Modders 'How To' guide.

[pathfinder]

Maverick: In addition to what Atrocities said (an excellent way to do the ship figures BTW) Malfador has a design criteria area at their website under racestyle (I think). their website is: [url=http://www.malfador.com.]
G'luck with any shipsets ya do!

now as to the AI files, I simply take one of the modded files, run it off (paper), then run off the same one from a default one and compare the values. EG. EA_anger.txt and compare it to Xi'Chung. I did that then made a copy of the EA one and set values between them to make an anger file for a custom race of mine. a nasty race that isn't quite Xenophobic.

Hope this helps.

[This message has been edited by pathfinder (edited 21 April 2001).]

[This message has been edited by pathfinder (edited 21 April 2001).]

[Dubious]

I've just posted in the "Space Empires: IV - Modding and other Help Tools/Information" archive a FREE side-by-side file comparison tool called "ExamDiff". It has various display options for showing the differences, including the ability to make changes directly to the files IIRC.

Makes the job a LOT simpler!

[Q]

quote:

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Originally posted by Dubious:
I've just posted in the "Space Empires: IV - Modding and other Help Tools/Information" archive a FREE side-by-side file comparison tool called "ExamDiff". It has various display options for showing the differences, including the ability to make changes directly to the files IIRC.

Makes the job a LOT simpler!

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Woh! That's really a fantastic tool! Thank you very much for posting it here.

[Coal]

Pathfinder, Atrocities, thank you for your Posts. I'm makeing a few practice ship pics and, hopefully, will begin work on a race style soon. The ACDSee program is helping alot. The only problem I have is making the minis. I'm not good at drawing with MS paint. Mabye with enough practice I'll improve.

Thanks again.



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Rules? What Rules?

[Q]

Maverick I am not very experienced in making pictures, but I found it very easy to make minis once you have the large picture. Even the most basic drawing programms let you change the size of your picture: choose pixels as units and 36x36 as size and that should convert the large picture to the mini.

[DaftWager]

I use a method similar to Atrocities’ with heavy emphasis on the ACDSee. Where it differs though, is that I’ve found how to pack much more details into the minis. Instead of drawing them in the 36x36 space, I use the portrait size 128x128. I can put tons of detail into the ship that way.
Another method I use is to take a texture from the portrait to get a base hull color. I fill a 36x36 square with it with some variations so it has a random look about it. Then I take another 36x36 in black with the outline of the ship cut out, and drag and drop over the texture square, and you have an instant ship! All that is left to do is add details to it.
Finally, to take away the “hard edged” look the minis might have, I resize it through ACDSee a few times, and it softens and blends the colors to give it a better (I think) look. When you do this just remember to fill the black with a contrasting color to take out the ‘halo’ around the ship that will be visible in nebulas, and if its bad enough in the system and combat windows.
Hope this helps!

[Tampa_Gamer]

Not to toot my own horn, but I would recommend reading my article here
http://www.cdmag.com/articles/032/11...eempir-04.html

I tried to provide a preliminary roadmap for mod makers and mod Users.