Modding 100?

First, welcome to the sins modding community ^^

Have you tried harpos utility? It can be found here: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/353296

I have, I kept on getting the convertdata?originalsins0 not found error...  However, I did figure out how to use cmd.exe with convertdata.exe, so I'm that much closer. Another question is that the 'Mods' folder that seem to be standard are in C:/Document and Settings/blah blah blah while the game itself is in my H: drive. Lets say I manage to weed through all the entity files, and make adjustments. How would I innact my mod? Do I just replace the entity files in my game's location? Or do I put it in one of the mod folders?

have you read the documentation pdf file in forgetools 3, note that some of the info in this is really outdated, could almost be called ancient history of sins, the reference files are outdated, the syntax for converting files between bin and txt is different, and you only need to add the editted files in the modfolder? Also while it is possible (I guess) it is never recommended to replace the original files.

You make a folder, which name will be shown in the mod menu in the game, in the mod folder and in this new folder you make a folder named GameInfo for your .entity files and the other files in the original GameInfo folder. If you add any new files you will also have to add the entity.manifest file and add in the new entity files (also explained in the documentation pdf file).

About the error you get with harpoes tool is because the tool for some reason searches for convertdata_originalsins0.exe instead of convertdata_originalsins1.19.exe (renaming the file should solve this).

I hope this helped clarifying some things.

Okay, where is your mod folder located? This is usually in a different location than where the main game is installed, and you may find it is actually on your C drive. Regardless, the files only reference files in the mod folder, so you shouldn't have to worry about what drive it is in.

To make a mod, just make a new folder in the mod folder. Then make the folders that the files you are modding are contained in. For example if you modded an entity file, you would make a folder within the new folder called GameInfo and put the modded file in there. Enable the mod in game and Sins will load that file instead of the regular file of that name (if it is a completely new file it will load that one in addition to the game files).

If you are having trouble, try downloading and playing a mod to see how it is set up. Or just ask here.

do NOT change the files in the game folder, or you will not be able to play online and any patch updates will remove your mod.

the correct location is the mods- folder eg mods-v1.19, mods-entrenchment v1.05, mods-diplomacy v1.00

then the files need to be inside a folder that houses your mod eg seconhanjaymod with the actual entity & other files in the same folder structure as the game eg entity files in a gameinfo folder textures in a texture folder etc..

regarding the coverter not found error with my textbin gui, you do not have the version number on the folder that you are attempting to convert eg sins 1.19,entrenchment 1.05 diplomacy 1.00, and also do NOT convert the original game files as the game wants them in bin to work properly, I recommend only converting a COPY of the game's files.

harpo

Man, you guys have been super helpful... But there's so much to modding! Ok, so I've been messing around with capital ships, a few things I've noticed is that the game only uses the latest .entity for the item. Considering the Diplomacy has only a few of the older entity files in it, most of the things I mod for Entrenchment would work for Diplomacy, right? So, if I download an Entrenchment mod, Diplomacy will read those files too? Another question is that I finished my alterations to a capital ship, (increasing everything to make it more useful, changed some of the weapons), and placed it in the game info folder of the correspond mod folder like you suggested, but when I load the mod, the game freezes, and I get the minidump error. It also does that when I duplicate points in the mesh file.

Well I wrote this in another thread:

So in other words the files have a very specefic structure and this structure is different across both version for an expasnion and between the expansions. If there is just a slight difference in the structure (Like a single capital letter not being capital ) the game will crash. You can use the dev.exe for identifying such errors if you did something wrong. It can be found in the install folder together with the normal .exes. Notice that your  options menu will be reset to defoult every time you switch between a normal exe and its dev exe version.

For your mesh, did you remember to change the line NumPoints (some number)?

EDIT: Just noticed that I didn't even asnwer your question . Yeah you are right, the files not shown in the diplomacy haven't been changed, so they can be used with it without the need of any changes. And could you please use paragraphs? Your posts aren't that long so it is not as bad as it could be, but it would make it a tiny bit easier for us to read .

