| Miscellaneous Replacing Pictures and Animations More specific details are to be found in sections dealing with the particular reason for replacing that picture or animation. Replacing
CBM stills If you want to use the original TG picture for reference then a program called XWA_CBM will convert the CBMs into BMPs. Replacing
CBM animations. Again if you want to use the original TG animation for reference then a program called XWA_CBM will convert the CBMs into a series of BMPs which can be viewed or even recombined into an animation. Replacing
DAT pictures The most common things to do are Hull, Map, Ship, or
Battle/Mission DAT files which (in my opinion) are best
done in DATech. XWA looks for DAT file entries and uses
the entry in the first DAT file that it finds listed in
resdata.txt. This means that rather than editing one of
the TG DAT files you can instead create and distribute a
smaller custom DAT file with just the entry that you want
replacing. This is useful as most new OPTs now have a new
picture for the Skirmish Editor in a Ship DAT . With more general work (on the XWA Frontend)
there is a problem as it seems that using a custom DAT
file will mess up the positioning of the pictures. I
noticed this problem when trying to replace the Panel
Arms (the control consoles that swing up on various
screens) which were displayed too high up the screen.
When I checked by creating a custom DAT file containing
several other entries I found that the full screen
pictures (such as the concourse and the tech library)
were okay but other pictures (such as pilot helmet and
pilot uniform) were being shown in the upper lefthand
corner. Replacing
DAT animations Replacing
SNM animations Section Links: DATech | XCR | XWA_CBM | XWADatCust
When I downloaded the excellent Imperial Hangar I noticed the disclaimer that said that no way to replace the fighter seen in the hangar had been found and I decided to see if this was something I could solve. Results were rather strange as my first idea to use MXvTED to swap the X-Wing and Y-Wing with other fighters, so that the fighters in the first two shipslots would be different, didn't work as far as I remember and so I tried another idea. This time I tried having the X-Wing and Y-Wing use renamed OPT files (XWING2.OPT rather than XWING.OPT for instance) and copying/renaming different OPTs to be called XWING.OPT or YWING.OPT. This second idea seemed to work and I felt rather pleased. But then I came back to XWA and discovered that although the hangar "Y-Wing" was still being shown as a TIE Bomber (as that was the OPT that had been copied/renamed in that case) the hangar "X-Wing" had reverted to being an X-Wing and therefore seemed to be using XWING2.OPT. The idea occurred that if it was using the same OPT as the flyable X-Wing that maybe it was determined in the same way, by which OPT that shipslot pointed. Checking this idea by changing in BHE what the X-Wing slot pointed to did change what was displayed for the hangar "X-Wing" but I found that changing what the Y-Wing slot pointed to had no effect, it just used whatever was called YWING.OPT (Alt-Tab out, delete, copy something else, rename, back into XWA...changed). This seemed so strange that the fighters were behaving differently that I reinstalled XWA and this time the swapping of ships in MXvTED worked where previously it had not. With some puzzlement as I had been sure the method
wouldn't work I changed my notes to reflect that and
decided that I had better put a disclaimer on the method.
But then I came back and found that it had stopped
working as the the Y-Wing had reappeared. XWA was back to
showing whatever the the X-Wing slot pointed to and
whatever OPT was called YWING.OPT. I also found that in
the post-mission hangar the hangar "A-Wing" was
whatever was called AWING.OPT (rather than being what the
A-Wing slot pointed to). All of this does not give me great confidence in the reliability of the method but at the moment what I can say that it appears that to replace the hangar "Y-Wing" and hangar "A-Wing" you would edit the Y-Wing and A-Wing so that they use differently named OPTs (like to be really imaginative AWING2.OPT), rename their OPTs to this, and have whatever OPTs you want to appear be called AWING.OPT and YWING.OPT. To replace the hangar X-Wing though would be a total pain in the arse as since it is whatever the slot points to having something different would require you to move the X-Wing into a different shipslot. This would mess up the X-Wings s-foils, require you to edit the DAT files for skirmish editor picture, hull icon, and map icon, mess up every mission with an X-Wing in it, and since certain meshes on the X-Wing exterior are set to move (pilot and R2 heads) whatever OPT you placed in the slot would have meshes wiggling about. So an unreliable method which would be a lot of work and would cause a number of side effects. This seems like a perfect candidate for taking the route of just explaining things away and simply saying that (for example) an Imperial ship has some captured X-Wings littering up the main hangar.
In the missions directory there is a file called email.txt which contains the information on when the e-mails "arrive" as well as the actual e-mails. Each e-mail consists of the following elements. Remember though, as pointed out by OI Monk, that the screen in the family transport / quarters does not have a scroll bar so of you produce a message which is too long then the last parts of this message will not be displayed. Whether you use e-mail in your campaign depends on
what you are trying to do. Since it does not add a huge
amount to a campaign you may feel that it is not worth
doing if you would have to redo the entire cabin for it
or risk spoiling the atmosphere of your campaign by
having the standard look hit the player in the face. As Defiant says can be installed as part of missions XMOD as the InstallMission command which would normally be used to copy mission files to XWAs mission directory can also be used for copying the new mission.lst and email.txt to that directory.
