x3 modding guide

Northstars X3 Modding for Beginners V1.6

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Index

Introduction................................................................................................................4

Tools required for this tutorial ............................................................................4 Explanation of the modding tools ..............................................................................4

X3 Mod Manager...................................................................................................4 TXT Editor.............................................................................................................5 Text Resource Editor .............................................................................................5 Galaxy Editor .........................................................................................................6

Enabling the in game editors ...............................................................................6 A note on scripts and why they are essential to modders ......................................6 Enabling the script editor .......................................................................................6 Enabling the galaxy editor .....................................................................................7

Making a mod step by step ........................................................................................7 Preparation .............................................................................................................7

Checking the unpacked files .....................................................................8

Creating a new ship ...................................................................................9

Create your cat file ..................................................................................12 Using the in game galaxy editor ..............................................................................12

A map to work from ................................................................................12 Cheating in the editor...........................................................................................13 Creating a ship in the editor .................................................................................15 Saving your map ..................................................................................................16 Navigating the galaxy ..........................................................................................16 Importing map patch objects................................................................................17 Adding or deleting sector objects and adjusting station wares ............................17 Copy, Paste, and rotate objects ............................................................................19 Asteroids and planets ...........................................................................................19

Connecting Sectors with gates ..........................................................19

Galaxy Editor that comes with X3 Editor ...................................................20 Exploring the editor .............................................................................................21 Naming sectors.....................................................................................................22

Adding a new sector ................................................................................22 Joining your new sector to the galaxy..................................................................23

Making your sector appear in the galaxy map ..................................24

Adding your updated bod file to the cat file ...........................................27 Checking how the new sector looks.....................................................................27

Playing your mod in the game ..........................................................................29 Instructing your mod users...................................................................................30

Making a start up script ........................................................................30 Script editor commands .......................................................................................31



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Editing the initplayer script..................................................................................32

Making your start up script work with your mod ...................................37 Cockpits, Guns and Turrets......................................................................................39

Adjust laser selections for your ships cockpits .......................................39

Adding extra lasers to your ship ................................................39 A note on turrets...................................................................................................43 Other ideas for your mod .....................................................................................44

Changing the game music tracks and sound effects ................................44

Converting bob files to bod using Doubleshadows x2bc .........................45 Appendices 1............................................................................................................47

Planet descriptions ...............................................................................................47



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Introduction Making game modifications for X3 Reunion might seem a little daunting to most fans who have played the game or would like more from the game. There are many good guides and tools for achieving this which will be explained further in this tutorial. Whether you would like to just mod the game for your own enjoyment or make a full blown mod for others to use, this guide will provide you with an explanation of what mod software you need, then through a step by step process on how to make a mod and hopefully advance many people wishing to mod. You might not become a modding guru as this comes with experience, but you will be able to mod almost anything in the game so that your preferred game play becomes a reality. Throughout the guide you will see star ratings for the complexity of each tutorial

which change as the difficulty level changes, ranging from to . If you are new to modding, I would recommend focusing on the 1 to 2 star topics before trying 3 to 4 star.

Tools required for this tutorial Many excellent tools have been created by Doubleshadow The main tool you need to download is the X3 Editor which includes almost all you need. The X3E contains the TXT Editor, Text Resource Editor & Galaxy Editor. You also need to download the X3 Mod Manager which is used to create cat files. Get them from here: http://www.doubleshadow.wz.cz/x3e/Note: to use these tools you also need to install, Visual C Runtime Library (msvcr71.dll) and zlib (zlib1.dll) library. These are also downloadable from Doubleshadows site. Don’t be put off by this as they are very simple to install as self extractors. The main galaxy editor is an option in the game, but it is best to use a combination of the two, which will be covered later in this guide.

Explanation of the modding tools This section explains what the different tools do. Using the tools will be covered in another section.

X3 Mod Manager The mod manager allows you to do the following with .cat files (short for catalogue files):

• Open and view a cat file

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• Extract the files from a .cat file, individually, by selection or all files. • Add to or delete files from a cat • Create and name a new cat

A cat file is basically information on the structure of a .dat file containing the game files in a directory structure that the game recognises. In the X3 game folder normally C:\Program Files\DeepSilver\X3 Reunion\ You will see cat files 01 to 07 if you have version 1.402 or 01 to 06 if you have version 1.4. Each cat file has an accompanying dat file with the same number. So 01.cat goes with 01.dat and so on. These data files contain many files the game uses e.g. game maps, graphics, 3d structures, text files, sound effects, etc. The files are in many formats, some well known and some not so well known. There are many editors available for manipulating these files e.g wav, jpg, xml, pck, bod, pbb. This guide will not teach you how to manipulate every file type as some are pretty self explanatory. However you will learn how to change the files you need to make a really good mod using the tools explained. When installing Modmanager the very last screen will prompt you to associate cat files with Modmanager. Make sure this is checked before clicking on close. This way all of your cat files will use Modmanager by default and they will show up with the black cat icon.

TXT Editor This utility is used for changing the values in a text file through an easy to use interface. You can actually mod the text files using any standard text editor e.g wordpad or notepad, but this would take a long time to figure out what all the values are. This can be done with some patience if you want to spend the time and this will be covered in a later section of this tutorial. Text Editor makes it easy for you by translating all the values into easy read tables with names. A good example of this is the tships file in the types folder. Once this file is loaded up into the text editor you will see the whole list of ships on the left. The ship list is sorted from A to Z and you can view by name, race or type. Clicking on each ship will display the ship values in the right side of the editor. Here you can change the values of many things like shield type, laser type, speed, cargo, etc. This is quite a powerful tool for making your own custom ships. Before you go rushing off to edit your ships though, there is a lot more to know about this editor before it becomes an effective tool for you. This will be covered soon.

Text Resource Editor This editor is for changing the game texts for many things. To name a few, ship names, sector names, bulletin board text, sector descriptions, race names and so on. The editor displays the text page ID number and description that holds all the text



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information listed on the left. The individual texts for these are displayed on the right; each text has its own ID number too which is important and explained later. You can edit each game text with your keyboard or add new texts by giving them a new ID number then tying in the text you want the game to display.

Galaxy Editor This galaxy editor can change many things in your galaxy structure but is limited, so is best used in conjunction with the galaxy editor that comes with the game once enabled. See the next section for enabling the galaxy editor in the game. Some of the things you can do with the galaxy editor that comes with the X3 editor from Doubleshadow are, adding new sectors, deleting sectors, adding or deleting elements from sectors like suns, nebulas, planets, stations, gates, etc. You can also decide which race owns the sector or station within your galaxy.

Enabling the in game editors

A note on scripts and why they are essential to modders When you are actually in a game you can enable both the galaxy editor and the script editor. You need to know about scripts and how to use them for modding your game. This is invaluable for testing your mod outside of the galaxy editor and in the real game. It would be hard work to test your mod by playing through the game every time you wanted to check a possible glitch or see how things all fall into place. The easy way to do this is to enable the script editor and then giving yourself more credits, faster ship, new ships, certain ship extensions or view all sectors. Then you can give yourself a jump drive, energy cells and basically jump to any part of your universe to see how that sector plays or looks in the real game world. So getting as many cheat scripts as you can from the scripts and modding forum is essential. The best of these I have seen are by LV in this post http://forum2.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=117616 who has made a cheat script for everything you need. The ones I use are more credits, engine and rudder tuning, add ware, explore all sectors, add notoriety and set to friend. These are required for testing mod changes quickly in the game. You can do most of your testing in the galaxy editor but because you are the only person in the galaxy editor it does not help if you want to try your new super lasers out on a pirate.

Enabling the script editor To enable the script editor in the game you need to fly anywhere in the sector or stop your engines then press P to open up the pilot details. Change your name from whatever it is and type in Thereshallbewings. Make sure you type this exactly as shown with a capital T. So many people struggle to enable the script editor but it is always for the same reasons, no capital T or miss-spelling. If you have done this correctly after entering the name, the screen will pause for a few moments and your

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name at the top will not change. If your name does change you have typed this in wrong. Now you can use the script editor by going to the ship menu, orders, and pressing s. The first time you enter this you will get a welcome message and you can skip this by pressing enter a couple of times. You activate a script with “r” or edit a script by scrolling to it and pressing enter. There are many great tutorials on script editing and how to use or launch scripts. The best one I have seen is the MSCI programmer’s handbook obtainable for the Xai Corporations website http://www.xai-corp.net/msci-handbook/ . You can also find many script tutorials by LV in the scripting and modding tutorials at the forum.

Enabling the galaxy editor The galaxy editor can be enabled in the same way as the script editor except for typing your name as Makeanapplepiefromscratch. This will now make the galaxy editor on your main screen show up next time you go into new game.

Using the in game galaxy editor is covered in section Using the in game galaxy editor on page 10.

