cataclysm modding tutorials

[sgt cortez]

i noticed there are hardly any mod tutorials for cataclysm, and the ones there are cover very little on modding.i have decided to make some.

tutorial 1

converting a somtaaw recon into a kushan interceptor

1:use winbig,extract all files from the cataclysm.big file anywhere.

2:create a new folder in your cataclysm directory and name it race_sect.

3:now search for the folder race_kushan wich will be where you extracted all the files.inside you will find a kheavyinterceptor folder,a kheavyinterceptor.lod file, and a kheavyinterceptor.shp file.

4:copy and paste these three into your new race_sect folder.

5:rename the three to srecon.make sure the .shp and .lod parts of the name are still there.

6:go into the new srecon folder and rename the rl0 folder to r10.

7:open the new srecon.shp file and at the top you will see the source files info.it should now look like this:
LODFile srecon.lod
pMexData srecon\R10\LOD0\kHeavyInterceptor.mex

8:open the new srecon.lod file and change everything to this:
type0 MESH
pMeshFile0 srecon\R10\LOD0\kHeavyInterceptor.geo
mOn0 1.0
bOn0 106531
mOff0 1.0
bOff0 118368

type1 MESH
pMeshFile1 srecon\R10\LOD1\kHeavyInterceptor.geo
mOn1 1.0
bOn1 377243
mOff1 1.0
bOff1 419159

type2 MESH
pMeshFile2 srecon\R10\LOD2\kHeavyInterceptor.geo
mOn2 1.0
bOn2 1883515
mOff2 1.0
bOff2 2092795

type3 MESH
pMeshFile3 srecon\R10\LOD3\kHeavyInterceptor.geo
mOn3 1.0
bOn3 4105586
mOff3 1.0
bOff3 4561762

type4 MESH
pMeshFile4 srecon\R10\LOD4\kHeavyInterceptor.geo
mOn4 1.0
bOn4 390581984
mOff4 1.0
bOff4 433980000

9:make sure you saved everything and voila!you now have a kushan interceptor!

tutorial 2

changing a weapon

all weapons can be converted the same way so we'll change the destroyer's ion cannons into rapid firing plasmabombs as an example.

1:find the battackbomber.shp file in the race_beast folder.

2:open up the file and scroll down to weapons.

3:copy the first weapon entry:
GUN 0
{
Type GUN_HiddenGimble
GunSize GUNSIZE_SMALL
StartUpgradeLevel WEAPON_PLASMABOMB
EndUpgradeLevel WEAPON_PLASMABOMB
DamageMult 1.2
MinAngle 0
MaxAngle 11
BulletLength 25 ; visual only. Length of bullet on screen
BulletRange 5800 ; distance bullets travel before disappearing
BulletSpeed 4000 ; measured in m/s.
BulletMass 0.01 ; mass of bullet
FireTime 2.7 ; fire repeat rate (reciprocal = shots/second)
}

4:find the sdestroyer.shp file in the race_sect folder and open it.

5:find:
GUN 0
{
Type GUN_HiddenGimble
GunSize GUNSIZE_LARGE
StartUpgradeLevel WEAPON_ION
EndUpgradeLevel WEAPON_ION
DamageMult 0.6
BulletLength 7500.0 ; visual only. Length of bullet on screen
BulletRange 7500.0 ; distance bullets travel before disappearing
BulletSpeed 0.0 ; measured in m/s.
BulletLifeTime 2.2
BulletMass 0.0 ; mass of bullet
FireTime 5.0 ; fire repeat rate (reciprocal = shots/second)
MinAngle 0
MaxAngle 8
}

and:
GUN 1
{
Type GUN_HiddenGimble
GunSize GUNSIZE_LARGE
StartUpgradeLevel WEAPON_ION
EndUpgradeLevel WEAPON_ION
DamageMult 0.6
BulletLength 7500.0 ; visual only. Length of bullet on screen
BulletRange 7500.0 ; distance bullets travel before disappearing
BulletSpeed 0.0 ; measured in m/s.
BulletLifeTime 2.2
BulletMass 0.0 ; mass of bullet
FireTime 5.0 ; fire repeat rate (reciprocal = shots/second)
MinAngle 0
MaxAngle 8
}

6: paste over both the entries above but make sure you dont have 2 gun0's.

