Several Modding Questions

[Olias7]

Thanks in advance for any answers anyone can provide. I've got a general handle on modding this game, but have a few questions:

1. After adding -filesys to the .exe and enabling mods, I noticed my "multiplayer" button is greyed out in-game. Is there a way to play SS:TGS in multiplayer with mods enabled?

2. Ship .def file: Length. In the ship def file, there's a length attribute and a scale attribute. The scale attribute seems to work fine for changing the size of the model, what does length do?

3. Landing Gear. I built a model for the nose landing gear, and it is the correct size compared to my X-Wing model in my modelling program, however in-game it is way too huge. I changed the size attribute in the .def file, but this seems to have no effect.

4. Landing. I noticed when I land at a starbase on a planet, my ship model is partial "sunk" in the runway. Should I raise the model's Y coordinate in my modelling program or is there another way to correct this?

5. Weapon: Barrels. I added two more barrels to the delta cannon for my X-Wing in the X-Wing's ship .def file, is this a cosmetic change or does it affect the weapon's performance? For example, if it's a 100 damage weapon, is that 100 per barrel or 100 regardless?

Also, does this affect the way hit determination is figured?

6. Scientific Notation? In the MOD SDK section it mentions that some numbers are expressed in Scientific Notation, however, the format of the number doesn't seem to be in a scientific notation format. What it looks like to me is hexadecimal. How does this work and can something like "517e3" be replaced with a normal decimal number?

7. Hud-Icon. I've attempted to add .pcx image for the hud icon, but I can't seem to get it to work. Is there a specific size this needs to be in or something I am missing here?

Thanks again, any info would be greatly appreciated.

[Adonnay]

Let me write down my wild guesses

1. I suppose that is is because of the -filesys parameter, not mods per se. I haven't tested that though.
2. I guess the length-paramter is to overwrite the length as it is shown in the tac-reference screen. If you don't specify the length the game will determin it automatically.
3. You can scale the landing gear just like you scale the ship, just add a scale parameter. Size only defines the components size as in how easy it is to hit (I think, I never really understood how that parameter worked).
4. If all other ships land correctly then yes, you should reposition your ship. If all ships land partially sunken into the ground (and they're all aprox. the same scale) then the landing approach vector of the runway has been set too low.
5. It depends... if the weapon is set to synced fire more barrels will deal more damage since the shot frequency is kept the same (ie. if two barrels shoot twice a second, four barrels will also shoot twice a second while doubling the number of shots). If the weapon is set to asynced fire (one at a time) then it will always deal the same damage, no matter how many barrels you define.
6. Scientific notation means - lacking the proper mathematical vocabulary - you write the number of zeroes behind the actual value. 1000 would be 1e3, 420000 would be 42e4 and your 517e3 would be 517000. It means how often the value has to be multiplyed with 10.
7. I'm not sure anymore but I think it has to be 128x128 and greyscale.

[Zanthras]

1. After adding -filesys to the .exe and enabling mods, I noticed my "multiplayer" button is greyed out in-game. Is there a way to play SS:TGS in multiplayer with mods enabled?

Don't quote me on this, but I believe the -filesys shortcut is for testing a mod, once proven a .dat file can be made. Ship dat files can be one or multiple ships. A few modders have created they own fleets and created working dat files.


Creating a dat is actually quite simple, I believe there are a few threads on how it's done posted here. Some basic files are needed, if you need help in learning how I can pass along what I have.

Once a file is in dat format you can start the game with the normal shortcut and have your mod available for mutiplayer use...