How did you manage to get the ship_data file all lined up nicely in excel?I don't know about Excel, but in OpenOffice Calc you have to set the column separator to be a comma when opening the file, whereas the default character is a semicolon. I would imagine the fix for Excel to be in the same vein.
Mines all bunched up in the first column and looks awful..
Also, where do I go to add descriptions and such? Don't like seeing stuff with no descriptions in game..
Great tutorial! It shows the general ideas behind ship modding pretty well, although it shouldn't be followed to the letter for public mods ofcourse. Really nicely done. ;)How did you manage to get the ship_data file all lined up nicely in excel?I don't know about Excel, but in OpenOffice Calc you have to set the column separator to be a comma when opening the file, whereas the default character is a semicolon. I would imagine the fix for Excel to be in the same vein.
Mines all bunched up in the first column and looks awful..
Also, where do I go to add descriptions and such? Don't like seeing stuff with no descriptions in game..
"id","type","text1","text2","text3"
"xpposi_amy","SHIP","An experimental scout fighter, aimed at quickly capturing critical mission objectives, the Amy Fighter is a testament to Positron engine technology. A single tactical laser is however all that keeps enemies at bay.",
Oh, and regarding that descriptions question - you can add descriptions through a descriptions.csv file, either in your own mod directory (for public mods) or using the game's one (for private stuff). Here's the basic layout, and an example from my Positron (tagged as xpposi internally) mod:CodeYou can use this way to set desciptions for everything. Ships, weapons and hullmods that is."id","type","text1","text2","text3"
"xpposi_amy","SHIP","An experimental scout fighter, aimed at quickly capturing critical mission objectives, the Amy Fighter is a testament to Positron engine technology. A single tactical laser is however all that keeps enemies at bay.",
Just paste that into a text file, then change the name to descriptions.csv and edit it in Excel. It should be in your ..\Fractal Softworks\Starfarer\mods\*modname*\Data\Strings folder if your mod actually uses the mod system.
Keep in mind this is for ships. I'm not sure if items use the same format, but the game's files or the weapons mod files should be able to tell you what to do there. ;)
Noticing something very strange when i try to separate this stuff in excel..
when i save it seperated i just get an error: Fatal: JSONObject["id"] not found.
so I guess it can't find the values if i save it separated..
How did you manage it 51ppycup?
I've had problems with the tool. Sometimes the .ship formatting doesn't work, it also requires you to manually add the ship_data.csv and the variant system doesn't work pretty much at all.
I use Excel 2010 but I can't find the option to set it to open with comma separation.. i gotta seperate it manually when i open it..
Every which way I try I can't seem to get it to work.. I guess I need to get Open office..
EDIT: maybe I can do this in Notepad++? anybody have any idea how?
I've been using redbull's editor to save both .ship and .variant files with no problems. Then again, I made mods before any tools were available so I already know what needs to go where; and, I do end up hand-editing for little tweaks or easy modifications.Really? Measure tool in gimp is awesome for that. I find all the coordinates that way. Clicking on the sprite is too niggly and imprecise.
The real win with the ship editor is the ability to define coordinates for bounds, engines and hardpoints. Those tasks were the most time-consuming and error-prone before.
I'd say just grab OpenOffice. It's 100% free and open source. Make sure you get it from a legit site though (like SourceForge), and be careful not to install any advertiser products that may come "conveniently" bundled with it. ;)
EDIT: Yay, you fixed it :D