Making a player-usable custom ship style

Published on March 23, 2007 By kryo In Modding

In order to make a custom style for your own use, where all (or some) of the core ships are replaced:

1. During a game, design enough templates to make up the new style. You'll need at least one template of each hull size if you want it to be useable by the AIs. If you won't ever use it for an AI race and don't build core ships, you'll really only need a Cargo (preferably two) and a Medium template to cover the colony, miner, and survey ships you start with.

2. In AI race customization screen at game creation, pick the style you used when you made your templates, edit it, and save it under a new name.

3. Go to My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar\ShipStyles and open your style's xml file in a text editor.

4. Change the <Prefix> value to something unique, with no spaces or special symbols. Check through the file for any instances of the original style name you copied yours from and change them to your new name.

5. Go to My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar\ShipTemplates, and rename the .shipcfg files for the templates you made in step 1 to match the prefix value you set in step 4.

6. Once renamed, copy at least the three starting ships' templates to GalCiv2\DarkAvatar\Data\ShipCfg as well (this is necessary to make them appear when you use the style for your own race), and rename them to match their roles in the same format as all the other files in that folder. So prefix_ColonyShip.shipcfg, prefix_SurveyShip.shipcfg, prefix_SpaceMiner.shipcfg, etc.

7. Start up the game, and go edit the style via AI race setup. Pick each item on the left and double-click the template on the right to assign it, then save.

Your style should now be ready for use. Whether you use it yourself or for an opponent, the three starting ships (and any future core ships or AI designs if you replaced more) should use the templates you made yourself.

Comments (Page 1)

Matthew Girard

on Apr 12, 2007

Thats wicked.

Major Major

on Jun 19, 2007

Fixing this so that it is automatic in the edit race screen would be a good addition to 1.7.

ZzzombieBunny

on Sep 11, 2007

When I try this all my ships just turn invisible.

SideMancer

on Sep 11, 2007

Nice. I've been wanting to ask this, but here's the answer already!

Bookmarking...

kryo

on Sep 12, 2007

When I try this all my ships just turn invisible.

Did you rename the shipcfg files correctly and move them to the stated folder?

The Blindman

on Sep 17, 2007

Lol,this is why directions should never be writen by people who know what their doing-only people who know what they're doing can understand them. Examples within each step would help alot. Change the value to something unique? Of what part of the xml? The whole thing? Change to bob? Would love to try these steps,but,as written would just trash my game. Thanks though,I do think your hearts in the right place,you just forgot some of us are morons.

kryo

on Sep 18, 2007

Change the value to something unique? Of what part of the xml?

Like it says, the value of Prefix to something not already used. That's easy enough, since the base game just uses s1, s2, s3, etc. So you'd change this:

<Prefix>S3</Prefix>

to something like this:

<Prefix>bob</Prefix>

Then go through and replace any occurence of the original name to your new one. So if you made yours a copy from Arcean style, you'd replace anywhere in the xml where it says "Arcean Empire Style" with "Bob's New Style".

MisterVertigo

on Oct 10, 2007

I just wanted to say thanks for making this guide. I got it to work, but like The Blindman said above, it was kind of tricky to get working. I'm going to see if I can't use these same instructions as a base, but update them with screen shots, etc to make it a bit easier.

Peter Low

on Apr 14, 2008

Hello,

I am new to the forums and the game in general. I Attempted the above instructions and hit a problem. Basically in the AI race set up the ship design appears in the window on the 'appearance' page. When I go back and select my custom race for me to play and attempt to use the custom style the ships become invisible.

Why is the style working if it is for the AI but not when I want to use it? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

USAF_Ronin

on Jun 06, 2008

Seriously though, why is this not an automatic feature of the game? It seems obvious.

pndrev

on Jun 09, 2008

Or at least a feature in the editors - maybe a 'Race Editor', where outside of the game, we could define looks, styles, abilities and also edit the descriptions (possibly the dialogue as well) of a race.

Generally though, the process remains the same with TA?

kryo

on Jun 09, 2008

Generally though, the process remains the same with TA?

TA allows you to access the style customizer from player race design, but using that only affects autodesigned ships. You'll still need to do this stuff if you want to replace the starting ships too, AFAIK.

USAF_Ronin

on Jun 17, 2008

This works with TA. Instructions were perfect (well for me anyway).

jmccrea

on Jun 19, 2008

So by doing this then, you can have the templates for your custom designed ships show up in the custom ship feature in TA? Also, im assuming this works just the same for any custom race you create?

USAF_Ronin

on Jun 20, 2008

yes

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