ok I want to make a race ship and missions mod

Gratuitous Forum Gratuitous Modding
1

I can make the ships in paint.net but

  1. How do i get them into the game as pictures not white (or black) squares?
  2. How do I go about making the races?
  3. How do I go about making new missions like defend B5 ect…
    I’m looking for easy to follow guides, the idiots guide to modding if you will
    Thanks for all your help and sorry if they’ve been posted else where, if they have please direct me accordingly . Thanks :smiley:
2

I can help you with #1. (kinda quick shitty guide)
I don’t use paint.net but GIMP + DDS Plug-in, its free, more user friendly and more powerful i found.
So lets say we start off with a picture of a ship (make sure the entire square image is 512x512 pixels or less)
firstly remove all the background so it’s transparent.
then go to channels, duplicate the blue one. Rename it Alpha 1, set brightness and contrast to 100.
you’ll want to save it as .DDS using BC3/DXT5 compression.
Generate mini-maps needs to be ticked.
i assume you’ve got the file names and locations right?

3

pretend i’m a novice in the extreme,
I have my ship already done a fighter, it’s done as a dds and a sprite and i’ve tried to get it into my game but it’s just a white square

4

1st of, what dds images do you have, You should have I think the SHIPNAME_sprite.dds (both Hulk and Normal at 64x64 with Normal on the Left) and then just the SHIPNAME.dds, but you can also have SHIPNAME_damaged.dds and SHIPNAME_hulk.dds

With paint.net you dont have to stuff around with alpha maps etc… just getting a image, Getting it to the right size and then saving, every thing in the Box when you push save Should be ticked (MipMaps, And Weight by Alpha) and at DXT3

  • = as i just use all of them

With a new race all you need to do is get the Stock race files, and Copy a new one in, Change the Names and then the Name you writ for the ‘name=’ is what your hull file needs as the ‘racename=’