WC2 - Ship Editing Question

Sorry for the double post- but it won't let me edit. . .

I'm trying to alter the Sabre to give it better armour and shields and it works in every mission except the last one on the winning path in Special Operations 1. No changes I make show up on the Sabres in that mission and the ship editor only shows one Sabre in the game. . . Any ideas on how to fix this?

EDIT
Okay, I think I'm narrowing it down- changes don't take effect on the modified Ferret in the first Special Operations mission either. Are there two different versions of some of the fighters and my modifications are only affecting one?

-Ryan P. Fialcowitz
 
RyanFialcowitz said:
Sorry for the double post- but it won't let me edit. . .

I'm trying to alter the Sabre to give it better armour and shields and it works in every mission except the last one on the winning path in Special Operations 1. No changes I make show up on the Sabres in that mission and the ship editor only shows one Sabre in the game. . . Any ideas on how to fix this?

EDIT
Okay, I think I'm narrowing it down- changes don't take effect on the modified Ferret in the first Special Operations mission either. Are there two different versions of some of the fighters and my modifications are only affecting one?

-Ryan P. Fialcowitz
Click to expand...

Yes, the modified designs are separate fighters as far the engine is concerned.
 
It's been ages since i tried doing that - but i believe that there are two sabres listed in the ships list? if so then thats the solution - if not then keep playing. maybe HCL never got round to including the option to edit those ships.
 
The archive that comes with the editor has a file for every ship, including the alternates- but the alternates all use the same ship number as the main one which is why they don't show up in the game. My guess is the alternates use a different ship number but the ship.v-- files only number 29 which is the base number of ships in the game, so it must be some other file that contains the other ship information. My head hurts. . . I sent an email to the creator of the ship editor, so hopefully he'll swoop down and solve all my problems.

-Ryan P. Fialcowitz
 
Here's the thing - WC2 featured a lot of alternative missile loadouts (e.g., the missile-less Epee, various Sabre versions, etc.). These loadouts included a lot more data than just the missiles - they actually contained all the stats for the given ship.

So, when a mission specifies that the player should use an alternative loadout, the stats from the ship file are overwritten with the stats from a given loadout stored inside the file altships.000. Although HCl's ship editor does read the alternative loadouts from altships.000, these are really only for reference - you can't actually modify altships.000 from the ship editor, unfortunately.
 
Become a hex editing robot. Of course that's only super easy if you happen to have access to illuminati technology, in which case we probably shouldn't hear about it.
 
Well, yeah, hex editing. It's super easy to find a hex editor, open up the file, and modify it. Of course, understanding what you're editing is harder, but there might be some documents about the WC2 ship file format on HCl's website to help you.
 
What about using the mission editor to change all missions that use the alternates to now use the regular ones? My changes should then show up. I tried to do this- but couldn't figure out how to work the editor once I loaded a mission. . . and does it even support the expansions and if so what are the series numbers for those?

-Ryan P. Fialcowitz
 
I think the editor does support the expansions, but probably not automatically. IIRC, the main campaign missions are stored in a file called MODULE.000, and the two expansions use the files MODULE.001 and MODULE.002. The three files should be the same as far as the file format is concerned, but the editor probably by default edits MODULE.000. So, in order to edit either of the expansions, you have to rename it to 000, make whatever changes you want, and then rename it back to 001 or 002.


As for how to use the actual editor... well, I can't help you there, since it's been well, well over a decade since I last used it.
 
Well, I can get it to load a mission- but I can't figure out the interface. Randomly clicking with the mouse seems to bring up things SOMETIMES. . . Not sure what the problem is.

-Ryan P. Fialcowitz
 
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