Star Trek Development - Latest news : The races are now being added to the mod

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Now for adding ships in the future I can just use Notepad ++ to add in the rest of the ships.... but before I do that I need to work out what data I need to add for the ships.

So in order to see what data is added into the mod I will start off using the DW2 Data Editor modding tool as shown here.

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To start adding ships in the tool, press edit ships hull and I will get a new window called DW2 Ship Hull Editor as shown below

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Now before going further I go into the Distant Worlds 2 data folder, find the file ShipHulls.xml and copy that to our mod folder we want to create ships for as shown here...

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Now we go back into the tool and press the button to load the ShipHulls.xml file in our mod folder into the DW2 Ship Hull Editor

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After we load the xml file into the editor you will see the screen below which is showing the ship hull data for one of the default ships.... a Haakonish/escort....

We will leaving those there for the time being and will be adding in the ship hull data for the Borg Cube.

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So to add the first Borg cube we will add a new ShipHull record using the ‘Add Item’ button on the toolbar.....

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When you press the Add Button this is what you should see..... a record for a new ship hull item which is what we are going to add the first Borg cube to.

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Before adding the Borg Cube Escort details I need to assign it a unique Ship Hull Id........ adding a new record adds the new record to the end of the file so if I click on move backwards it will show the last record id added to this file.

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The picture below shows that the last ship added was a Zenox Medium Fuel Tanker with a Hull Id of 767.... so for the new record it needs to be given a Hull Id of 768.

Click on the Move Forward Button as shown below to go back to the new record

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When I am back at the new record I then fill in the data starting with adding in the ShipHullId of 768..

I will create a Borg Cube Escort so add escort where indicated and fill in the other details as shown below and , where it states model name, I will put in Ships/Borg/escort.
Obviously I will need to add the 3D model of the Borg cube into that location for this to work.

RaceID of 110 is the ID I have assigned to the Borg race so this is added.

Everything else is pretty much copied from an existing escort record.

Once I have added everything in as per the screenshot below , this means 50% of this Ship Hull screen is done.... We will go to the next part of the ShipHull data in the next post.

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Now we use the screenshot below to fill in the data for the Borg escort starting from Engine Limit 3, adding everything in to and including BuildSpeedFactor 1.........

Now everything we do in this screen is important but for the text we are just going to add in the values used by other escorts. We can modify these figures at a later date if needed.

Note: Once you have added these figures, go to the prior record, and then go to the record you are adding. You will see the data you entered is saved as you enter it.

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The next step is to add in two bonuses for the Borg Cube Escort...... First thing to do is to click the button called Add Bonuses.

This will come up with the following screen. Add the data as shown below to add in a ship speed bonus for the Borg Cube.

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Now we want to add in a second bonus for the Borg Cube Escort....... to add in the 2nd bonus click on the Add Bonus button again.
Now add in the data for ShipManeuvering as shown below.

If you make a mistake you can delete that record you have in front of you by pressing the X.

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Now we get to a more complicated side of adding in the hull data for the Borg Cube. Now for this test I simply have a cube shaped object with a texture added to the cube.

For the escort model we have been looking at the 3D model was a little more complicated than a simple cube and the ship model for the Haakonish escort has additional meshes added to the model for the following:

- A Weapon bay
- 3 Different engine bays
- 2 Sensor bays
- 2 Defence bays

The screenshot below shows the 7 different components bays you can have on your ship, each one linked to mesh attached to the 3d model of the ship.

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At this stage I want to save the file ShipHulls.xml and check the file is being updated with everything entered via the ZData Editor tool.......

Looks good to me.......

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For this test I am going to leave the component bay item as simple with a Component Bay Type of General....... all I want to see is the Borg Cube make it into the game..... after that I can look at engines, weapons etc.

Sometimes it is better to start simple and work your way up.

I am also leaving the Image filename as a Haakonish escort for the time being.

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At this stage, we have a Borg cube escort with just the very basic features. no weapons, no engines, etc....... we will now save the file and see if the Borg Cube loads into the mod.

When you press the save button as shown below, make sure you save the file as ShipHulls.xml...... this may change after more testing but keep the name at this stage as ShipHulls.xml

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Before we move the Borg Cube Escort into the mod we need to go back into Stride and make some changes.

We are going to have multiple Borg Ship types so I changed the project from Simply being BorgCube to the new name BorgCubeEscort....
I have also added the fbx file into the BorgCubeEscort folder as that is the model file to be used by Stride.

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Before we try to create the bundle file for the Borg Cube Escort, we need to change the Stride Configuration file and make sure that is pointing to the location of the Borg Cube Escort.

So in the Stride folder for the ship BorgCubeEscort, go to the folder BorgCubeEscort.Windows and edit the file BorgCubeEscort.Windows.sdpkg

Make sure everything looks like the screenshot below where you have the 2 lines showing Name: BorgCubeEscort.Windows and the path is shown as

Paths:
- /Resources/Ships/BorgCubeEscort/

You need to have this set correctly or the bundle file will not be created.

(note: where you see a red dot in the screenshot below needs to be a space in the line)

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We go into stride and make sure as shown below that you have the correct path set under assets.

The path you want to add the 3d model should be as such Assets/Resources/Ships/BorgCubeEscort

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