Making a mod step by step Now that you know what you need and what they do, we will get down to the best bits and guide you through your very own mod. The mod we create here will be very simple but effective. The procedure we follow though will give you the knowledge to be able to create a small mod for your own enjoyment or a full blown mod to share with others.

Preparation 1. To make your mod easier to maintain and manage, create a folder on your

desktop and name it northstar. For this exercise we will call this mod northstar. Not very imaginative but seems simple? ☺ Pick something original if you like but you must follow the naming protocol which will become obvious as we make our creation. Inside the northstar folder create another

http://www.xai-corp.net/msci-handbook/

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folder called cats. This is where we will unpack all the cat files from x3. In side the cats folder.

2. You should have all the tools you need to make a mod by now if you followed

the above sections. You should also have a basic knowledge of what the tools do. If you are not sure have another scan through, but do not worry, the learning process is much more effective by applying the techniques rather than reading about them. Make sure you have installed Doubleshadows X3 Editor which contains the tools you need. I installed mine in my mod folder the one we are calling northstar. This way you do not have to keep popping in and out to do everything. It would be best if you did the same.

3. Go to your C:\Program Files\DeepSilver\X3 Reunion folder (or wherever you installed it) and you will see the cat files 01 to 06 in the shape of a black cat if you associated cat files with modmanager as described earlier. If you forgot you can always associate them in modmanager by clicking on Options/Settings/File Associations. Double click on the 01.cat and it will automatically open up into mod manager. Click on extract and set the target path (the three dots) to your northstar\cats folder. The default is Decompress compressed files during extraction and Preserve file paths. You need to make sure these are checked. Then click ok and watch the progress of the extraction. This might take about one minute depending upon your system. Repeat this procedure for the other cat files 02, 03, etc. When prompted just click on overwrite all. This will ensure you only have one set of files up to the latest version of X3, making sure you place them into the cats folder northstar\cats.

Checking the unpacked files Now that all of the cat files are decompressed and structured correctly, go into your nothstar\cats folder and take a look around. The two most important folders for this mod are the types and the t folders. Check inside the types folder and you will see a list of txt files which contain all the specifications for ships, factories, lasers, missiles and so on. Double click on tships.txt and take a look at the code. Aggh I hear you gasp! Well do not worry this is the code for all the ship specs which can be edited as it is if you know what the values mean. In the next section I will show you the easy way of editing this file to make a new ship with. Browse around the other folders in other cat files and see the different file types as mentioned earlier in this guide. You will begin to see the possibilities of editing graphics, sounds and bods. For now though we will stick to creating a new ship and giving it a name. The t folder holds xml files that are for all the game texts. There should be four xml files there. Each of these is in a different language and as this guide is in English the one we will be working with is 440001.xml.



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Creating a new ship 1. Start up the X3 Editor which you should have installed to your northstar

folder. The program does not need to be installed here but is easier to work with when located near your mod. Double click on settings and on the common tab point your Directory with data files to C:\Program Files\DeepSilver\X3 Reunion. Also ensure that the path to the X3 executable is C:\Program Files\DeepSilver\X3 Reunion\x3.exe.

2. You might have installed X3 to a different location so set these accordingly.

3. You will see the tools I mentioned earlier and the one you need to start up first is the TXT Editor. Click on open and locate the file desktop\northstar\cats\types\TShips.txt, then Open.

4. Take time to look down the left column and you will see all of the ships in X3

from A to Z. Also check the right hand side which shows the ship specifications for each category.

5. Scroll down the ship list and select the Teladi Falcon Hauler. Right click on

the Teladi Falcon haler and select copy. Now right click and select paste, when prompted select no so that your copy gets pasted to the end of the list.

6. Now click on your new ship in the list at the end. You should see a description

of the ship in the right hand pane at the bottom. If you do not see any descriptions then your paths in preferences are not set as per the start of this section. These descriptions and the text for everything you see are being read in from the t file 440001. So if the path is not set it cannot read the text values

7. Look at the first tab called info in the right hand pane and select ID which

currently has a value of SS_SH_T_M3_1. Double click on this value and change it to SS_SH_NS_01. This value can be anything as long as it does not match any other value in the text files. There are other values like this associated with factories, wares, lasers, etc. So I use a safe naming format of NS for Northstar then a number.

8. Now double click on description about half way down the ID list and Set the

value to 3995. Click on the icon at the top called Text Res (short for text resource editor). When this editor opens it defaults to an irrelevant game text file so click on open and locate the file desktop\northstar\cats\t\440001.txt, then open. It is important to remember when opening the text file to check the path to the right one or you will be trying to edit the wrong text file which is still packed in its catalogue.

9. Look for the text page title called Boardcomp objects, about the seventh one

down and select it. This has an ID number of 17. There is another page ID number 300017 further down. They are both called Boardcomp objects. The difference is that 17 holds all the texts for the original X2 and to make it easier



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Egosoft just created another page ID with the extra texts for X3. Have a look through both lists and notice that the ship description value we set to 3995 does not exist in either list. This is why I chose this value so that there will not be a conflict with other objects. Scripters often inform each other of this and reserve these ID numbers so that their scripts do not clash with one another.

10. Click back on ID number 17 Boardcomp objects and then in the right hand list

of all the texts right click, then select add. In the ID field type 3995, then in the text area type a name for your ship. Call it what you like, (I chose Northstar Special) then click ok. You can now scroll down to that number and see it there in the list. Now right click again and enter an ID number of 3996 and type out a description for your ship. You could be short and sweet or you might want to give your mod players a full description of this awesome ship! You might wonder why ID of 3996? Well any name text ID 3995 in our case is always followed by the description. The X3 game reads the files this way and associates the next ID with the same object, whether it is a ship or a ware or a factory.

11. Now click on the save icon and close the text resource editor. You should be

back in the TXT editor and ready to edit your ship further. So far you have created a copy of the Teladi Hauler and named it. If you do not see the new name for your ship do not worry it will be there when you enter the game and also if you come back to edit the ship a little more. Sometimes the editor reads the old name until it recognises the correct path to the right text file.

12. Still in the info section of the right hand window you can change Cargo type

e.g. Small, Medium, Large or XL. The Teladi hauler can already carry XL so let us change the size of the cargo bay. Click on cargo max and set this to what you want. I set mine to 600. This is quite an advantage but one thing to bear in mind is if you make the ship too powerful your mod users might as well be in God mode! There are other values here that can be useful like Price modifier, value for NPC and player, as well as min notoriety. These things change the cost of the ship and at what level you must be to be able to buy it. Try playing around with the values and see the price differences in your mod. You can also get a clue for notoriety and cost by looking at the values for other ships. Do not change any values unless you know what they do or you can have crashes or errors in your mod which would not make it too popular.

13. Click on the Performance tab and set some values by double clicking on them

here as follows: Max number of engine tunings 40, Max number of rudder tunings 20, Reactor output 880 MW. The only other things worth changing are acceleration and hull strength.

14. Click on the model tab. You can set the ship and cockpit to look like any of

the other fighters here by, clicking on say the Mamba and using the right mouse button to copy its value then pasting it into your new ships value fields. Your special ship will have the same exterior and interior as the mamba then. Try different ship models with the cockpit you like best, so mix and match a



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little. I left mine the same as I quite like the Falcon graphics. A word of warning, it is not recommended to use other ship type models that are not the same type e.g. an argon colossus on a Mamba as you will have many strange effects in your game. This would be crazy anyway, but I guess some of you will be tempted! ☺

15. Now click on weapons and you will see you can adjust shields and laser power

here. The shield is set at 1 x 125MW for the Falcon Hauler but if you must you could make it two. Also set your weapon energy and recharge rate. This will mean your lasers do not use as much energy and recharge quicker making you a strong contender in many a sector. Do not change the turret count or missile count as you will have problems with the ship model you have on your ship.

16. Now click on Front Lasers and remove or add what you like. You might want

a Beta HEPT to fit your ship or you might quite like the mass driver cannon. The choice is yours whether to be god or not out there. Remember one thing though, the lasers you select will not be in the ship just able to buy and use. We can mod what we like into the ship later.

17. Save your file over the tships.txt file and exit.

Ok, you now have an updated tships.txt that has a new ship with new specifications. You also have an updated 440001.txt that shows your new ships name and its description. You can add as many new ships as you like using the same method but do choose a free text ID as explained earlier for each ship you make and also try creating a new type Freighter or a special carrier, you get the idea? Other tfiles can be edited in the same way from the types folder using this method. Try creating a new factory or some new wares for your factory. You might want to play around with the specifications of the lasers or the missiles. It is up to you as a modder but always remember that if you make it too easy the game becomes less of a challenge. There are two more special text files that can be edited but just need renaming for now. Locate the two files as follows: in the cats\types folder rename the jobwings.txt to jobwings.northstar.txt and in the cats\types folder find the jobs.txt file and rename it as jobs.northstar.txt. These files are what make your game come alive with traffic and fighters. Without them your mod would be a very lonely mod, with nothing to fight or interact with. The reason for renaming them is so that they work with your mod map. They will only work with your mod if they have the same name inserted as shown.



