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Author Topic: Ship Modding Tutorial Video  (Read 18300 times)

51ppycup

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Ship Modding Tutorial Video
« on: March 12, 2012, 12:27:48 AM »

Demonstrates how to mod your custom ships into the game using Redbull's fantastic tool.  It's more or less start-to-finish, with the exception of creating the .PNG file.  Hope you find it useful, and I look forward to seeing some more sweet home-brew ships  ;D

http://youtu.be/r4K7S34ShSw?hd=1
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Plasmatic

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Re: Ship Modding Tutorial Video
« Reply #1 on: March 12, 2012, 06:54:19 AM »

How did you manage to get the ship_data file all lined up nicely in excel?

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..
« Last Edit: March 12, 2012, 07:46:41 AM by Plasmatic »
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XpanD

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Re: Ship Modding Tutorial Video
« Reply #2 on: March 12, 2012, 08:28:32 AM »

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?

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..
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.
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Plasmatic

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Re: Ship Modding Tutorial Video
« Reply #3 on: March 12, 2012, 08:43:48 AM »

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?

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..
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.

Got it, just was a bit trickier in my version :) Microsoft likes to hide the functions you want, when you want em :P
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XpanD

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Re: Ship Modding Tutorial Video
« Reply #4 on: March 12, 2012, 08:49:35 AM »

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:

Code
"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. ;)
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Upgradecap

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Re: Ship Modding Tutorial Video
« Reply #5 on: March 12, 2012, 08:59:34 AM »

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:

Code
"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.",
You can use this way to set desciptions for everything. Ships, weapons and hullmods that is.

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. ;)
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51ppycup

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Re: Ship Modding Tutorial Video
« Reply #6 on: March 12, 2012, 10:00:04 AM »

Thanks for the tip on adding in descriptions, Ill have to do that!
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Plasmatic

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Re: Ship Modding Tutorial Video
« Reply #7 on: March 12, 2012, 10:12:26 AM »

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?
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XpanD

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Re: Ship Modding Tutorial Video
« Reply #8 on: March 12, 2012, 10:16:16 AM »

You should not have to separate values manually, Excel should be able to do it for you when you load the file (though I'm not sure how to set that). For example, when I run a .csv through OpenOffice Calc with the right settings it opens with all the column stuff working nicely right away. The ID error is probably caused by Excel appending some sort of new values to the file, and having the file automatically loaded as it should be loaded should help avoid that.
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Reshy

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Re: Ship Modding Tutorial Video
« Reply #9 on: March 12, 2012, 10:16:25 AM »

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.
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51ppycup

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Re: Ship Modding Tutorial Video
« Reply #10 on: March 12, 2012, 10:41:02 AM »

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 haven't run into that issue myself.  I've been using MS Excel 2003 (I think, could be '07).  As far as the variant system is concerned, I haven't played with it.
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XpanD

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Re: Ship Modding Tutorial Video
« Reply #11 on: March 12, 2012, 10:55:35 AM »

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.

The variant part of Redbull's editor has worked great for me so far. It does take a bit of getting used to, though. Having to CTRL-click several weapons into a group at once, for example, is a trick that's pretty easy to miss.
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Plasmatic

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Re: Ship Modding Tutorial Video
« Reply #12 on: March 12, 2012, 11:13:49 AM »

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?
« Last Edit: March 12, 2012, 11:17:08 AM by Plasmatic »
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Trylobot

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Re: Ship Modding Tutorial Video
« Reply #13 on: March 12, 2012, 11:19:30 AM »

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.

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.
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XpanD

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Re: Ship Modding Tutorial Video
« Reply #14 on: March 12, 2012, 11:31:38 AM »

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?

Notepad++ is what I used before I saw this video and saw how easy using an Office application would be. I wouldn't want to go back, now. Maybe install OpenOffice Calc only (and not all the other parts), just for modding? Or wait for 51ppycup to give you the fix. :P
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