7:now change the fire times for the new plasma launchers to 0.07 for rapid firing.there you have it!a destroyer that shoots rapid fire plasma bombs instead of ion cannons.

another thing you can do is change the startupgradelevel-projectile entry to startupgradelevel-energy so that you dont have to research just so your ships can shoot energy balls.

next tutorial:altering ship stats!

[Ghost3021]

Aha! New I was missing something with my heavy cruiser conversion...the folder paths must have been borked up >_>

Greetz and thanks, I'm gonna try that out myself ^_^

* Ghost3021 fantasizes about having a Nomad Moon

[sgt cortez]

what ship were you trying to replace with wich kind of cruiser?

[Ghost3021]

I was trying to replace the Dreadnought with the Kushan Heavy Cruiser...but it showed up as a white model every time. I think this might explain why though, I never messed with any LOD files.
When do we get those weapon tuts? ^_^

[sgt cortez]

i should be working on that soon.

hey,where did my sig go?

edit:the weapons tutorial is now complete

[Ghost3021]

Yay!

umm your sig only appears once and that's in your first post in a thread...I recall the board FAQ saying something about it reducing visual spam or something
/me checks

[Zabaron]

I belive your sig only appears once per page.

6:go into the new srecon folder and rename the rl0 folder to r10.

IIRC, that's not nessicary. All the stock ships use the path [slotname]\rl0\lodx\file.

@Ghost3021: If the ship is showing up white it's some problem with the textures. Make sure you copy them over along with the .mex and .peo (they're all in .lif format).

-Zabaron

P.S. I would like to add that the only way to sucessfuly mod Cata is to never try in the first place. There are lots of things that are hardcoded (even more than the original HW (the weapons on the Acolyte? What were they thinking?)).

[Captain Pierce]

Well, they were probably thinking "Hey, wouldn't it be cool to put missiles on a fighter? Wait, we have to do what to make that happen? Well, what the hell, let's do it anyway--missiles on a fighter would be TEH R0X0RS!!!!"

Here's a link to a tutorial I did on converting a Homeworld ship to Cataclysm a while back (good Lord, was it really two years ago?)...

[Ghost3021]

lol
who knows...
I personally find Cata's SP to be better than HW2's, so that's probably one of the reasons I still even bother with it

" IIRC, that's not nessicary. All the stock ships use the path [slotname]\rl0\lodx\file."

Actualy, I just did a quick test to make sure of this. When you keep the paths the same (RL0), then textures.ll throughs a fit...but if you rename to R10, then you end up with shiny pretty tex instead of the 'optimized' ones.

[sgt cortez]

this thread should be stickied so that people can easily find it in the future.

[Ghost3021]

Hopefully it won't die anytime soon.
If you don't feel like doing a weapons tut, I'd be more than glad to

[sgt cortez]

i made one on changing weapon types but feel free to create your own.all tutorials will be edited into the first post for easy locating

[Ghost3021]

Aight...thanks
/me resumes modding for now

[Zabaron]

/me pokes ST:BTFF, ST:TW, and SW:GE

All 3 of those mods have the paths to their ships [name]\rl0\lodx

-Zabaron

[Ghost3021]

Don't they also have custom texture.ll files?
I don't have a clue how to alter that file, so this way works.
rl0: Texture corruption
r10: Shiny 8-)

[Captain Pierce]

I don't recall doing a textures.ll for BTFF or TW. Which is not the same thing as saying that there isn't one, of course. Then again, I rarely see texture corruption as such in Cataclysm. Only on about two occasions that I can remember, actually--once in Dark Age 3 (where I believe the problem was a texture that had the same name as a stock texture from the ship in that slot) and once in a little project I was working on when I dropped the Kadeshi swarmer into the Somtaaw Recon slot. Usually what I see is just a slight degradation of texture quality once I load a lot of mod ships into a game; which I guess technically is "texture corruption" but I usually save that term for the full-on Homeworld type of texture corruption... I have to admit that I never tried R-one-zero in Cataclysm...

[Ghost3021]

I'm just saying what I've seen, and my idea about what might be happening.
One works, the other doesn't >_>

[Zabaron]

Holy hells, he's right. Its not genuine HW texture corruption, but its just as bad.

in \rl0\


in \r10\


-Zabaron

[Ghost3021]

How come r10 works though? o_^ it makes no sense....

[Zabaron]

Hence the Holy hells remark at the beginning of my last post...