I did.

Working for the Kol Battleship, I wanted to add small point defense lasers, so I copied all of weapon-1 (10 weapon points) and added 10 the the NumPoints, (29-39), renaming my copied points weapon-3.

After a little test, I found that they can't have four weapons, so I added weapon-2s to weapon-0, and renamed all weapon-3s to weapon-2s. Adjusted the .entity file so that weapon-0 was the lasertech weapon, weapon-1 was the autocannon, and now weapon-2 was the point defense beam weapon.

Since I have a copy of the entire game elsewhere, I was altering the actual game's files. When I loaded the game, it worked. It showed the new weapon, and the animations were only a little off. 

However, I replaced the modded files with the original again, and put the modded capital.entity and .mesh into a gameinfo folder in the mod folder. Now I get a minidump... If it worked in system, it should work in mod, right?

Edit: I was working with Diplomacy, so I made sure I had an Entrenchment folder, with the .entity inside a GameInfo folder, and outside the Entrenchment, I had a mesh folder, since Entrenchment didn't update most of the meshes, so I'm pretty positive I put them in the right places.

all .entity files are placed in the GameInfo folder no mather from which version they are, so no subfolders. also Have you renmaed any of the .entity files and updated the entity.manifest?

No, I didn't rename any files... What's the entity.manifest?

the entity.manifest is basicly a "library" of all the entity files that there is, which means that you have to edit it when you add or remove entity files.

So, if I add any ships, I have to add the entity to the entity.manifest? Where is the entity.manifest?

Yeah, you find it in the expasnion folder in the install folder, so in your case the diplomacy folder in your install folder, also note that the file is already in txt format so you wont need to convert it.

any NEW entities NEED to be added to the entity manifest, but if there are no new entity files you can just copy the manifests from the game's expansion folder

all the manifests are in the mod's root folder where you can see the gameinfo and other folders and can put your own notes etc and the game does not read any of the files other than the manifests( at least from my observation)

harpo

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/329761

Skip the plot stuff and jump right to the links. There are a ton of things there that can help you on your way.

I noticed that the capital ships cannot support more than three weapons. Is there any way I can adjust that?

no, 3 weapons is the max for any entity, the only way to make more is through abilities. Notice that the entity has 5 ability slots, while capitals only use 4, this is because the 5th is hiden behinf the skill button. You can either make a passive ability or an ability with auto attack on by deffault.

Alright, another modding question (this'll end up being a modding guide, if I slam enough in...). Where the HECK are the graphic files? I see references, HUDICONPLANETMODULE blah blah blah... But where are the icons? I should be super easy to make new icons, but I can find them anywhere.

The pictures are in the Texture folder, but the line that is refered to is in a file in the Window folder. The files in the window folder are bin/txt files which kind of organize the textures and tell the "reference" line such as HUDICONPLANETMODULE.

So I have to go into the Window folder, find the correct file to figure out which image files HUDICONPLANET_PHASEORBITALMISSILEDEFENSE refers to?

So it says HUDIcon-Ships.brushes. How do I convert those?

They are like the entity files, in the game folder they are bin and will have to be converted to txt like you normally do and then open it with notepad. Remember to place the .brush file in a Window folder in your mod folder and not the GameInfo

Yeah, I found that out... The dev.exe is really useful when making huge alterations. I made so many mistakes. However, I noticed that while playing using the debugger that the game popped up errors that weren't even related to the changes I made... Some kind of mesh problem with the Vasari starbase or something, but the game kept working. Will I have to worry about those?

Ok, I opened up the HUDIcon-Ship.brushes file, and it shows stuff about pixel boxes, but I don't really know what I'm looking at. There seems to be five different states to each icon, but the pixel box has four numbers, and no reference to a texture file... What am I looking for?

    fileName "Unit_Main"
    pixelBox [ 181 , 241 , 28 , 28 ]

Add .tga in front of the bold and that should be the file that the actual icon is located in. It's in the texture folder if you didn't know that already.