Limiting basic ships to custom races?

Using basic shipyard & minimal editing?

from GalCiv2 Forums
Hello.

Before I ask these questions, I'd like to apologize in advance. I know how it is to be continuously battered by repeated questions that have likely already been answered time and time again, and I certainly don't wish to add to the onslaught. I've read the available tutorials and numerous posts on modding, however I'm not particularly adept when it comes to applying broad, over-arching explanations to very specific or simple practical implementation, and so am left with some questions. Again, I apologize for any frustration or redundancy I'm introducing to the community by posting these questions. Please bear with me. Thanks in advance!

I want to do something very simple. I don't wish to create a mod (unless necessary, in which case I'm willing to create a very simple mod folder) or alter the game in any significant way. All I wish to do is use the game's basic ship design feature, which I'm having hours of fun with incidentally, to create ships that only certain custom races I've created in the game proper can make use of.

What I want, specifically, is as follows:

* To have certain templates and full ships I've created be available to the player and to AI only when they are a specific race (i.e. a hypothetical Borg Cube would be available only to the hypothetical Borg custom race, whether it's the player or the AI.)

* For those templates and full ships to not be listed as buildable ships in the starport screen unless I am playing as the requisite race.

* For the ships I've designed to be made simply by using the Shipyard, without additional modification or assets (i.e. a hypothetical "Borg Cube" made in the Shipyard would be "assigned" to a hypothetical "Borg" custom race by editing whatever files necessary in notepad to ensure that the ship in question can only be used by the "Borg" custom race, etc.)

1) Is this possible (I assume it definitely is?)

2) How do I accomplish this?

Again, I am sorry if this has been asked previously (I have a feeing it has been numerous times,) and offer my gratitude in advance. I will wait 48 hours before bumping the thread out of courtesy as well. I don't like to bump.
modding
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Sure, all you need to do (assuming you're in DA, since you mentioned templates) is this:

1) Go to GalCiv2\DarkAvatar\Data\English\ShipStyles and open one of the files there. Change all the instances of the old name to Borg Style or whatever suits your fancy, and change the <Prefix> to BORG or something equally appropriate. Save the file as Borg Style.xml in My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar\ShipStyles (Doing this manually since if you did it in-game you'd need to come back and change the prefix anyway).

2) Make your custom race in the game and pick Borg Style when you're setting them up. Create whatever ships and templates you want in-game. For the AI you'll need at least one template for each hull size.

3) In another new game, when you pick your opponents, edit one of them, assign it the Borg style, then click the custom style button below the list. Here you can assign the templates you made to the various AI ship classes.

That should be all you need to do. Since all of your designs and templates are prefixed with BORG_, they will only appear as useable when using the Borg Style.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thank-you very much!

This is pretty delightful stuff. With this, I can essentially create "mod-like" gameplay for myself without actually modding anything (more or less.) With some .png icons and what not I could go nuts without doing much work. And I thought the in-game options gave us lots of customization as it was! It hasn’t seemed this easy to be creative (in my own limited way, at least) since Civ 2 MPGE (it was so easy to make Star Wars scenarios and what not in that game.)

Thanks again!
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
P.S.

I have noted one problem, however. I didn't notice it at first because I was too busy creating the new ships.

The default core ships are now invisible. Is there a way around this? Thanks again!
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have noted one problem, however. I didn't notice it at first because I was too busy creating the new ships.

The default core ships are now invisible. Is there a way around this? Thanks again!


This is because there are no ship designs with your new prefix for them. You can simply copy a group (all of the files with a particular prefix) from GalCiv2\DarkAvatar\Data\ShipCfg to My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar\ships and change the prefixes to match yours (just so there's something there).

Alternately, just make copies of your colony, survey, and miner templates' shipcfgs (you'll find them in My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar\shiptemplates if you made them) with the appropriate names (BORG_ColonyShip.shipcfg, BORG_SurveyShip.shipcfg, and BORG_SpaceMiner.shipcfg are the names they'll need) and place them in the ships folder. Other than those three the core ship designs are not that important, since you can design your own ships--you just need those for the ships the race will start with.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Alright, that makes perfect sense, and it works. Thanks.

Is there a way to modify those initial ships so that they always appear as custom templates? It says I can't change core ships. Or is that the only caveat? Lol. In either case, thanks a million again!
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You can't replace them in-game. However if you just make a design by another name, say, 'Colony Ship 2', then make a copy of that file named appropriately like I said above (copy 'ships\BORG_UD_ColonyShip20.shipcfg' to 'ships\BORG_ColonyShip.shipcfg'), it should use that one.

To replace those in the core styles you'd need to actually replace the shipcfg files in the game's data folder.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Oh, I see. The game just looks for a configuration file with the correct name, so I can just copy a ship I've created into a file with that name. It works! Thanks for your patience and assistance. It is greatly appreciated.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
My apologies; one more problem!

It worked the first time, but upon starting a second new game, the initial ships were once again invisible. I tried copying all of the S0 prefixed core ships (Colony, Space Miner, Constructor, and Survey) to my ships folder as you described, changed their prefix to BORG, and started another game to see if this fixed the problem. Then something really odd happened. Not only were they invisible in the game, but when I went back to look in my ships folder, the files I had placed there were nowhere to be found.

