Trying to load custom ship

[MasterChief54924]

I downloaded a custom ship from a mod site for star shatter and installed it into the mods directory in a folder called ships. I loaded the test mission for it and when I try to start it up it gives me a bunch of errors that say it can't load the ship model. What am I doing wrong? I also modelled a ship myself and made a .def file for it and used the test mission template and that gave the same error. I tried putting the ship model inside the same folder as the mission and that didn't work either. Help me out please.








Thanks in advance

[Kuokkanen]

It's been some time when I have messed up with modifications or even Starhsatter itself. Let's see if I remember anything

There are two different ways mods are delivered. One is packed files as .DAT format which works only with commercial versions starting from version number 4.0.0 and out of date demo version 3.7.6 (note: .DAT files were rare at that time and new mods are unlikely to work on that version). These files are to be placed to the Starshatter root directory and enabled from the game. .DAT files don't work with the new demo versions (3.9.4 is newest)

.DAT file is practically compressed file which can include multiple files and directories. It is possible use those files without compressing them to .DAT which is nowadays done mostly by mod developers to test their mods. These files are placed to mods subdirectory. Note that mods directory can include other subdirectories for different components of the mod. So ship goes to directory path Starshatter\mods\ships and weapons go to Starshatter\mods\weapons. If I remember right, ships may have their own subdirectories. Like Starshatter\mods\ships\shipclass.

It is also possible for mod developer to define subdirectories for some of their files. By default all weapon files are in same directory. But with .DEF files (script files which defines how weapon works) it is possible to place other files to subdirectories. For example some modder might want place all sound effects of all weapons to same directory. So .DEF file in directory Starshatter\mods\weapons tells the game that sound effect of the weapon is not in that same directory but instead is in Starshatter\mods\weapons\sounds.

Last trick to get these uncompressed mods to work is start the game from command prompt with command stars.exe -filesys. stars.exe is the executable file in version 3.7.6 and I don't remember what it is in other versions. Got the commercial version by the way, but I haven't installed it yet. Anyway that command enables all uncompressed mods and disables multiplayer option. Uncompressed mods would make it easy to make modifications for the mod (like how much weapon does damage) and thus multiplayer is disabled. It also effectively disables choice to use mods for multiplayer in demo versions.

[wdboyd]

Greetings, [:)]

I had downloaded 12 nifty fighters for use in Starshatter.

I followed the installation instructions. The ships .Dat files showed up in the game and I was able to enable them but they failed to show up for use anywhere in the game after restarting.

After hours of trial and error... I loaded the ships .Def files into a sample mods /Ship directory and after enabling the sample mod.... yeeeaaa.. the ships were there. [:'(]

If all else fails... try that.

"They can't hear your scream in space"