-Zabaron

[Captain Pierce]

Well, Zabaron, that's pretty much like HW texture corruption, which could probably be fixed by Liflisting.

Back in the days before Liflist, the R-one-zero thing was used as a workaround for texture corruption, but I think it has its limits. It never made a lot of sense to me, either, but it did work, and really, isn't that all that counts? But it's been a long time since I used it even in HW--once I figured out Liflist, it was a moot point.

I do still need to see if R-one-zero would help the problem I observe, though... of course, the problem is actually finding teh motivation...

[Bentusi324]

What is the file for the Bentusi Super Acolite called in Cataclysm?

[Captain Pierce]

It's "dacolyte" in the "race_derelicts" folder.

[TheStressPuppy]

BTFF did indeed encounter texture corruption in later test builds. It just was nowhere near as bad as HW. Cat has a finite amount of texture memory hardcoded in just like HW, but i think CAT's limit is 64 megs vs HW's 32 megs (correct me if im wrong, its been a while).

The Current release of BTFF, and TW never needed an LL file. Which im amazed, because we went ballistic with the textures. While we restrained ourselves to the 256x256 boundry we made alot of tiny detail textures as well. If you are getting corruption several things you can do.

1) Make an LL file using liflist. This is the best option. I cant explain how to do this, because i dont know how myself. I always had Captain Pierce do it for me

2) Do the r10 trick like previously posted. Also you can remove lods 1-4 from the equation by editing them out in the lod files leaving only lod0. I wouldnt worry too much about too many polys on todays machines, or even machines a few years old for that matter lol. I never had an issue with it. It may work for you, or it may not, but it doesnt hurt to try. Make sure you back up your lod files.

3) Reduce the size of your textures. This is the absolute LAST resort option. Reducing the size also nerfs the quality as well, and it WILL show. But if you are still getting major corruption after you tried the 2 options above there may be no other alternative than to reduce.

EDIT i just looked at the date of the OP

[AdmiralTheon804]

I tried to change some of my ships to other ships, but even though I followed the directions, I always got a 'homeworld.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close' error message. =[

[Captain Pierce]

Well, first off, Admiral, this is a Cataclysm thread, so bumping it for an answer to a Homeworld modding question wouldn't have been the right thing to do even if it wasn't better than a year old.

That said, what you need to do is search this subforum for "debugtofile." When you enable that command line addon, you'll get a debug report that will help you figure out what went wrong...

[AdmiralTheon804]

Thanks you. =p This was the thread I bumped because this was the thread that I used to guide myself through modding a weapon on HW. (I put an ion cannon on an interceptor. XD) Sorry if what I did was unorthodox/against forum rules/inconvenient, etc.

[Dot]

Sorry for the bump.

The White instead of textures is a game code bug, It can't be fixed.

[Xelnaga98]

um how do you mod an acolyte? I mean I have done the tutorial but when I mod the acolyte the game crashes

[Captain Pierce]

What exactly are you doing to the acolyte? Off the top of my head, I remember that if you give it anything other than two energy cannon and two missile launchers, that's enough to make it crash...

[Xelnaga98]

I was trying to change the acolyte into a taidain intercepter
um how do you mod an sentenel (Is that how you spell it?) I mange to get the ship but If I change the .Mex file to allow shielding after I take it off the ships weapons go funny and they go in three directions.

[Captain Pierce]

What you'd have to do to make the Taiidan interceptor into an Acolyte is to make sure it has the two energy guns and two missiles. Other than that it should work pretty well.

As for your Sentinel issue... that's an odd one. Have you tried taking the original Sentinel .mex and changing the point locations to fit your ship? I had a lot better luck doing that than trying to take another .mex and make it work on most of the "special ability" ships.

[Xelnaga98]

Thanks for the help, bu can you give me a program to edit the ship through visual?
It would help alot thanks.

[Captain Pierce]

HWSE is what you need if you want to see where you're putting the .mex points. (Heck, it's what you want even if you don't. )

[Xelnaga98]

hey thanks for the program but it won't work in vista, is there one for vista?

[29c3]

I modded Cataclysm and it work great, just that when it hits the part when I found the cannon and build it, which I was about to fire it when I click on the mining vessal it crashes everytime. I don't know if it was the mod or the game...But I know I have more than enough requirement of what the game needs. You guys have any of this issues?