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Create your cat file Now that we have modded files you will need a way to get them into your game without overwriting the original game files. This is where Egosoft did a great flexible job for modders and cat files become a necessity. Open up Mod manager from the x3 editor window and click on new. This will open up a window showing the mods folder in your X3 game folder. In the filename field type northstar, then open. Click on add and look for your new tships file in northstar\cats\types and open. You will then be asked to enter the folder name for the file which is types and then click ok. Do the same with the cats\types\jobwings.northstar.txt and the cats\types\jobs.northstar.txt files. The folder structure must be kept the same mirror image of you cats folder where you modded and saved your file earlier. This is how the game knows where to find it. Now click on add again and look for your 440001.xml file. This should be in northstar/cats/t. After clicking open you will be prompted for the folder name which must be t. You should now see two files in the correct folders. You do not need to save the cat file as you have already done this by giving it a name when you created a new cat, so just close the new cat file you made. Now you need to know something about the way X3 works with cats. When you place a cat file in the mods folder and start up the game, by selecting your mod on the initial screen, the game will use your text files in place of the normal game texts. This is the real great thing about mods, they are separate from the original files so are very flexible depending upon what your mod players choose on start up of the game. They can work well with most scripts too but you just need to be aware that some scripts might use the same text ID’s as your mod. The script author normally declares these or has them listed in the X3 forum. Now that you have your modded texts file ready for use in the game located as a mod in the mod folder of the X3 game, you will need a way of trying out your new ship. You can bring it into the game with a simple script or as a modder you can use the galaxy editor in the game itself. I use a mixture when testing the game I just run a simple script to start me off with the new ship I want to test. I will cover this later on but it will be a simple script that you can easily create yourself with very little scripting knowledge. Using the in game galaxy editor.

A map to work from Before we start using the galaxy editor you need a map to work from. The game maps are also in your cat files for editing and using in your custom game. So go to northstar\cats\maps and copy both the x3_universe.xml and x3_universe_v13_patch.xml maps into your C:\program files\Deepsilver\X3



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Reunion\maps folder. The reason why you need to copy both maps is that I will be showing you how to combine the original map with the patch V1.3 patch map so that you have all of those little roids in your mod. Some players do not like these as it slows their game and others like them as they rely on drilling for more credits. The choice is yours but I prefer to have them all available. You could make two versions of your mod to please both parties. If the mod is for personal use then you do as you like but when you make mods for gamers then thinking of these up front benefits your users as well as yourself in the long run. You can now start up your game with your mod enabled by selecting mod package from the initial starting screen. If you have not already enabled the galaxy editor you need to do so by starting any game and typing your name in as Makeanapplepiefromscratch. See previous section for more information. Then exit the game and start a new game. The galaxy editor should now be at the end of the list.

Select Galaxy Editor and then select your Northstar map. Do not select new map or you will start with an empty galaxy. It is much easier to edit the existing galaxy but you might want to make your own. We will cover more galaxy editing in the next section. For now we just want to try out our new ship and make a few tweaks.

Cheating in the editor You will find yourself in a Nova parked in the centre of Argon Prime. The galaxy editor is not really much different to playing your game, except for the fact that you are on your own and you have many extra options to customise things. If you are familiar with playing the game then you know how to fly, dock, buy, sell and so on. You can do all these things in the galaxy editor too. You can also cheat in the editor and give yourself anything you need. The editor is really good for testing your map out if you do not have cheat scripts to test in the game. You will probably find yourself in and out of both game and editor until you get into a routine that suits you.



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Most of what you need to do can be accessed from the editing menu using the keypad Enter button. Where ever else I mention Enter I mean the main keyboard Enter, but for the menu it is the keypad enter.

To begin with I want to show you how to cheat and this is required for getting around your mod galaxy easier. So enter the menu as above and enter on Your Current Ship or press Y. The keyboard shortcuts are always shown in the menus. Now scroll down with the down arrow cursor key until you reach cheat and enter on this.

You can now set your ship extensions to all, increase your cargo space, up your speed and more by moving to that option with the cursor key and pressing enter to change. So set your speed up and whatever else you feel is necessary. Make sure you set your cargo to max volume so you can hold energy cells for jumping around. Now press Esc to move back one menu. You notice there are two options Add Ware and Install Ware. Add ware puts things in your cargo hold, install ware installs them on your ship. Select Install Ware and scroll down the list and enter a jumpdrive. Now Esc and select Add Ware to add 260 Energy Cells to your cargo.



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Ok we are now ready to jump around the lonely galaxy. You get about three jumps no matter how far or close a sector you jump to. All you need do is add more energy cells as required.

Creating a ship in the editor Before we go hopping around though, I think it is best to jump around in our new ship. You can add any ship to the sector or place it in a shipyard or factory. This is particularly useful for giving the player of your mod an extra ship at start up or creating a freebie in a sector somewhere. From the menu (keypad enter) move along to the debug tab with the cursor keys and scroll down to select Create Ship.

Scroll down the list of ships and find your new super fighter. You will be prompted where to place it with X then Y then Z coordinates. You are sitting at 0,0,0 which is dead centre of the sector so place it something like 20,20,20. Now eject from your Nova and go get in your new toy. Now while in your new Fighter you need to fit it with all upgrades, Jumpdrive and cells. It is all good practice until you know the key commands very well. You might want to give your new ship a test drive to see how the power fairs you gave it earlier. Now you need a way for your players to access this new ship. There are various ways to do this.



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• Place it in shipyards for sale • Place it as a one off in a secret sector • Have the player start in the new ship with a start up script

By the end of this guide you will be able to apply all three of these. Saving your map We will now save our new map as you could experience a crash and it would be a shame to have to repeat any mods you have made. Hit the keypads enter and select the Debug tab. Your screen should already show the galaxy file name as maps\northstar.xml, but you might be working on more than one mod so you can use the first field Set Galaxy File Name to name your map. You might want to name it as northstar2 so that your original is kept empty for future mods. You can always rename it again from here or in your maps folder.

Now select Export Galaxy and enter on it. This will overwrite the map name you chose on set galaxy file name. Now escape out back to your galaxy.

Navigating the galaxy You can navigate around your galaxy by using the “,” key as in the game and also the “.” as a shortcut to the sector map. You can move around the galaxy map with the cursor keys too as you would in the game. Pressing enter on the sector you want to look at will allow you to edit objects in the sector. To place new objects like ships or stations in a sector, you need to be there too, hence the Jumpdrive for getting there quickly. You can copy and paste objects from a distance but this will be explained in the next section.



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Importing map patch objects Earlier I mentioned two maps one of the X3 universe map and one of the v1.3 patch map which has all the roids in it. You can easily import these to save you placing the rocks one by one. To illustrate this jump from Argon Prime to Cloubase South West. Set your ship to face the Goner temple. You will notice quite a lot missing in the way of rocks. Hit the keypads enter and select the Debug tab. Scroll down the list of commands until you reach Import patch objects. Enter on this and type in the name of the 1.3 map which is x3_universe_v13_patch and hit enter. Hey presto, all the roids appear. This option will only import what is missing from your galaxy so an obvious advantage to this option is when you want to combine two mods. A word of warning, I found that importing can sometimes import any mods you made to the map you are importing from. If you moved any asteroids around just a touch, they will be imported onto the asteroid that is present. So you end up with double asteroids in any sectors you played around with. They are easy to check up on as you just look for double entries with the same ore or silicon yields and press D to delete one of them.

Adding or deleting sector objects and adjusting station wares The D key deletes any object you have selected; this includes stations so use it wisely. Just open up the sector map move to the All tab, select the object and press D.



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You can add objects to your sector by hitting the keypads enter, selecting Debug and choosing the add options as you did for adding a ship. You can then choose the stations properties by pressing P or as you would in the game when checking their prices and scroll down to add ware, add product, add primary or secondary resources. This is how you would add new ships to shipyards or new stations. This is also a great option for adding a new ware you might have created to a station. You need to dock with the station to buy or sell goods at the price you set with the price modifier in the text files we edited earlier. Have a play around with adding and removing products. If you add a new ware to say a pirate station, maybe missiles or lasers, you might see all the normal wares removed from the list. All you need do is add default wares and they will be back again along with the new product. I was shocked the first time I saw this too! ☺ When adding wares or ships to a sector or your own ship you can use the filters to narrow down your search. In time you get to know where in the list the items are but using a filter is quicker. You can see above there are options to filter by type or race, making it easier if you are say adding items to a Teladi shipyard and only want to view Teladi ships.



