Slot Modder and You

[AxeMan]

Hi, Im new to Starfury. I have just downloaded Suicide Junkie's Slot Modder, and I was wondering.
When i start up the program, the Terran starter ship is shown, ready for me to edit
But, what happens when i want to edit other ships? where exactly is the other ship graphics so that i can edit their slots as well? I have (finally) found out where to save/edit/load the files i do, but i cant seem to find the b&w of the ships.

[Wydom@ker]

The images you seek are to be found in the Portraits subfolder of Images. The bmp you want is named ShipPortrait_[race]_[ship].bmp

One thing to be aware of is when you save your work, save it to a new file as the program will wipe out the original file and leave your work as the only entry. The game will not run.

I then cut and paste my work into the game file.

[ November 15, 2003, 09:35: Message edited by: Wydom@ker ]

[AxeMan]

thankyou thankyou thankyou thankyou thankyou thankyou thankyou thankyou thankyou thankyou thankyou!!!

[Suicide Junkie]

If you choose "Export" it will create a new file with the name you specify, and place only the current slot layout in there.

If you choose "Save", it will add your slot layout to the beginning of the file and remove any slot layout with an identical name.

I've used it that way for ages now. Open-edit-save directly to the campaign files.
I haven't bothered to make a backup while editing in quite a while.

[ November 15, 2003, 19:05: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Manathor]

SJ,

I have a problem that is driving me crazy. I added a new ship type, the Abbidon Superdreadnaught. I used the Abbidon battleship as my templat, I increased the tonnage and then used slotmodder to move the rear firing weapon points to the front of the ship. I moved the hull spaces that were there to the back to replace the hardpoints. Bottomline, I didn't delete or add slots, only moved some around.

My problem comes with the firing arcs of the moved hardpoints. I changed them from a rear firing arc to a forward arc. When I go to buy the ship in the shipdealer, the arcs appear correct, but once I buy the ship and go to put components in it, the arcs revert to rear firing, even though they are in the new spots in the front of the ship. ???????????

Any ideas why this is happening. I checked the text file and the hardpoints have the correct firing arc. It seems that the game is pulling information on firing arcs from somewhere else.

Thanks

[Phoenix-D]

Yes, it is. It draws from both the spaceobject.x file (where the shot comes from) and the slot file (where the weapon is).

If you don't change the space object file- which SJ's modder doesn't- you're restricted to the hardpoints in that file. You can use the slot modder to change -which- hard point is refered to for a specific slot, though. For the Abbidon battleship, you want hard point 3 for a left-side front shot, and 4 for a right-side front shot.

code:

---

// 3X4   

//  X   

//2 X 1  

// 6X5

---

that's from the space object file, its a simple way of showing where each hardpoint is for the Abbidon Battleship.

[ November 24, 2003, 21:11: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Yep. The slots file dosen't specify the location the beam/projectile comes out of (except maybe for FP zero slots, such as used for PDC)
And currently the X_file overrides the slots for weapon arcs once you purchase the ship.

I'm hoping Aaron will make the arcs work the other way round, so it will be easy to make ship variants using the same model.

[Manathor]

Thanks for the input, I was wondering what those
patterns were for in the .X file in front of each
ship model.