Ok, now its time to get a basic understanding of some of our mod files and folders. Navigate to your FirstStrike mod folder, right now it doesn’t matter what it is called so you don’t need to rename it right away (ie change from FirstStrikeM to FirstStrike).

Open up the folder, you should see a whole lot of folders and zip files. If you don’t have a zip tool (most version of windows can open zip files) then go get one now. There are plenty of free ones out there.

Ok, depending on what you are doing, you will probably spend most of your time adjusting settings in either the levels folder, or the objects folder. Funny old thing, the levels folder contains the maps, while objects contains all the er…objects! You may also wish to play in the ai folder to change some bot settings, later in my little series we can look at some settings in there, such as changing the number of bots.

There is no need to look in any other files or folders other than those mentioned. You will see a folder called python…really really really don’t look in there or play with any of it unless you understand python software code. You could really break your mod by faffing about in there.  Most of the other stuff is fairly easy to work out, but python is a little different.

Anyways, lets take a look at some stuff huh? Lets start with the levels folder, open that up and take a look.  Yay! More folders! Pick anyone you like, I’m going to open up endor clearing as it has all game versions, ie singleplayer, conquest and co-op. Might be easier if you do the same if you have never done this before! So, opening up any folder in here will give the same options to start with, two zip files and one folder. Open the folder titled info: inside are some of the pictures used in the small loading screen image. You could change these if you really wanted too, just make sure the new pictures have the same resolution and file name. The file named endor_clearing can be opened with notepad, but there is no real need for you to do anything with that. Navigate back out to the main folder and we’ll take a look at the zip files.

Two options here, we can extract all the contents to the folder, or just look inside each zip file. If you extract them, then if you make any changes you have to put the changed file in to the zip file. For that reason I just work inside the zips to save myself a little time . You can look inside client.zip if you like but I wouldn’t bother. There is nothing really in there that you can play with at this stage, instead open up server.zip.

Eeek! Lots of files and folders right?! Ok, well the only ones we are interested in right now are the ones that end in .con as we can open these up with notepad. Go ahead and open up staticobjects.con with notepad. This file keeps a record of where every static object is placed, from trees to buildings. It’s kinda hard to change stuff here without using the dedicated editor so lets leave it for now. Close it down and open up init.con. This file holds some basic information and we can change a few things if we want. We can change the kits, (lines titled gameLogic.SetKit) and we can also change the number of tickets. Remember though, we aren’t making changes just yet, just getting a little familiar with the mod folders. Close it down, time for a new one.

We’ll go into the folders in a minute, but the other thing you could play with if you wanted would be sky.con, you could change a day map in to a night map for example. It wouldn’t be great without changing lighting properly though and that requires some dedicated software, but its an option if you wanted it.

Anyways, open the ai folder. Inside is one file, called ai.ai. Again, we can open this with notepad so try that now. Not a great deal to play with here, but if you wanted to you could change the ai view distance. Remember init.con? Well that has a max view distance setting, you could change that, then come in here and have the ai see less than or more than that setting. Just remember though, make it too high and you’ll never see the ai before they can get a bead on you! Ok, close it and back to the main area again.

The only other thing we can play with is held in gamemodes, so open that one up. Now pick a game mode I guess sp = singleplayer, cq = conquest and coop = er co-op. I’m going to open up…..singleplayer. They are all pretty similar, but coop and sp have an extra folder called ai which isn’t there in conquest. Just open the map size and you will see it, plus the gameplayobjects.con folder. Open the .con file first. Now, we don’t want to mess with too much here, but you can use this to change the vehicles that spawn on a map. But again, we’ll go in to that later. Close it up and open the levels ai folder. Pretty boring, all it really does is tell the ai what order they can take flags in. Close it up again!

Ok, so that’s a quick intro to specific map settings, we can change vehicles that spawn, weather and sky, ticket numbers and kits with a basic knowledge. Remember, we’ll look at specific changes in another post.

Next up…object changes!

Ok, head back to the main FirstStrike folder area. You can close any windows you have open. Lets take a peek inside the objects folder now. Ok, lots going on here, every area has two zip files, client and server. The client files basically just hold the visible meshes, collision meshes and things that your computer will render. The server files hold the stuff that the server is interested in and also the things we’re interested in. The ones you are most likely to want to use are vehicles_server and weapons_server. The file structures are the same, so lets stick with a simple one. Open up vehicles_server then select a category. I’m going with air, then x-wing.

Again, depending what you look at depends what you get and how much is in there, but you should generally see three bits, a .con file, a .tweak file and an ai file. In the case of vehicles you may have different numbers of them for each variant of the vehicle. Here for the xwing, we have the regular xwing for space, an atmospheric one for planet stuff and the ds one for the deathstar. The .tweak files can be opened with notepad, try that now.

Eeek! Lots of scary code type things! Don’t worry, we will look at changes we can make later, but here is where you would come to make a ship stronger or weaker, change weapons etc. Close it and open the .con. Not as much information, this just tells the puter more or less where the different pieces of the ship go. Close this and open the ai folder.
This has two files, weapons.ai and objects.ai. Both are opened with notepad (see a theme running here?!). You shouldn’t have to play with these, objects.ai tells bots how to fly if you like, and weapons tells it how to shoot.

So, to make changes to objects, find the object, then use the .tweak file to make changes. Don’t mess with the .con and don’t play with the ai folder

Bit of a long one that, plenty of information. Feel free to navigate round and get used to the files, but try not to make changes just yet!
Next one I will show you how to change the kits on a singleplayer map (principle will also work for other game versions) and change the numbers of bots.

Bite my shiny metal Tie Fighter!

My personal record is 150

Nice tutorial so far Twigs, should be great help to aspiring modders.