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A good tip for your mod and I am sure you will find this out is to add few pirate or yaki ships to shipyards in certain sectors. You might make them available at all shipyards or just certain races. The whole mod is your world and you shape it the way you enjoy.

Copy, Paste, and rotate objects You can copy any object in the galaxy by selecting it and using Shift C. This places it on the clipboard for pasting into the sector you want. Just use Shift V to paste. You need to empty the clipboard by selecting the object in the location you copied it from and pressing P for properties. You will see a yellow C next to the object in the clipboard. If you do not clear this it will be pasted again alongside anything else you copy and paste. It is useful for copying many objects. If you do find you forgot to clear the clipboard and you paste more than was intended just use the D to delete what you do not need. You can then move objects around the sector by selecting them and using the keypads 2, 4, 8 and 6 keys. You can also rotate objects by using the /, *, -, +, Ins and Del keys on the keypad.

Asteroids and planets There are many other options in the galaxy editor and you will gain experience by playing around. Try adding Asteroids to your sectors or adjusting the mineral values. Asteroid resource types are as follows: 0 = Ore, 1 = Silicon and 2 = Nividium. They normally have a subtype of 1 so that they are mineable. You will need to know this when adding asteroids. Try adding planets from the Debug menu and moving them around with the keypad until they look right. You can find a list of the planet subtypes and descriptions at the end of this guide.

Connecting Sectors with gates You can link sector gates quite easily but first a word of explanation. Gates need to be valid to work correctly. X3 uses a gate validation system to ensure that a north gate links to a south gate, an east gate links a west gate, etc. Try to stick to these rules to



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prevent various oddities occurring in your game. Gates have variables that are set to manage all jumps to and from sectors.

• Gate ID 0 = N, 1 = S, 2 = W, 3 = E • Target Sector • Target Gate ID

From this you can see that a North gate ID of 0 is compatible with a South gate ID of 1 and vice-versa. It would be invalid to have a gate ID of 1 connected to another 1 or a 1 to a 2. You can add gates to a sector following the above rules by hitting keypads enter, selecting Debug and selecting add gate. You will be prompted for the above information, so have a galaxy map available with coordinates. While modding you will find out that sector coordinates can differ between the galaxy editor and the text files. You can get a full sector map with two sets of coordinates on for modders from http://www.xperiment.co.uk/files/X3ModMap.xls. You might want to print a few off for spares to scribble on. I went through quite a few. This is my mod map showing new sectors but it has both sets of coordinates. The coordinates the Galaxy Editor uses are the inner ones where Kingdoms end is X0, Y0. Once you have placed your gates use the option on the debug menu to check gate validation. If everything is ok then it will tell you that. Otherwise you will have to delete the gate that is wrong and make another one.

The next section will cover more galaxy editing using the galaxy editor that comes with Doubleshadows X3 Editor. You will learn the easy way of creating new sectors and connecting them with gates. Now exit the galaxy editor and the game.

Galaxy Editor that comes with X3 Editor Go into your northstar folder and start up the X3 Editor. Then start the galaxy editor. Open your map from the maps folder in C:\Program Files\DeepSilver\X3 Reunion\maps\northstar.xml. This editor is very simple but very effective. It is very easy to manipulate sectors, but I find the in game editor is much better for adding objects like wares, ships and stations. Adding sectors is easy with this tool. I also find it easier to connect my new sectors using the in game editor as described previously using the connect sectors

http://www.xperiment.co.uk/files/X3ModMap.xls



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with gates option. This way you do not have to worry about validation. Try different ways but the following system works great for me.

Exploring the editor Now you have your map loaded, look down the left to see all your sectors. Open up the sector by clicking on the +. You will see the Background type, Suns, planets, asteroids, gates and objects listed. Select the background type and notice the information on the right showing the subtype, the background style. Also click on a sun and see its subtype, colour in Hex units where 000000 is black and FFFFFF is white. The hex values are represented as 0 -9 A to F, first two are Red, second two green and third two blue. If you know your primary colour mixes then try FFFF00. This will give you full red, full green and no blue making yellow. All values set equal are the grey scale e.g. 000000 black, 111111 dark grey right up to FFFFFF white. This will be old hat to the web designers or graphic artists out there but good to know if you want the right blend of light for your sector. There are many to suns to choose from as well as many planets. Look down the list and see what the other sectors use for backgrounds and planets. Just imagine how many different mixes of suns and planets you can have! You can find a list of the planet types at the end of this guide. If you cannot remember the asteroid types then this editor makes it easy. It shows you in the asteroid properties and all you need do is change it here by double clicking and selecting from the drop down for ore, silicon and nividium. Most of the properties are self explanatory so try a few out. You will only spoil things if you save the file. You could work on a backup map until you become familiar with the editor. Now click on Sector and you will see a screen showing all of the object locations in that sector. You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out. I much prefer the in game editor for messing about with sectors but this really does have its uses for adding new sectors. This is an opportunity for you to rid your sectors of roids if you prefer your mod to be less graphic intensive. All you need do is select, right click and delete the objects labelled [no file specified for 28]. You might want to leave some for the mining community out there ☺ Now click on the Universe Icon and you will see the whole galaxy and how each sector is connected. Holding the left mouse button down will allow you to scroll it around. Clicking on a sector will show its coordinates in the bottom of the screen and also the mouse coordinates in the bottom left. This screen is where you add sectors. You can copy and paste sectors with the right mouse button. You can also remove sectors.



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Naming sectors Close the universe screen and the sector screen and then click on the Text Res button. This should be a familiar sight from editing text files earlier. Again you will need to open up your 440001 file from northstar\cats\t. Then look at page ID’s 7 the first one and 300007 for the existing sector names. The ones in page 7 being X2 names and the new ones in 300007 being the added sectors for X3. There are a few names in there you will not recognise which were never added to the game. Maybe these are for X4! Existing sector names can be changed and new sector names created now you know how. Sector descriptions are held in a different text page ID unlike the ships and wares. Look for pages 19 and 300019. Here you type whatever description you want for your new sectors. You could copy and paste another sectors description and just edit this a little. Now we are going to enhance our northstar map with a new sector. This next section will be a little more advanced but well worth learning to get your mod status up a little more. ☺

Adding a new sector While still in the X3 editors galaxy editor, click on the Universe icon. Look for Patriarch’s Retreat at coordinated X9, Y2. In the sector space above X9, Y1 right click and add new sector. You should see a new Argon coloured sector named [string 7:1020210]. The default when placing a new sector is always Argon but we will change that soon. The string is showing for this sector space as the reference in the t/440001 file which does not exist yet but we are going to create this so that it has a name. Each sector has a set of coordinates which the text file entry expects to see. The 7: is the page ID number. You should be familiar with this as we were looking at pages 7 and 19 a moment ago. 102 is the text file reference number and the 0210 are the coordinates. I also mentioned in an earlier section about different coordinates used between the galaxy editor and the text editor. These coordinates are shown on the modders map from http://www.xperiment.co.uk/files/X3ModMap.xls , they work slightly differently. If you imagine Kingdoms end is now y1,x1 (instead of x0,y0) then you will begin to see what I mean. So 02 is relative to Y02 and 10 is relative to X10. This takes you to the sector we chose just above Patriarch’s Retreat. Now while you have the new sector selected close the universe map. On the main screen you will see that this new sector is selected on the left. Open the sector up with the +. Another thing you will notice is the sector only has a background with no subtype number. We can fix this by selecting the background, double clicking on the subtype and changing this to 31 then clicking ok. There are a few backgrounds to choose from. If there is a particular sector you like the background of, check its number in the left hand side list and use that number. A list and picture of these

http://www.xperiment.co.uk/files/X3ModMap.xls



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backgrounds would be very handy. Someone might have a reference table or something but I have not seen one. Now click on the sector name in the left, [string 7:1020210] at the moment and change the race value to Split. You will also notice our coordinates are shown as per the galaxy map here as X9, Y1. One thing to note about race, the player race is UFO in this galaxy editor and Julian in the in game galaxy editor Open up another sector in the left hand list, anyone you like the look of and copy the sun by right clicking. Click on our new sector and paste it. You can do this with any of the objects from other sectors, planets, asteroids, gates or stations. But for now just copy the sun and some planets. Try a mix from other sectors, this way the new one will be original. Now open the Text res and make sure you edit the one from northstar\cats\t\440001.xml. Do not use the default that opens up, it is of no use. Now click on page ID 7 Boardcomp Sector and right click in the right hand window list of 102’s, select add text and type the ID number as 1020210. Then give your sector a name in the text area, maybe Thuruks Wig or something saying as it is a split sector, I leave that up to you. ☺ Now scroll to page ID 19 Sector Description and right click, add text with an ID of 1030210. Type a description in the text area, maybe this sector is split. You will notice sector names start with 102 and sector descriptions 103. This is a sequence that the game recognises for the text names. Now save the 440001.xml file and exit the text res editor. Now save your Northstar map and we will go take a look at it shortly. Now that we have edited the text files further we need to replace the old one in our mods folder with the new one. Open Mod Manager and then open the northstar cat file from your X3 Reunion/mods folder. Right click on the t\440001 file and select delete. Now click on Add and point to your updated 440001 file in the northstar\cats\t folder and open. Set the folder name to t so that you now have the same files as before, the new version of the t file is now packed up ready to use. You should have types\tships.pck, types\jobwings.northstar.pck, types\jobs.northstar.pck and t\440001.xml. The files have the .pck extension when in the cat file as they are now packed files. Close the cat file and fire up X3.

