MK2, new thruster, new shields, a new system and a battleship (base) in that system.

For some reason though, there are no people onboard that battleship... strange.
Also, I have a little problem with implementing my own weapons. The Mark3 Torpedos were a breeze ans actually work, but the enhanced Kusari Katanas just don't show up to be bought. I doublechecked all the ini's countless times, but I'm still missing something, it seems.

Oh well, time will tell, I guess. (Or can anyone of you pros tell me?

)

T448 ... out.

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