If during your custom campaign the players pilot is not going to be flying from one of the three Calamari Cruisers (Defiance, Liberty, and Independence) or indeed is not an Azzameen then it would be strange for their insignias/crests to be displayed. That said though as there was the later MC-90 class Defiance which would have inherited the ships-insignia from the MC-80 then this insignia could be used and Independence is what TG were calling Home One (see note on downloads page) so again this could be used as we know this ship was still in use as late as the events of Isards Revenge, so this insignia could also be used. If neither of those possibilities appeal and you decide to create your own insignia or crest then this is reasonably simple as they are normal animated CBMs which loop during their period of display (which means that as with the TG Azzameen crest you can simplify your task further and make a single-frame "animation" if you wish). The first step is to decide what sort of insignia or crest you want to make, do you want it to be animated or still and what kind of organisation do you want to make it for (A family crest? A starship insignia? A squadron insignia? A corporate logo?). TG made a spinning gold insignia for each of the three cruisers and a static colour crest for the Azzameens but, other than a wish to remain consistent, you don't need to follow their example. If you have the ability to produce animations then I would say that it is worth the extra work. A spinning insignia can be created by mapping a picture onto a box in a 3D modelling package and just spinning the box (zero lighting, black box, black background, texture with black background set to 100% self illumination), or pictures can be distorted in a paint package to provide a similar effect. For a static insignia you should simply create the
picture and then convert it to a single-frame FLC. You should then give your FLC (either single-frame still or multi-frame animated) a name like squad1.flc (or 2 or 3 or 4) and copy it to xwa/frontres/tour. Delete or copy to another directory the CBM file of the same name as your flc and then start XWA which will convert the CBM into a FLC when it needs to use it. The final step is relatively optional as when the
default mothership insignia of 0 is used this gives the
label "Tour of Duty" which adequately describes
what a pilot in military service is doing and therefore
well be all you want. If you have gone to the trouble to
make an special insignia though you may as well go the
extra inch and open fronttxt.txt in a text
editor and either edit the lines which start
"!STR_CRUISER_" (which correspond to
squad1-squad3 with the family base being squad4) so that
the text after the second exclamation mark to the name of
your ship or organisation. Either way the final step would be simply to select the appropriate mothership insignia in AlliED when building the mission.
For more details on creating XMODs please see the XIS readme file. For an excellent and extensive guide to producing complex XMODs please see Darksabers site. An XMOD is the file used by the X-Wing Installation System (XIS) to automatically install one, or more modifications, to XWA and is a renamed zip file containing the files to be installed plus a script file for XIS to use, a readme file for XIS to display, a picture for XIS to display as a banner file, and a ZT file for patching XWINGALLIANCE.EXE. When the XWAU began the idea was to produce OPT packs, something which due to the slowness that people such as myself have been producing OPTs has been dropped in favour of individual releases, and the need was realised for a simple automatically installing way of distributing these OPT packs. It would have been quite easy to have decided that a program that could do just what was required would be good enough so thanks go to (the author) Defiant for his foresightedness in creating a program which has the ability and script commands for installing any sort of modification. There are advantages and disadvantages to the XMOD
format. Leaving aside that it is a very small amount of
extra work the main disadvantage is actually the main
advantage as well, the fact that it is an automated
process. The general process (of which there are far more
details in the XIS help file) is to create a directory
for your modification. In this folder you should place a
350*100 bitmap called banner.bmp which as the
name suggests is for your banner image and a rich-text
format text file called readme.rtf which again
as the name suggests will be the readme displayed when
the XMOD is loaded into XIS. Once you have all your sub-directories containing the appropriate files and the corresponding script files created the next step is to zip them. Select all the sub-directories, the readme, and the banner image and then use the appropriate command (I'd do the same as Defiant, right-click and select Add to Zip). As Defiant says do not select your main directory and zip this as that will add an extra layer of directories to the zip-file structure and this will prevent the XMOD from working. Open this zip file in whichever zip-file program you use and check that the readme and banner image are in the root and that each modification (or set of modifications) are shown as being in sub-directories. If they are not then check that if your zip-file program has an option for this that it is set to "include subdirectories" and check that you are not creating any extra layers of directory structure by accident. Once this is done then the final stage would be to simply rename the zip file to have the extension *.XMOD rather than *.ZIP. Missions An XMOD for installing a set of custom missions should
contain the mission files, custom briefing icons if
custom OPTs used, mission.lst, possibly mission voices,
possibly a new pilot, and possibly the file for the pilot
quarters e-mail. OPTs For an XMOD for installing custom OPTs you should
include the OPT files themselves, ZT patches for
XWINGALLIANCE.EXE, and DAT file(s) for the skirmish
editor picture and map icon (and if a fighter a hull
icon). Cutscenes An XMOD with cutscenes in it is likely to be rather
large and I might have recommended splitting it into a
separate XMOD for each cutscene were it not for that
