What is needed to design a mod?

tarus-begin · Post by **tarus-begin** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 9:48 pm

I want to make a mod based of the privateer remake. Mostly just mess around with ships and stuff, but mabeye later edit capagin.

Thanks!

Post by **hellcatv** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 4:34 am

Gemini Gold is one such mod of priv remake...it's really not hard to start--just make a copy of the tree and start editing stuff--it's hard to keep up with all the new improvements each does--I hear gemini gold is going into beta, so it may be good to start from the beta and modify it from there

Ryder P. Moses · Post by **Ryder P. Moses** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 6:55 am

The manual has somewhat dated but handy howto's for most game modifications.

If you want to add units, you'll need Wings or some 3D graphical suite that can save to .obj format. Wings makes calculating hardpoint locations a little simpler, and is free, but those are its only real advantages. Once you've made and skinned your unit, use one of the plugins or programs available here to convert your mesh to an .xmesh or .bxfm file, stick it and your skin in a units subfolder, add an entry in VS's units.csv file with the appropriate numbers (using Office, or Openoffice, or some similar spreadsheet editor), and fiddle around with shuffling .blank files about until the game registers your unit and stops crashing.

For mission and campaign editing, well, you have to know python. I don't know python and I don't know anything about it, so can't help ya there.

tarus-begin · Post by **tarus-begin** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 1:12 pm

Can you give me very detailed instructions on creating a ship? Also do you know a place i can just download a mesh and stuff...

Thanks

BladeSkydancer · Post by **BladeSkydancer** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 11:23 pm

Is there a exporter plugin for 3DS Max 7?

I was wondering, it'd be nice if I could make my own fighters. Or hell, even my own capital ships.

(I've got experience in 3DSMax7 and am pretty good at modeling itself.)

Post by **hellcatv** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 9:39 am

export to 3ds and then we can convert 3ds to obj and then obj works with the mesher

chuck is also working on a 3ds converter of some sort I think

Ryder P. Moses · Post by **Ryder P. Moses** » Mon Dec 26, 2005 12:00 am

Oooh, don't do that. .3DS>Wings>xmesh lets you keep texture coords and map out gunpoints.

Post by **klauss** » Mon Dec 26, 2005 3:08 pm

3ds>obj>bfxm/xmesh lets you preserve texture coordinates as well... I don't see the problem.

Ryder P. Moses · Post by **Ryder P. Moses** » Mon Dec 26, 2005 10:32 pm

It does?

Guess you're using a different conversion process than I am.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Mon Dec 26, 2005 11:58 pm

Tarus-begin, have a look at the Wiki HowTo section:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/HowTo

HowTo:Create Models and HowTo:Add Ships are good places to start.

Post by **klauss** » Tue Dec 27, 2005 3:10 pm

The time I did it, I used a modeller that could open 3ds files to export to obj... can't remember the name. Anyway, it's not free, it was a trial version that now expired, so I can't use it (legally) now.
The rest is done with mesher, and I'm pretty sure it preserves texture coordinates, since I rewrote many parts of it.