Joining your new sector to the galaxy Make sure you select your mod on the starting screen. Select new then galaxy editor. Cheat yourself some speed, a jumpdrive and some energy cells. Jump to sector Patriarch’s Retreat. You will not be able to jump into your new sector yet as it does not have any jump gates. Open up the galaxy map with the “,” and you will notice that your sector is not showing. I will explain why and how in the next section. If you move the cursor up



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with the cursor key you will see the new sector name show. Esc out of the galaxy map and press keypads enter, Debug then connect sectors with gates. The first prompt will ask you for the “from sector” which is where you are now Patriarch’s Retreat, so just press enter. The next screen is asking for the “to sector”, so move the cursor up one until you see the new sector name and press enter. You should have a new north gate and you are now welcome to enter it and have a look at your new sector. When in your new sector, you might not like the sun or planets you chose. You can move them around a little by selecting them on the sector map and using the keypad numbers 2, 4, 6 and 8. You can always change backgrounds, planets and sun later. You can delete the sun or planets now and add them from the Debug menu. You can also add nebula and a few stations; fill them with goodies if you do not like the default goods. Just customise this any way you like; besides it is yours now ;) You might want to change the race to pirates, Khaak, xenon or Unknown. You can even make it a Goner sector. This way your mod players will gain recognition with the Goners for killing pirates in that sector. Something you cannot do in the current game. You could also rotate the gates and move them further out using the keypads /,*,-,+, Ins and Del keys. If you want to make a ship a freebie just make the owning race neutral. If you want it to belong to the player, make it Julian race. From this exercise you can see it is a lot easier to add your sectors in the X3 editor galaxy editor and join them in this Galaxy editor. You should now have a wealth of knowledge on both Galaxy editors and I am pretty sure you are raring to go make a full mod now. But you still need to make your sector appear on the galaxy map.

Making your sector appear in the galaxy map The reason why your sector does not appear in your galaxy map is because the map is actually a bod file which you can find in objects/cuts/00749.bod. These files can be edited in 3DS using a plugin again from Doubleshadow to import them and edit them for the game. Not everyone can afford 3dsMax so another way to do it is to use a simple text editor. Use word pad as it opens the bod file in an easier to read structured text format. If you open it in note pad you might choke on your coffee. Try it and see the difference. Now it is best to print out the file so that you can scribble on it for reference. Once you understand what the code means it is not very difficult to edit this file. The code has been simplified quite a lot from the X2 Galaxy map bod file.



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The first few lines of code look like this: /=============================================================== / 3D Scene Information file X:\objects\cut\00749.BOD / Automatically generated from X:\objects\effects\menugfx\GUI\gui_galaxymap749_v3.max /=============================================================== / EGOSOFT Bodyfile exporter version Apr 5 2005 19:09:19 VER: 3; / >> Mon Sep 26 20:53:40 2005 / Animation time interval: 0..16000 / >> Mon Sep 26 20:53:40 2005 / Staring Biped Key Reading/ >> Mon Sep 26 20:53:40 2005 / finished Biped Key Reading / Mon Sep 26 20:53:40 2005 / Node Camera01 Class [SimpleCamera, CAMERA_CLASS_ID] / Target Node: Camera01.Target! P 0; B -1; N Camera01; c { 0x0808; 0; 0; -19818; 0; 0; 32; 0.000000; 1.570796; -1; -1; } // 0 / Mon Sep 26 20:53:40 2005 / Node Camera01.Target Class [Target, GEOMOBJECT_CLASS_ID] / Lookat Node: Camera01, skipping this target node! / Mon Sep 26 20:53:40 2005 / Node 0904 Class [Box, GEOMOBJECT_CLASS_ID] P 2; B 904; N 0904; { 0x2002; 50548; 6941; 2010; 0.000000; 0.000000; 0.000000; 0.000000; -1; -1; } // 0 The bit of code we are interested in is highlighted. This code is for the sector Tharka’s Sun. All others with the [Box, GEOMOBJECT_CLASS_ID] are the other sectors. These code blocks translate as follows: the / lines are all comments and are not really required but you could put your own text in here as notes on what the sector name is and where it is located. You could delete these but best leave them in so you get used to the structure and type of code. The useful part of this is the [Box, GEOMOBJECT_CLASS_ID] which means this line signifies a box graphic for the sector. P 2; Line number. This number is incremented by one for each sector in the galaxy map. B 904; is the sector position as x,y. It is important to ensure that a sector starting with 0 e.g. 01,01 has only three digits for this value. 01, 01 would be Kingdoms End but we would put 101 here. 201 would be Rolk’s Drift. N 0904; The same coordinates but with all 4 digits this time. { 0x2002; 50548; 6941; 2010; 0.000000; 0.000000; 0.000000; 0.000000; -1; -1; } // 0 The only part of this code you ever need to change is 50548; 6941; 2010; as these are the X,Y and Z coordinates for the graphic box on the map for the sector. The X is east to west, the Y is north to south and the Z is up or down. If you



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were to leave them the same you would not find your new box as it will be there but stuck over the same box as Tharka’s sun. We want ours to show north of Patriarch’s Retreat. On average the Sector boxes seem to be spread out X by about 12,000 Y by about 8,000 and Z can be left the same unless you want it to look way up high or low down on the galaxy map. Positive will take you east or North, negative will take you west or south. To add code for our sector you need to copy one sectors code and paste this onto the very end of the text file. There are 697 lines of code so we need to change ours to 698. Our code needs to look like this: / This is my new sector Thuruk’s Wig / Node 1002 Class [Box, GEOMOBJECT_CLASS_ID] P 698; B 1002; N 1002; { 0x2002; 62248; 21950; 7729; 0.000000; 0.000000; 0.000000; 0.000000; -1; -1; } // 0 As you can see we now have line number P 698; Coordinates 1002; 1002; I added 12,000 to the first value to take us one sector east and 15,000 to the second value to take us two sectors north. The Third value I added 5,500 to lift our new sector up. We can now save our new bod file in our northstar\cats folder. We will pack this into our cat next. If all you need is the box showing then you are done here. However there is more code for the lines that connect the sectors further down the text file that you can change to place the lines joining your new sector box to the other. This is how it looks: / Mon Sep 26 20:53:40 2005 / Node 08040904 Class [Editable Mesh, GEOMOBJECT_CLASS_ID] P 32; B 8040904; N 08040904; { 0x2002; 43706; 8208; 1952; 0.034601; -0.380136; 0.068352; -0.922402; -1; -1; } // 0 The Node class is for an [Editable Mesh, GEOMOBJECT_CLASS_ID] The code is very similar with the line number P32; B is the sector that we are going from and to. B 8040904 so from Rhonkar’s Clouds to Tharka’s sun. Note the missing 0 for the B Code and added back for the N Code. The next values you should already know as the X,Y and Z coordinates of the line centre. The last sets of values are the rotational values of the lines centre axis. I did not use these lines so left this code out of my mod. As long as the player sees the box in his map it is worth it. You might want to play with adding the connecting lines but if you do then each sector has a line to every other sector, in other words there are four of these for a sector like Argon Prime.



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It is well worth adding some comments to your code to show where your new sectors are like this: /=============================================================== / My new sector codes start here /===============================================================

Adding your updated bod file to the cat file If you have completed this mission then well done and save the file as requested above. I saved mine in a separate folder from the 03 cat so that I could use the same bod to make another map rather than extract all the files again. It does not really matter as you always have the originals in your X3 cat files. You can now add the 00749.bod file to your cat but ensuring that you include the folder structure when prompted after adding as objects\cut\ You should now have objects\cut\00749.pbd in your northstar cat file. Now fire up your mod and go look at your new sector in the Galaxy Editor.

Checking how the new sector looks My new sector looks like this on the Galaxy Map



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The new north gate in Patriarch’s retreat looks like this

The sector I chose looks like this.

