Unpack game files to prepare them for being modified
Edit the files to achieve the desired result
Repack the files to get them into standardized .cat/.dat format
Activate the mod so that it can be used
Unpacking .cat/.dat files using X2tool
Just as an fyi before I start, you may hear people referring to Stone D's X2Patcher. Among other things, this is an unpacker with a gui attached that is not supported by egosoft.
Using X2tool to unpack your game files is relatively easy.
The first thing you need to do is download the latest version of the X2 modding kit available in your personal download page from the main egosoft page.
X2tool needs to be run from a command prompt, it has no graphical user interface. Double clicking on the file won't accomplish what you want. To open a command prompt from most versions of windows, go to the start>run menu and type cmd
I'm going to assume you can navigate to the proper directory using the command prompt.
Navigate to your X2 root directory and make sure the x2tool.exe is also in this folder (you can't run the command if it isn't in the folder you're trying to run it from) (I know this isn't quite correct, but this guide is for newbs
)Usage is x2tool -extract-dat 01.dat
You can think of the .dat file as comparable to a zip file which contains many files within it. You're using x2tool to unpackage it. It will create multiple folders and extract the contents of the .dat to these folders. As egosoft releases new patches, they add additional .dat files, so the 01.dat contains the oldest data, the higher numbers are more recent. Therefore, when you extract the game files, extract 01.dat first, then 02.dat, etc. Extracting the later versions on top of the newer will overwrite previous files in case of duplicates, and make sure that at the end you have the most recent files extracted.
Ok, you're almost done. Most files will still now be in compressed format. If you look in the newly created /types folder, you'll see that the files end in extension .pck. Next we need to unpack the specific files that we want to use/change/mod.
To unpack the file TShips.pck, the usage is x2tool -unpack TShips.pck TShips.txt (remember to put a copy of x2tool in the directory or it won't work)
This will create a new file TShips.txt that can be edited using any text editor.
Congrats! You're done learning how to unpack the game files.
Edit the files to achieve the desired result
Editing can be accomplished using any text editor. I use notepad myself. There are 3rd party editors made specific to X2 and can be found by searching fan sites, but these are unsupported by egosoft.
An excellent 3rd party editor is doubleshadow's X2 editor.
Most of the files that you'll want to edit will be in the X2/types directory.
Opening the TShips.txt file that you just created will display a bunch of numbers that won't make much sense to you at first.
Download Storm Front's Mod Kit from the site in my signature. It's the best compilation/description to date of what all of the numbers in each file mean.
In brief,
TShips - contains data dealing with ship speeds, turning, weapon mounts, etc.
TRockets - missile parameters.
TLaser and TBullets - weapon parameters.
TShields - shield parameters.
TWare? - price, volume, size class, etc. data for all wares.
There are many others.
Pick the parameter that you want to change, find the correct location using Storm Front's mod kit, locate the number in the correct .txt file, and change it using a text editor. Use some common sense. Experiment! If you're wondering how to use a specific field, or what a particular number means beyond the desciption given in SF's mod kit, post a question in this thread. I don't know how to use all of them, but chances are someone out there does.
That's it. You now have a new version of the file that incorporates your changes. Now we have to tell the computer to use your file instead of the egosoft ones.
Repack the files to get them into standardized .cat/.dat format
As explained in the modding documentation, the new standard for mods is to put your modded files into .cat/.dat format. This means compressing your modified file/files into a pair of files, {yourmod}.cat and {yourmod}.dat.
Step by step:
Create a folder 'temp' (or whatever)
create a folder in temp called types
put your types .txt files in there to be packaged
run gzip on each file: gzip <TBullets.txt >TBullets.txt.gz
run x2tool on each: x2tool -crypt TBullets.txt.gz TBullets.pck
delete/move the .txt and .txt.gz files so you have only .pck files in the directory
now you're ready to make the .cat/.dat
back out to the directory that contains the temp folder, everything in this folder will be recursively added to the .dat. (that's why you make the types folder in it) You can think of the .dat as a zip that will be extracted to the root x2 directory in terms of how things will be used.
run x2build: x2build mymod temp (will create mymod.dat/.cat using all files in /temp
Activate the mod so that it can be used
There is already a tutorial that deals with installing and managing scripts and mods so I'll just reference it.
That's it!
That should be enough to get you on your feet, editing game parameters to your heart's content.
Remember that pretty much everything I just covered is also covered in the instructions in the egosoft mod kit.
Ask a specific question and receive a specific answer.
Have fun.
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