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I have been creating mods for Distant Worlds for many years and today I have started work on a new Star Trek mod for DW2 with the first change to the mod already implemented....

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Boldly going where no man has gone before

Have solved the first issue I had with DW2.... with this mod there will no longer be random names given to characters in the game.

Preview screenshot showing the first appearance of Captain James T Kirk

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Boldly going where no man has gone before


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Boldly going where no man has gone before

While working on the characters I made the following change.

The picture shows Captain James T Kirk is the Ship Captain currently at Andoria.
The bottom of the picture shows Kirk is currently in the Andorian System.

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Boldly going where no man has gone before


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Boldly going where no man has gone before

What I have planned next for the mod is to look at adding in a realistic map of the federation, Klingon and Romulan planets,

What I see so far is this will be more difficult than what I was able to-do with DW1

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Boldly going where no man has gone before


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Boldly going where no man has gone before

runandhidegamer wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 7:06 pm Mod Logo No Title Original.png

I have been creating mods for Distant Worlds for many years and today I have started work on a new Star Trek mod for DW2 with the first change to the mod already implemented....

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Boldly going where no man has gone before

Very nice pic, imho, but where is your also nicely done mod-title pic gone to / why have you deleted it

frankycl wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:08 pm

runandhidegamer wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 7:06 pm Mod Logo No Title Original.png

I have been creating mods for Distant Worlds for many years and today I have started work on a new Star Trek mod for DW2 with the first change to the mod already implemented....

-----------------------------------------------------
Boldly going where no man has gone before

Very nice pic, imho, but where is your also nicely done mod-title pic gone to / why have you deleted it

It will be back...doing some changes to it.



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Boldly going where no man has gone before

runandhidegamer wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 7:49 pm Have solved the first issue I had with DW2.... with this mod there will no longer be random names given to characters in the game.

Preview screenshot showing the first appearance of Captain James T Kirk

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Boldly going where no man has gone before


Picture 001 - James T Kirk.png

WOW-that's super-great, imho !! - but how did you do that ? - could you please explain a bit more in detail (what files, what entries did you edit, etc.)

frankycl wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:15 pm

runandhidegamer wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 7:49 pm Have solved the first issue I had with DW2.... with this mod there will no longer be random names given to characters in the game.

Preview screenshot showing the first appearance of Captain James T Kirk

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Boldly going where no man has gone before


Picture 001 - James T Kirk.png

WOW-that's super-great, imho !! - but how did you do that ? - could you please explain a bit more in detail (what files, what entries did you edit, etc.)

In the races file, do this.

<CharacterFirstNames>
<string> </string>
<string> </string>
<string> </string>

</CharacterFirstNames>
<CharacterLastNames>

<string>Robert April</string>
<string>Batel</string>
<string>Morgan Bateson</string>
<string>Chandra</string>
<string>Will Decker</string>
<string>JT Esteban</string>
<string>Philippa Georgiou</string>
<string>John Harriman</string>
<string>James T Kirk</string>

runandhidegamer wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:56 pm

frankycl wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:15 pm

runandhidegamer wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 7:49 pm Have solved the first issue I had with DW2.... with this mod there will no longer be random names given to characters in the game.

WOW-that's super-great, imho !! - but how did you do that ?

In the races file, do this.

<CharacterFirstNames>
(...)
<CharacterLastNames>
(...)

Ah, yes ok - but that doesn't prevent the game from picking the names randomly, or does it ?

frankycl wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 11:08 pm

runandhidegamer wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:56 pm

frankycl wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:15 pm
WOW-that's super-great, imho !! - but how did you do that ?

In the races file, do this.

<CharacterFirstNames>
(...)
<CharacterLastNames>
(...)

Ah, yes ok - but that doesn't prevent the game from picking the names randomly, or does it ?

This is still very much a work in progress and characters were randomly brought into DW1 but in more of an order.

In DW2 from what I see there is no way to specify if a character is a leader, a captain or any other role. The first step was to have a character called James T Kirk appear and not Tiko Tarfan.

Second step was to remove the text "Ruling from" because it would not make sense to have Kirk ruling a planet.

Today I am adding thousands of Star Trek planets to the game and resurrected my maps of the different quadrants for later use to custom-build the Star Trek map.

I started working on the mod 18 hours ago and I have just added the following races to the game.

- Federation
- Klingons
- Romulans
- Vulcans

Still a lot of work to do but it is a good start.
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Boldly going where no man has gone before

In the first 21 hours of development 8 Star Trek races have been added to the mod..... but still a long way to go.

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Boldly going where no man has gone before

Work has started on the Enterprise-A model.

This sounds amazing and I can't wait to see what comes of it. Thank you for doing this awesome work!

Before getting into some serious modding with Distant Worlds 2, I wanted to test what I was able to do at the moment.

So I setup a test in the smallest map possible for the humans, put the game on pause, and then went into the editor and began deleting systems left, right, and center making sure to keep the one where my humans are on.

Saved the game and saw it created a file called "test deleting systems.DWGame" that I had named it.

So I have a backup file containing everything with the current game I am playing.

The question is... can I extract that map from the DWGame file and copy that into a new game.

When you have the ability to edit a map, add systems, planets, civilizations, etc, surely there must be a way to save that map so you do not have to rebuild the map every time you want to use a custom map in a new game again and again.

Have my list of systems for the alpha and beta quadrants and currently adding them to the SystemNames file.
Hopefully today I can test the system names work well in Distant Worlds 2.

Tested the Star Trek system names were added correctly to the game.
Confirmed

Below is the Vulcan System though this needs correcting once I can do the mapping.

The 8th of May 2023...... this was the day that Earth made first contact with the Vulcans...

Back in March I added the different species from Star Trek such as the Romulans and Klingons by simply renaming the races that came with the game.....

Today I actually add the Vulcans as a new race without the use of simply renaming another race.

Distant Worlds 2 comes with the default races of the:

- Ackdarian
- Boskara
- Haakonish
- Human
- Mortalen
- Teekan
- Zenox

In the screenshot below you can see the Vulcans have been added as a new race along with the default races of DW2.

A little work is still needed on the description of the Vulcan race and formatting of text.

When Adding new races to Distant Worlds 2 you need to know the race ID assigned to each existing race.

Race ID 0 - Human
Race ID 1 - Ackdarian
Race ID 2 - Teekan
Race ID 3 - Haakonish
Race ID 4 - Mortalen
Race ID 5 - Ikkuro
Race ID 6 - Boskara
Race ID 7 - Zenox
Race ID 16 - Quameno
Race ID 20 - Shakturi

In the list above the Ikkuro, Quameno and Shakturi are not in the selected Race screen but they are assigned a race ID so that Race ID is not available for new races.

So with the Vulcans I have added them in with a Race ID of 30.... just in case the developer adds in a bunch of new races down the track as they have done with the latest DLC.