Your sector screen shot might look different depending upon the sun and planets you chose. You might have a different background. There are some good red and green backgrounds. Blood red looks good in a dangerous pirate sector. I quite liked the planet slightly to the left. You could rotate yours so that it is behind the south gate, which looks quite effective. If you do not like the look of your planets choice then easily solved. Open the sector map while facing your planet, then select it from the all tab and press the enter key on the keypad to scroll through them all until you see something you like. Don’t like the background of the sector? Then use the editor tab and move down to the sector background field, then press the keypad + key to scroll through them. You can also change sector radius, owner, core area on off and proposed factories on and off with the + and – keys on the keypad. ;) All that is missing from mine are Asteroids and stations, but you already know how this is done.



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Playing your mod in the game It is very simple to play your mod in the game but first let us look at what makes our mod work so far. You should have the following files:

• A map file in the maps folder called northstar.xml • A cat file in the mods folder called northstar.cat • A data file in the mods folder called northstar.dat

To recap, the cat file is similar to a zip file, only the cat stores information on the files and folders stored in the dat file and is a means of opening and working with the stored files. The stored files and folder structure should look like this:

• types\tships.pck • types\jobwings.northstar.pck • types\jobs.northstar.pck • t\440001.xml • objects\cut\00749.pbd

You should now know what each of these files do and how they are used by the game. When you launch your X3 game, make sure you Select Mod Package on the starting screen choosing northstar. From the game menu select new, then go to the custom game menu and select northstar.

When ever you put a named cat file in your mods folder, this will show up on the Select Mod Package screen on initial start up. Using this mod package will mean that any files you have in the cat file will be used in place of the relevant game files. So if you forget to pack your tships.txt into your cat your custom ships will not be there. If you do not use the correct folder structure in your cat files e.g. types/tships then your ships will not be there either. So it is very important to get your files packed and in the correct folder structure. You will always know the correct structure as you have the same structure with your unpacked cat files in your modding folder. Selecting



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Custom Game from the new game menu loads the relevant map file for your mod. So if a different custom game is selected then your new sector will not be there only the elements of your mod, new ships, stations, wares, etc. Your starting position will be the default in Argon Prime for your mod map. In the next section you will learn how to make a simple script so that you can specify the starting conditions for your mod. You do not need to be a scripter or have knowledge of XML, Javascript, PHP etc. Egosoft have provided a very easy to use scripting editor that we will use for this.

Instructing your mod users On a final note for this section, as a modder you need to understand how the mod files all work so that you can explain the correct installation in your readme file for distribution to others. After building a mod this will all become second nature but for the person wanting to play your mod it could be quite a harrowing experience to install everything correctly. Easy install instructions help the user, a self extracting zip or install file will make this even better.

Making a start up script You can start your player off in any sector with any chosen conditions, credits, ship type, sector location, name, etc. This will provide a little more variety for your mod. An example would be to have your player start in say a new Goner sector you created and change the notoriety so that only the Argon and Goner have high regard for the player. You should already know how to enable the script editor in your game. If not go back and read the enabling the script editor section. Start your game and enable the script editor. Select Script Editor in the menu and enter. This will give you a list of existing scripts in the game. Scroll to the galaxy.Example.initplayer script and select enter.



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You should now be looking at the code for this script and ready to do some editing.

Script editor commands Before we do some editing here is a list of editing commands you need to know.

• Cursor keys are used to navigate the script • Insert creates a new line in the script • Delete deletes a line in the script • C copies a line in the script • V pastes a line into the script • The enter key is used to change values where your cursor is placed



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Editing the initplayer script The code you see is quite self explanatory but here is what happens by line: 001 This is a comment to show what the next part of the script does 002 The x and y coordinates of the starting sector 003 This is another comment 004 The starting ship type, who owns it and where in the sector x,y,z it will be placed 005 A command that adds all default items to the ship 006 Adds 1 unit of ware to the ship SETA 007 Adds 1 unit of ware to the ship Boost Ext 008 Another comment 009 Create a smaller ship at the same coordinates which will place the ship inside 010 Install ware to the internal ship 2 x 1MW Shield 011 Install more ware to the internal ship 2 x Wasp Missile 012 Another comment 013 Add money to player account of 1000 cr 014 End script We want our player to have just the one ship so delete the lines as shown here:

We will now change the starting sector and starting ship type. Move to line 2 and to x=0 and press enter on the 0, scroll to number and press enter. Change this to a 9. Do the same for y=2 but change this to a 1.



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Now scroll to line 004 and to Create ship: type = Unknown Ship and press enter. Scroll to Select ship type and press enter.

Now scroll down the list until you see your custom ship and press enter.

You can delete line 008 also. Then copy line 007 and paste using c then v. This will add another line after line 007.



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Change the value of the ware to 2 units of Hurricane Missiles by moving the cursor to the 1 after add and pressing enter. Scroll down to number and press enter to change this to a 2.

Also change the ware of line 008 by pressing enter over the Boost Extension. Scroll down the list until you get to select ware.



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Press enter then scroll to select Hurricane Missile. You should now have this.

Now we are going to change the starting notoriety of the player so that he is favoured by Argon but no so much by the Split. Copy line 003 and paste this as line 009. Change the comment to Change Notoriety up for Argon, down for Split. Then add another two lines with the insert key. On line 010 press enter and you will have a list of commands to choose from. Scroll down to General Commands and press enter.

Now scroll down to the ,Var/Race> add notoriety: race=<var/Race> value=<Var/Number> command as shown here.



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Change the race before the add notoriety command to Argon by entering on the first value and scrolling to select race. Then change the second value to the julian race by following the same process. Julian race is the player race.

This will change the race to player. You then need to change the value to 500. Follow the same procedure with line 011 only this time set the race to Split and the value to -500. I also changed the comment at line 001 to show in our script where the starting sector is. You do not need comments but it helps yourself and others understand what the code means.



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When all this is completed your script should be looking like this:

You can now save your script by pressing Esc and answering yes to the prompt.

You could enhance the script further by sending an incoming message to the player on start up or setting the players ship name and many others. Explore the other commands in the script editor just as you did with the set notoriety command. Now we will need to do a little more to this script to make it work in our mod.

Making your start up script work with your mod After saving your new script, exit the game and navigate to your X3 scripts folder. C:\Program Files\DeepSilver\X3 reunion\scripts\ Most scripts are compressed and have the pck extension. There is a scripting tool called script manager available from the forums that will pack and unpack these scripts for editing. You should notice an XML file called



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galaxy.Example.initplayership.xml. This is the script you were just working on. There is a default packed script with the same name which when edited will save an xml copy of this which is basically what we just did. Double click on the galaxy.Example.initplayership.xml script and it will open up in your browser as it is an xml file. Now right click on this and select view source. You can also right click on the xml file and open with notepad. Look for the name tag near the top that has this piece of code: <name>galaxy.Example.initplayership</name> Change it to look like this: <name>galaxy.northstar.initplayership</name> Then just save it as galaxy.northstar.initplayership.xml. Now when you start your mod and select northstar from the custom game all your start conditions will be enabled. Because you renamed it as northstar and are running the Northstar mod and map it will be used instead of the standard Argon Prime script. Now this opens up all manner of possibilities for your mods. This Guide is not designed to teach you scripting but only to give you a small amount of knowledge so that you can test your mod and make small scripts. However you might want to learn scripting too, so check out my recommendations in the earlier sections of this guide. Scripts are very powerful and can achieve many things that mods cannot so a mixture of the two can make an excellent mod. There are some great scripts to use in the forum so a mixture of these and your mod can enhance game play further. You must always check with the script author if you want to use their scripts with your mod. It generally pays to distribute you mod and point out recommended scripts your players could use. A lot of hard work goes into scripting and authors like to be recognised for their work the same as you for your mods.



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Cockpits, Guns and Turrets In this section we will look at the three main areas that deal with laser power for your ships. You will learn how to change the rear cockpit so that your ship has a wider range of lasers to choose from, add more or remove lasers from your ship and how to add a rear cockpit to any ship. This can be very tricky to do but with practise you will be able to adjust your ships fire power to your taste.

Adjust laser selections for your ships cockpits The first thing you need to do is create a new freighter as explained in the section creating a new ship. Copy and paste the Argon Mercury freighter and mod it a little. Give it some speed, maybe an extra shield and some extra cargo space. Now go to the cockpits (turrets) tab and note down the cockpit name SS_COCKPIT_A_ALL_TP and save the Tships file. Now open up the Tcockpits.txt file from the types folder and scroll the left window list down until you find SS_COCKPIT_A_ALL_TP and select it. Look at the right hand window to see the laser selections for this ships turret. They are quite limited and maybe your freighter is an Out of Sector trader which could use a stronger turret laser. All you need do is add extra lasers to the list and save the file. Make sure you pack the Tcockpits and the updated Tships into your cat file in the types folder for the extra ship lasers to be available in your mod. You can modify all of the cockpit lasers this way for the various ship types. You might want to create a special TL, giving its turrets a better selection of lasers for the front, right, rear and left cockpits.