[Oligarth]

what mod did you use in Cataclysm?

[29c3]

Will I didn't actually use a mod, I tweaked the files by adding bentusi laster beam on my mining vessal.

[Oligarth]

he he. take em off, then add em after you complete the level, see it that does anything. i actually have no idea why the game crashes on certain levels and not others. i may have experience modding, but im still new i comparison to others.

if anyone knows why he would have that problem on Cat tell him, and me as well. i have the same problem on HW1, but ive modded the taiidan to be te kadeshi instead. cant get past mission 4. game crashes every time. tried changing the race back to taiidan, then restarting the mission. no go. if anyone has any info on this let me know.

by the way, any changes you make to a game is called a mod, because its different than the original.

[29c3]

I'm guessing your situation if you tried changing it back you go to delete the folder and replace it with the original folder such as the r2 original folder. But it would be nice to see the kadeshi out and about, but I guess when you try to replace taiidan with the kadeshi some mission requires the taiidan to be there to run some certain movies or tigger it I guess. I could be wrong, but sometimes it can be a pain when your just making one mistake on one string of the mod and makes the game crash. Which sometimes you overlook the string and think it's the whole file you modded. Mos of the time my mod are like that so I ususally have to look carefully for the problem and use the hw log files to find the main problem.

[Oligarth]

actually, when hw runs the movie in the 3rd mission, where the scaffold is attacked, it showed the kadeshi ships. i thought that was awsome. and i already tried deleting the folder and replacing it with the original. did work

[Captain Pierce]

HW mission 4 is the classic "Bentusi crash bug." See, to make the Ambassador corvette, the NIS code tells the game to take a heavy corvette and remove the turrets. If your heavy corvette doesn't have turrets, the game doesn't know what to do, and so it crashes. Somewhere around here, if you search on "Bentusi crash bug," you should be able to find a link to new NIS scripts that fix the problem.

And the problem with the Kuun-Lan crashing on firing the siege cannon, I'm guessing, is that you overwrote the siege cannon code with one of your Bentusi ion cannon modifications, so again, the game gets confused and dies. "GUN0" in smothership.shp is the siege cannon; try returning that to its original value.

[Oligarth]

i hope he backed up the files like i tld him to. if not, then hes at a loss unless he reinstalls Cat.

so you think you could give me a hint as to where to look, er should i just google it?

EDIT: i googled it and cant find it anywhere. some help in locating it would be appreciated.

EDIT EDIT: i just finished looking through the results i got in the forum search. nothing. although i did find some very interesting topics. "driving a hw ship" comes to mind.

[Captain Pierce]

Odd. I'll have a look after work and see if I can't find it and upload it, then.

[29c3]

Ok I'm pretty pissed here with an head ache, I got the big gun to not crash anymore but the big gun when it shoots it just stay there and blows up all my stuff. I try doing almost everything I can think of and even going slow and checking everything. Where can I edit the big gun so that it stop firing so near, I can't complete the mission with Clee-sun without killing him lol I need it to be 50%. Any help would be great Thanks. I know there is a big gun.ship file i check that no help, I check smothershi.shp not help, smothershipspecial.shp no help what else could I edit to make the big gun weak or go futher geez. Anyways thanks beforehand for the help.

[Oligarth]

first of all, are you moving when you fire the siege cannon? when i did that mission i was still moving when the cannon tried to fire. because of the motion, it did not fire, and stayed there, hung up in the gun. when i stoped, er, canceled orders, then entire thing detonated inside the siege cannon, destroying all but my mothership. if your moving, stop before fireing the cannon.

[29c3]

Nope I'm not moving tried it a thousand times lol.

[Oligarth]

huh. then i have absolutely no idea.

send a private message to captain pierce. he would know.

[Captain Pierce]

Not that I mind the PM's, but I usually find it's better to ask questions out here in the open, that way it's easier for other people to find them.

Now, 29, you're using a Kuun-Lan that's 100% standard other than the addition of the Bentusi ions? In my experience, the only thing that I've ever done to cause the siege cannon to suicide me is moving it around and having it fire from a place that went through my ship. You did put it back as GUN0, right?

[Dot]

I replaced my seige cannon with some ion cannon contraption I developed along time ago. Usually spazzed and incinerated the MS so I stopped and went back to Bentusi Acolyte Recons