How to unpack game files and create a simple mod

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

You royally jacked something up then.
I do this.

I use the doubleshadow's modmanager. It's got an option to automatically unpack a drag and drop removal. So I'll drag the file I want to my desktop, it unpacks into a Text. Then I just run X2Editor and edit that. After that, I go back to modmanager and 'add' file, and choose to replace the file I pulled with the alterations. Run it, good day.

CTD is usually caused by an invalid memory call function. If it were an infinite loop, the game would freeze. So I'd say, you have a value the game doesn't like somewhere. Either the program didn't repack it correctly, or you chose a value that won't work in the game.

It sounds like the Tships file either has a bad value, or didn't repack correctly. Ensure it didn't double compress it of course.
I would say, if it's T ships, then it only would crash the game when you attempt to load an actual universe, since that's the only time it would actually NEED to check the Tships file for the ship governing parameters. (The cutscene, and all the non function scenes used in the menu and such seem to only need effects and bullets.)

I had similar trouble trying to use X2 Editor to resave as a PCK file, and it didn't like it. So I saved as text, and packed it manually.

[Red Spot]

finally .. got doubleshadows modmanager .. couldnt get the lib.'s

but just copied the link to the download .. and slowelly got it in .. now I've tried the Disco (boy is it easy to mod ship-specs with this .. thumbs up to doubleshadow)
and it worked .. no problems ..

anyhow .. tnx to all you helpers ..


still dont know what went wrong when doing it manually .. but "who cares"

[TSM]

I had problems with Cut & Paste Tships files aswell eventually it seemed to be notepads wordwrap setting if it was on it messed up all the entry's but now I use DS's Editor and havent had a tship failure since

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Let's not forget to mention that it catagorizes everything with IDs so you know what offset you're editing, and the latest version even allows you to easily program the guns for ships without so much as blinking. (X2 Editor that is.) I'm glad that feature was in the latest version, I was going into cardiac arrest trying to figure out how to just ADD gamma Plasmas to a mamba.

[Red Spot]

Let's not forget to mention that it catagorizes everything with IDs so you know what offset you're editing, and the latest version even allows you to easily program the guns for ships without so much as blinking. (X2 Editor that is.) I'm glad that feature was in the latest version, I was going into cardiac arrest trying to figure out how to just ADD gamma Plasmas to a mamba.

true .. but not always trustable .. the ID's ..

did you see how many Pirate-ships it has??..

but thats only with 2 or 3 ships .. for the rest .. I couldnt say a bad thing about it ..

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Wrong IDs.

I meant the ids for the offsets.

However, with the pirate ships, that's easy. Just look at the ones that have zeroed parameters.

[moley1390]

Ok this is a tough one - I've successfully extracted all the files (i'm assuming, by the lines upon lines of code popping up with "processing *********file") but then when i look in the directory there isn't anything new! Even when i list the dirs in cmd or i try to navigate to one of the folders that it clearly said it was "processing" before, none of them exist??? is there something i'm doing wrong, or am i not looking in the right place? i can't seem to see the extracts anywhere!