Adding extra lasers to your ship The following section is a little more complex, but can be achieved quite easily with practise. We will be using the Split Scorpion M4 as an example. Load up the Tships file in TXT Editor and scroll down to select the Split Scorpion Raider. Now click on the right hand guns tab.



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You will see that the Scorpion has 6 guns, and 6 gun positions. We are going to make these 8 guns and 8 positions. Click on add gun and the following gun edit table will appear:

Type the information in each field as follows: Count 1, Body ID ships\props\weapondummy, Path index 7, then click on OK. You should now see 7 guns in the ships turret. This ship has only one turret which is in the front cockpit and is referenced in the upper window. Double clicking on any of the guns will bring up the edit gun properties window. You will notice how we left the secondary Body ID field empty and the Path index for this has defaulted to -1. Secondary body ID’s are only used for bigger ships like the M1, M2 and TL’s. Now repeat this process by clicking add gun but make the Primary Path index 8. You can now save the Tships file and exit TXT editor.



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The addition of 2 extra guns in the Tships file for the Scorpion will mean that you can install two more guns to this ship in the game; however they will not be very effective as you will find they do not fire. To make them fire we need to add them to the ships scene file where all of the information is held for gun points using the ships model. The scene files are in bod (text files) format so we can edit these with windows wordpad, similar to what we did for the galaxy map. Open your cats\objects\ships\split\ folder and look for the file Split_M4_var1_scene.bod file. You should also see an associated bob file which is a binary encoded file and cannot be edited with a text editor unless you decompile the file to bod format first. Doubleshadow has also created a decompiler called x2bc.exe, if you did want to get into converting bob files to bod. This is required if you want to edit the ship models in GMAX or 3DS max. You also need the DBOX plugin so that the bod files can be imported into your 3d editor. For now though, all we require is to edit the Split_M4_var1_scene.bod file which is already decompiled. You will also notice we are using the var1 model which is the scorpion raider. The M4_scene is the ordinary scorpion, the var 2 is the vanguard and the var3 scene is the sentinel. You can easily determine this from the Tships file under the cockpits tab listed as Body ID. Right click on this file and open it up using wordpad. I use wordpad rather than notepad as it lines up the text better which makes it easier to read the code. Look for the following code blocks which I have colour coded to show each of them separately. They are the second two blocks of code in the text file: / Sat Oct 01 15:37:32 2005 / Node Bships\props\weapondummy_1f Class [Editable Mesh, GEOMOBJECT_CLASS_ID] P 3; B ships\props\weapondummy; C 1; N Bships\props\weapondummy_1f; b { 0x2002; -244; -1684; 536; 0.305556; -0.000680; -0.000476; 1.000000; 3333; 1; } // 1 { 0x2002; -244; -1684; 536; 0.305556; -0.000680; -0.000476; 1.000000; -1; -1; } // -1 / Sat Oct 01 15:37:32 2005 / Node Bships\props\weapondummy_1e Class [Editable Mesh, GEOMOBJECT_CLASS_ID] P 4; B ships\props\weapondummy; C 1; N Bships\props\weapondummy_1e; b { 0x2002; -87; -2050; 233; 0.305556; -0.000680; -0.000476; 1.000000; 3333; 1; } // 1 { 0x2002; -87; -2050; 233; 0.305556; -0.000680; -0.000476; 1.000000; -1; -1; } // -1 These are the first 2 of the six guns. We want to add two more to make 8 in total so that they all fire in the game when installed. Now we will take a closer look at each code block to understand what is happening. / Sat Oct 01 15:37:32 2005 / Node Bships\props\weapondummy_1f Class [Editable Mesh, GEOMOBJECT_CLASS_ID] The code block is headed by two comment lines which should be familiar to you if you edited the galaxy map in an earlier section. Again, these are just used as a reference by the coder to keep track of what the code is doing. These could read anything and will not be executed as long as the line begins with the forward slash /. P 3; B ships\props\weapondummy; C 1; N Bships\props\weapondummy_1f; b { 0x2002; -244; -1684; 536; 0.305556; -0.000680; -0.000476; 1.000000; 3333; 1; } // 1 { 0x2002; -244; -1684; 536; 0.305556; -0.000680; -0.000476; 1.000000; -1; -1; } // -1



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P3; is the line numbers for the code, followed by the weapon dummy object paths. You will notice the weapondummy_1f; part which has a unique identifier for this particular weapon point. In the second code block the gun is identified as 1e and so on for each of the six guns. They do not follow in alphabetical order as the guns on a Scorpion are placed in a circle around the body of the ship and all depends on the order they were joined to the ship model during creation. It does not really matter in which order they are identified as they will fire anyway when a laser is attached. The coordinates -244; -1684; 536; are the X, Y and Z values in space around the ship where the guns are placed. This diagram represents the ship and how the coordinates work with positive and negative values.

The only other parts of this code you need to know for information are the 0.305556; -0.000680; -0.000476; 1.000000; these are the rotational values for the gun objects. You do not need to altar these values unless you want some of your guns facing the rear or out to the side. I guess it could be fun shooting to the sides but could also have strange effects in the game. If you wanted to spend time working out the coordinates of each gun you should see the guns placed in a circular pattern around the ship body. The easiest way is to adjust the coordinates slightly and then try them in the galaxy editor later. You can do this in the game but risk being shot by pirates as you scribble down your adjustments! ☺ Press F1 in the game for an external view of the ship and rotate it using the keypad numbers to get a good idea where they are placed. Now we know what the relevant code does we can edit the code. Copy one block of this code then paste it in twice just after the last of the six guns. Make sure you check exactly where to paste by hitting enter after the last gun code block to give yourself a space to paste into and also see what you are doing easier. Now you can backspace the dead line and renumber the lines. P8 is the last of the six guns so you need to renumber P9, P10, P11 etc, until all code blocks are in sequence. I guess you could paste the code at the end but pasting them in sequence means editing it in a few months will be a lot easier to read. The code for each scene file is only 28 – 30 blocks so it is very easy to renumber them. Now change the identifiers in each code block so that we have guns a to h as mentioned earlier like this C 1; N Bships\props\weapondummy_1f, C 1; N Bships\props\weapondummy_1g and so on.



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Next adjust both sets of coordinates in each code block to move your new guns away from the others a little. You should be able to tell by comparing each of the guns coordinates roughly where to place them using the coordinate diagram above. I would suggest adjusting the Y coordinates a little first -244; -1684; 536; to read -244; -1784; 536; Now before saving the file, check that you have the line numbers sequential otherwise your new guns will not fire. If you have three identical line numbers, only one of those will be executed. Save the file and add it to your cat file with the right path name: objects\ships\split\Split_M4_var1_scene.bod. Ok, now for one last job, an easier one this time ☺ Now that your guns are fixed you need to delete the types\components.pck from cats 4, 5 and 6 in your X3 root directory. The components.txt holds all of the scene info and needs regenerating, otherwise the guns will still not work. Now load up your game and you will notice it takes longer to load up. It takes me 90 seconds more after adding two extra guns with my P4 3 Gig processor. The reason for the game loading slowly is because X3 is now creating a new components.txt based any changes made to the scene files. Once in the game, have a play with your new guns then exit. You will find that insode the types folder located in your X3 Game folder, there is a new components.txt. This has all the new info you provided. If you add more guns to other ships, all you need do is delete this components.txt and let the game create another. Please bear in mind, the more you add to the scene files the longer it takes to load the game the first time around, as your now components.txt is being created, so don’t panic if you think your game has locked up at the loading screen ☺ If your guns worked ok, give your self a pat on the back and have a lie down after that long tutorial. ☺

A note on turrets Adding turrets to a ship can be very difficult to get them placed correctly. To add turrets you need also add a cameradummy the same way you would add guns. Just copy one from an M4 scene file along with a turret. Delete and create your components.txt as before.



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Other ideas for your mod Now you can make ships, add sectors, make starting scripts, create a universe etc, you might want to explore other ideas. Here are a few to think about which you should be able to do quite easily now: Adjust laser power and specifications in the types\TLasers file Create bulletin Board articles in the 440001 file Re configure missiles in types\TMissiles Create extra cockpits for extra lasers so that only your special ships use them in types\TCockpits Add new factories to the types\TFactories Add new wares to the TWareN file or use the huge list of wares available to sell in your factories Adjust the power of weapon types for Hull/shield damage, Energy used, speed and range in TBullets Change sector race layouts with custom sectors Create business opportunities in selected areas Add another Xenon sector or two Other areas of modding This guide touched lightly on graphic editing. If you have 3dsMax or some other similar editing tool then you could change the ship graphics. There are tools available from Doubleshadow as mentioned previously to help you with this. There are also many articles from experts in this area for editing the ships graphics. The M7 mod uses a load of new ship designs all custom made.