Am I making a known mistake here that is easily resolved or is my computer haunted? Lol. Thanks again, and sorry!
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
the files I had placed there were nowhere to be found.


Interesting. You may try right-clicking them in explorer after you copy them, and going to the properties dialog and setting them to read-only.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, that prevented the files from being erased, but the ships still appear invisible in the game. I noticed that despite the prefix of the file name being changed to BORG_, the internal prefixes in the file itself (things that say “dummy” etc. and list individual components) remain S0. Could that be part of the problem? (I know nothing about this so that may not even be a logical question lol.) In addition, the S0 style ship now appears in the Appearance tab for the custom race itself (whereas before it, too, was invisible,) but the ships in the game once it stars are still invisible.

Would it help if I created a new colony ship and saved it, and then manually copied the actual text of the configuration file into the core colony ship configuration file in the ships folder?

Thanks again, and I hope this isn't too frustrating.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'll have to see if I can try it out myself and poke around a bit.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Alright. Don't go out of your way or anything. I'll experiment too, and post any successful ways to do it I find. It's fun messing around with regardless of the setbacks.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Try just putting your customized core ship files in the game's base Data\ShipCfg folder--it doesn't seem to mind them being there.

the internal prefixes in the file itself (things that say “dummy” etc. and list individual components) remain S0. Could that be part of the problem?


The actual models referenced inside the shipcfg file are not restricted based on prefix at all--they could be any of the models in the game.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ah! Ships copied from S0 core ships renamed with the prefix "BORG_" are now visible in the game, no matter how many new games I start, and the files remain in the directory whether they are read-only or not. Thank-you!

So, assuming that's solved, am I correct in thinking that I should be able to copy and paste the text in custom ships config files into those files and save them, to customize the appearance and modules of the core ships?
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Appearance, yes. The actual functional components in the core ships are defined globally for all races in GC2Ships.xml, though.

You could copy the shipcfg contents from any design you have into the core shipcfg files, and those ships will look like that design, regardless of the actual components.

Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That's more that good enough. I wouldn't want core ships to do anything other than their intended basic functions anyway, since that's what they're there for. ^_^ Thanks again! I can't wait to play with this all day now lol. I've seen you help A LOT of people, and exhibit great patience in so doing. I hope you know it is not unnoticed or taken for granted, at least not by me. Thanks.
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Just so you know, so far with just this basic information, I've been able to create Starfleet, the Borg, Romulans, Klingons, and Vulcans. I've also read some more elsewhere and managed to make all of this into a mod I can enable or disable in the mod options at will, and was able to rename some of the techs accordingly in that mod.

This probably all sounds unoriginal and redundant given the excellent trek mod already being worked on, but I like making things myself. It's part of the fun. I also wanted it to be simple, and to use all in-game graphics, and to keep the core gameplay identical to what I'm familiar with in the normal game. Your help has allowed me to do that. I just love how I can make a casual mod like this, while others can go all out and completely transform the game. Maybe that's common in games these days, but it seems a might simpler in DA than others, and it's certainly more fun and less work than in others. I'm having a blast.
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This is cool!
I've noticed that Drengin Empire and Korath Clan use ModuleStyle 3
(Drengin style) so their tiny ships are all drengin style tiny ships, for example. Is it possible to make own custom style so that player can select both terran and drengin tiny hulls?
Can i put multiple ModuleStyles for one ship style?
Or is a style restricted to one ModuleStyle? (And i have to DL KHSM?)
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Can i put multiple ModuleStyles for one ship style?


No, only one.
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
By the way - I might have noticed this sooner had I not been so pleased with the success of this method from the player perspective - but AI ships remain invisible, as it turns out.   

I've tried two or three things to correct this.

1) I created templates and ships with the names of the default ships (like HvyFighter, Frigate, etc.) for the Borg Style and saved them appropriately.

2) I changed the AI templates in the Borg Style.xml to those specific templates created for the Borg.

3) I tried #2 again, this time making sure that the templates used the same hull size as the default "Attacker," "Defender," etc. AI templates used, thinking that might have been what was at issue.

None of those attempts fixed the problem. When playing against the Borg custom race I created, AI ships (such as "Borg Scout" and "Borg Fighter M6-02" or something to that effect) are consistently invisible. There are templates for all the hull types and sizes, so I can't figure out why this is occurring.

Playing as them still works fine, though.

Any thoughts or suggestions? You have my continued thanks!
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Please start a new thread in bug reports and post your debug.err file (located in the game's directory, just open it in notepad and copy+paste). There have been other reports of missing ships not related to custom templates, and the debug should show for sure.
Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Sure thing (I posted one.) Again, I thank-you for all your assistance. It is appreciated, and exceeds what I'm used to from the staff, moderators, and other related personnel of the official forums for almost all other games that have earned my patronage over the years.

If nothing else, this has given me a much firmer grasp of the directory structure of the game and the relationships between the different files types therein!