people have shown that they are willing to download a
file as huge as the 180MB Ultimate Craft Patch, and so
you may as well have a single XMOD. This file will
contain the avi files for the cutscenes (which will be
played thanks to XCR), possibly dummy snm files if you
are adding rather than replacing TG cutscenes (these
dummy files will be seen by XCR which will then play the
avis instead), cbm files for the thumbnails for the
cutscenes, a new cutscene.lst, and a new cutscene.txt. Frontend XMODs for this purpose will contain mainly CBM files
with some avis (which XCR will play instead of the snm
files for the large animations) and some DAT files. Section Links: Darksabers X-Wing Station | Defiants Flying Temple
hangar entry/exit problem with mothership not in CRS slot For some reason XWA seems to have a problem judging the position of the players craft compared with whatever hangar OPT it is using if the players mothership is not installed in either of the two Calamari Cruiser slots. Although the game will pick up correctly on the fact that the player craft is by the hangar on whatever ship has been set as the mothership when the player enters the hangar they will find their end position being in parking in empty space and the various hangar camera positions also being incorrect. This does seem to be a peculiarity of what shipslot the mothership is installed in as if the same OPT which has been giving this problem in a non-CRS slot is installed instead into one of the CRS slots then the player will stop in the correct position. It is not a flaw with custom-OPTs or installing ships in slots which are not used by default as TG OPTs in TG slots behave in the same manner in both not working in their normal slot and working if installed into a CRS slot. 99.99km separation in Skirmishes When using custom OPTs the skirmish editor can get confused about how much clearance the various ships need to avoid collisions and decide to play it safe to the extent of separating them by what is displayed as 99.99km. This is a little annoying as although the skirmish editor is rather limited you do sometimes just want to have a quick fight and to involve custom OPTs. A partial solution seems to be juggling the order in which the Flight Groups are arranged in the skirmish editor and trying to sandwich custom ships between standard XWA ships. A more reliable solution would be to build up a little library of mission files created by the skirmish editor for TG opts and to edit these to change ship types to use the custom OPTs, save as temp.tie, and then make temp.tie read-only so the skirmish editor cannot overwrite it. Remember though that the player craft in the skirmish you use to launch this seems to need to be the same as the player craft in the mission file or a new skirmish is created (though temp.tie is not overwritten). Problems with Dual-Warhead launchers This was something that I discovered when I created the T-42 and only applies to if the craft is being used in a mission where the player launches from a hangar and the player tries to change his warhead loadout. XWA seems to change the wrong set of warheads and then to forget that the craft has dual-launchers. This is not a problem with custom OPTs as even the Skipray and the Missile Boat do not work properly in this respect. The Skipray works as badly as a craft with dual
launchers installed in a custom slot. The dual-warhead craft work fine in skirmishes and it is easy enough to just not give the option to change the warheads in a custom mission so this is not a huge problem. hangar wave files, and being called Azzameen Various of the wave files that are played when you return to the hangar during or after a mission include the name "Azzameen" which could be rather jarring in a custom mission-set where the player is not an Azzameen. Fortunately this is rather easy to solve. There is a list file called HangarVoiceSFX.lst in the Wave folder on the CD and (as the name implies) this controls what voice wave files are heard in the hangar and fortunately it seems that only two of these voices have the dreaded word "Azzameen" in them. If a folder called wave is created in your XWA directory then the game will use the copy of HangarVoiceSFX.lst placed in this folder in preference to that on the CD and so by editing line 1ine 1 (Rebel_Pilot8/G4P8001.wav) and line 6 (Rebel_Pilot8/G4P8006.wav) to read "unused" you can prevent the offending wave files from being played. Pilot returning to beginning of mission set when using BriefingLauncher On my system and some other peoples FindFile() returns a filename to BriefingLauncher which has been shortened. This can can be discovered if when starting with BriefingLauncher the list of pilots has the "~" in it to indicate this. For example John Myers0.plt gets shortened to johnmy~1.plt or Ace Azzameen gets shortened to aceazz~1.plt. This shortened pilot filename then gets written to config.cfg as the pilot for XWA to use, but BriefingLauncher can sometimes only overwrite the first name and other times only partially overwrite the second name. For example it changes lastpilot John Myers to lastpilot johnmy~ Myers or lastpilot Ace Azzameen to lastpilot aceazz~ Azzam. And so when XWA launches it thinks "Eeek! I can't find the pilot" and rather than crashing creates a new one with that name, which obviously is a fresh pilot whose position is right back at the start of the game. For the previous examples this would mean that johnmy~ Myers0.plt or aceazz~ Azzam0.plt would be created. So what you need to do is have a pilot whose name and filename is short enough (either when created or by editing with XWA Piloteer) to not be shortened by this strange problem with the filename passing. You may also have to edit config.cfg to delete the second word if the previous pilot you were using had two names defined rather than just surname. This is a rather puzzling problem as I encountered it on a Windows98 machine and Flaming_Imp developed BriefingLauncher on a Windows98 machine, and for him and his testers this worked perfectly even with the same default pilot of Ace Azzameen. You may have the problem or you may not, but it is not a major problem as in some ways it would be better to create a new pilot for a custom mission set anyway. |