Changing the game music tracks and sound effects You might want to play around with the music and sound effects in the game. The music is very easy to change if you want to hear your own MP3’s playing in various sectors. You just need replace the existing ones in the X3 Reunion\soundtracks folder with your own MP3’s and make sure they have the same file name. Also make sure you make a copy of the soundtracks folder just in case you want to put them back to normal. I created a folder called my MP3’s inside the soundtracks folder next to a backup folder of the original MP3’s. I also created a simple text menu showing what each track is. This way I can just copy and paste tracks very easily before starting a game, a bit like loading up the jukebox. You could also replace some of the wav files in the cats\s folder with your own to change the game sound effects to your liking. These can then be loaded up in the game from your cat file.



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Converting bob files to bod using Doubleshadows x2bc Doubleshadow provides an excellent help file which explains this procedure but many people seem to be doing things the hard way despite the help text. Here is a simple overview of doing it all the easy way: Create a folder on the root of the C: drive and extract the x2bc into that. You should have the following files in your C:\x2bc folder – x2bc.exe, mcvcr71.dll, libx2bc.dll, x2bc.ini, Readme_compiler.txt and etrabob_data.txt. It also pays to copy your cat files to the root of the C Drive C:\cats. This makes it much easier to specify the path with the command line for x2bc. Now open a dos prompt. If we want to convert the Argon Nova M3 bob to a bod you would type the following: c:\x2bc\x2bc –d “C:\cats\objects\ships\argon\argon_M3.bob Note you do not need to close the quotes after the argon_M3.bob. You can however rename the bob by closing the quotes and adding something like c:\cats\mynova So this would be c:\x2bc\x2bc –d “C:\cats\objects\ships\argon\argon_M3.bob” “C:\cats\mynova Now you will have a mynova.bod in the C:\cats folder which is now a decompiled Nova model to import into 3ds max or GMAX. Recommended tools for X3 editing: Doubleshadows editing tools – X3 Editor, X3 Mod Manager, DBOX2 and X2BC Irfanview for viewing DDS files, then saving them to BMP for editing. This comes with a great thumbnail viewer for finding what you need quickly. DDS viewer2 for converting BMP back to DDS. 3ds max 8 or GMAX for editing ship models. You need to convert your DDS textures to JPG to see them in GMAX so I prefer 3ds max. Wordpad for editing text files



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I hope you have found this guide useful and are producing some good mods now. You can download one of my mods which have six starting positions and take a look see how I did things. Feel free to explore them and use some of the same ideas. You can find them at http://www.experiment.co.uk/downloads.htm This guide will also be available from the “downloads” page along with universe maps. I will be updating it from time to time and if anyone has anything to add to this guide please let me know. Enjoy and best of luck with the mods. You can also get help online at our community forum http://www.xperiment.co.uk/phpbb2/index.php Northstar mailto:[email protected]

http://www.experiment.co.uk/downloads.htm

http://www.xperiment.co.uk/phpbb2/index.php

mailto:[email protected]



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Appendices 1

Planet descriptions Note: Orbital means huge and very close to the sector so that it looks like the player is in orbit.

Doubleshadows Galaxy Editor Sub Type

In game Galaxy Editor Sub Type

Type Properties Description

PL1 0 Planet Close Acid world PL2 1 Planet Close Awk world PL3 2 Planet Close Copper World PL4 3 Planet Close Crater World PL5 4 Planet Close Curosant PL6 5 Planet Close Death star PL7 6 Planet Close Desert PL8 7 Planet Close Frosty PL9 8 Planet Close Gaseous PL10 9 Planet Close Gas Giant2 PL11 10 Planet Close Gas Giant 3 PL12 11 Planet Close Green Rock PL13 12 Planet Close Grey Rock PL14 13 Planet Close Home land PL15 14 Planet Close Ice Outpost PL16 15 Planet Close Ice White PL17 16 Planet Close Jungle World PL18 17 Planet Close Lava Rock PL19 18 Planet Close Oasis PL20 19 Planet Close Oceanica PL21 20 Planet Close Outworld PL22 21 Planet Close Red Pools PL23 22 Planet Close Rock Lands PL24 23 Planet Close Water World PL25 24 Planet Close Acid World PL26 25 Planet Distant Awk World PL27 26 Planet Distant Copper World PL28 27 Planet Distant Crater World PL29 28 Planet Distant Curosant PL30 29 Planet Distant Death star PL31 30 Planet Distant Desert PL32 31 Planet Distant Frosty PL33 32 Planet Distant Gaseous PL34 33 Planet Distant Gas Giant2 PL35 34 Planet Distant Gas Giant3 PL36 35 Planet Distant Green Rock PL37 36 Planet Distant Grey Rock PL38 37 Planet Distant Home World PL39 38 Planet Distant Ice Outpost PL40 39 Planet Distant Ice World



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PL41 40 Planet Distant Jungle World PL42 41 Planet Distant Lava Rock PL43 42 Planet Distant Oasis PL44 43 Planet Distant Oceanica PL45 44 Planet Distant Out World PL46 45 Planet Distant Red Pools PL47 46 Planet Distant Rock Lands PL48 47 Planet Distant Water World PL49 48 Planet Orbital Acid World PL50 49 Planet Orbital Awk World PL51 50 Planet Orbital Copper World PL52 51 Planet Orbital Crater World PL53 52 Planet Orbital Curosant PL54 53 Planet Orbital Desert PL55 54 Planet Orbital Frosty PL56 55 Planet Orbital Gaseous PL57 56 Planet Orbital Green Rock PL58 57 Planet Orbital Grey Rock PL59 58 Planet Orbital Home world PL60 59 Planet Orbital Ice White PL61 60 Planet Orbital Jungle World PL62 61 Planet Orbital Lava Rock PL63 62 Planet Orbital Oasis PL64 63 Planet Orbital Oceanica PL65 64 Planet Orbital Out World PL66 65 Planet Orbital Red Pools PL67 66 Planet Orbital Rock Lands PL68 67 Planet Orbital Water World PL69 68 Moon Large Large brown Crater PL70 69 Moon Large Cratered PL71 70 Moon Large Dark Channels PL72 71 Moon Large Dark Grey PL73 72 Moon Large Dark Rock PL74 73 Moon Large Dust PL75 74 Moon Large Green Moss PL76 75 Moon Large Grey PL77 76 Moon Large Grey Crater PL78 77 Moon Large Grey Snow PL79 78 Moon Large Large Ice PL80 79 Moon Large Ice Channels PL81 80 Moon Large IO PL82 81 Moon Large Lava PL83 82 Moon Large Moss Dark PL84 83 Moon Large Red Channels PL85 84 Moon Large Red Dust PL86 85 Moon Large Redish Crater PL87 86 Moon Large Snow White PL88 87 Moon Large White Dust



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PL89 88 Moon Large Brown Crater PL90 89 Moon Medium Cratered PL91 90 Moon Medium Dark Channels PL92 91 Moon Medium Dark Grey PL93 92 Moon Medium Dark Rock PL94 93 Moon Medium Dust PL95 94 Moon Medium Green Moss PL96 95 Moon Medium Grey PL97 96 Moon Medium Grey Crater PL98 97 Moon Medium Grey Snow PL99 98 Moon Medium Ice PL100 99 Moon Medium Ice Channels PL101 100 Moon Medium IO PL102 101 Moon Medium Lava PL103 102 Moon Medium Moss Dark PL104 103 Moon Medium Red Channels PL105 104 Moon Medium Red Dust PL106 105 Moon Medium Redish Crater PL107 106 Moon Medium Snow White PL108 107 Moon Medium White Dust PL109 108 Moon Medium Brown Crater PL110 109 Moon Small Cratered PL111 110 Moon Small Dark Channels PL112 111 Moon Small Dark Grey PL113 112 Moon Small Dark Rock PL114 113 Moon Small Dust PL115 114 Moon Small Green Moss PL116 115 Moon Small Grey PL117 116 Moon Small Grey Crater PL118 117 Moon Small Grey Snow PL119 118 Moon Small Ice PL120 119 Moon Small Ice Channels PL121 120 Moon Small IO PL122 121 Moon Small Lava PL123 122 Moon Small Moss Dark PL124 123 Moon Small Red Channels PL125 124 Moon Small Red Dust PL126 125 Moon Small Redish Crater PL127 126 Moon Small Snow White PL128 127 Moon Small White Dust

x3 modding guide

Documents

game galaxy editor

txt editor

script editor

text resource editor

northstars x3 modding

modding tools

map patch objects

beginners v1