Ship install tutorial with 96 available ships with photos

Ship install tutorial with 96 available ships with photos; support/discussion/questions

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thunderchero
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Ship install tutorial with 96 available ships with photos

Post by thunderchero »

Hi everyone,

this post will have the tutorial below and ships are in next post below.

A downloadable tutorials is also available in shared file with ships

This will be an on going effort.

If you have any ship meshes that you would like added pm me.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

This is a tutorial for installing new meshes and textures to BotF

This is for personal use of ships. If it is to be used in a new mod you MUST get permission from the builder of the mesh or texture.

programs needed for this tutorial;

Birth of the Federation installed with 1.0.2 update (optional mod installed)

Ultimate Editor 6.2b or newer

Ultraedit (recommended) or hex editor of your choice

Zip program (winzip, winrar)

Knowledge of these programs is a must.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
First thing you will need to do is decide the ship you will want to replace. Their are only so many ship slots so replacement is
the best way, unless you use advanced methods. This tutorial is only for basic replacement.

As a sample for this tutorial we will use the Netel destroyer and replacing it with Hideki destroyer.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Finding ship to replace
Step 1; Open Ultimate Editor 6.2b and go to ship stats and find ship prefix in this case it is cl1 and make note of prefix.
Then close Ultimate Editor 6.2b for now.



________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Installing files
Step 2; open the folder that contains the new ship mesh if the prefix matches the prefix you are replacing add all the files to
stbof.res with zip program.

Note; If prefix does not match, You will need to use advanced tutorial.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Checking file install
Step 3; Open Ultimate Editor 6.2b and go to ship stats and find ship you are replacing if none of the prefix was changed
you should see the picture of the new ship. this is done just to check the file were installed right. Close Ultimate Editor 6.2b.



Note; at this time you can change name and stats of the new ship and upgrade ship then save file.
 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Register textures
Step 4; Open Ultimate Editor 6.2b and go to, edit - graphics - textures choose the prefix from drop down list. then click on use
own palette, then close Ultimate Editor 6.2b it will ask if you want to save changes, click yes.



Selecting gif file



Note; if palette list is at 127 prior to registering palette you may need to trim palette list of unused palettes.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Editing trek.exe
Step 5; In the ship folder their is a file in this case it is "hideki-phaser" open it with hex editor you will find something like this:
do not close file.


Next; open BOTF folder that contains your game and open trek.exe with hex editor it will look like this;


Next; use the search tab - find, and tell it to find for the prefix of ship. In this case "cl1". when you find a screen like this;
Do not close file.



Next; you will click on the tab for hideki-phaser at top, then highlight everything and click on edit - copy so it will be on your
clipboard. The selected file should look like this;



Next; click back on the tab trek.exe and highlight this area of the file like this:


Next; you need to paste the text from hideki-phaser that should still be on your clipboard.


Next; you need to save trek.exe file like this.



Next; go to the BOTF folder and delete "trek.exe.bak" file.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Your basic install is done you can play the game with your new ship.



Advanced Ship Mesh Install Tutorial

This is for personal use of ships. If it is to be used in a new mod you MUST get permission from the builder of the mesh or texture.

programs needed for this tutorial;

Birth of the Federation installed with 1.0.2 update (optional mod installed)

Ultimate Editor 6.2b or newer

Ultraedit (recommended) or hex editor of your choice

Zip program (winzip, winrar)

Knowledge of these programs is a must

________________________________________________________________________________________________________
When entering extra meshes to Botf their are a lot of limit.

First limit is you can only have 125 ships and that includes minors and random events

second limit is their is only 127 palette slots

Third limit is the worst limit of all and that is how many phaser slots there is in the trek.exe 74 slots if you count the temp slot.
The reason their are fewer phaser slots is their is 52 ships and outposts that upgrade and use the same slot for both ships.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Lets start with ways to free up phaser slots in the trek.exe.

1. Their is 2 extra slot in trek.exe not used by OE game HM1 and TMP slots. the HM1 has 2 slots with same phaser settings.

2. You can free up extra phaser slots by using only one slot for both starbases and outposts doing this it would free up 5 slots
but no ship slots.

3. So if you replace one starbase with a ship, that would give you 2 outposts and one starbase and an extra 5 ship slots.

4. If you want upgrades for the 5 new ship slots use only 1 colony ship per empire and that will free up 5 more ship slots.

5. So by doing all of this you have 7 phaser slots and 10 ship slots

6. Another way to free up slots is to go though all of the phaser setting to find slots that are the same and rename both prefixes the
same with an extra underscore after prefix. like this;

cl_a.hob
cl__a.hob

Note: The file name prefix can not be more than 2 Characters long or program will crash. also if meshes have different number
of phaser slots trek exe must be set to lower number of slot.

That way each file is different name but use the same phaser slot.

I am sure their is more ways to make more slots pm them to me and I will add them to the list

________________________________________________________________________________________________________
How to change file prefixes

As a sample I will change the Excelsior-light cruiser (hm1) to go in command cruiser (hh1) slot.

First thing change files name prefix like this;

Before___________________________After



Next; you will need to change the gif marker in all 3 hob files. see below on how to find hob file information from oe files you will only use
first marker. Below is a list of markers from oe files. You would use the first number after the prefix if there is only one gif file.



Next you will need to rename the prefix in the phaser file, open it with Ultraedit and change the prefix at beginning of file.

Then you should able follow the basic install tutorial.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Finding information in files.

hob files:

You will need to know where the marker is for the gif in the hob files. There are several ways it is put in hob and even more ways to
set them up.

Sample 1 OE ch1_a.hob file

The 3 highlighted areas below represent the 3 gif files the mesh uses; 3A is the 512x512(chl_a.gif), the 3B is the 256x256(ch1_b.gif),
the 3C is the 128x128 (ch1_c.gif).

On OE files the ch1_b.hob and ch1_c.hob have no gif file makers in most cases

Note; on a few OE hob file the order of the markers very not sure why they did it, but they did, it looks like: this most of them are
3A 3B 3C but some are 3A 3C 3B the 3C is still the 128x128 and 3B is still 256x256 so watch for them

In this sample if you want to OE mesh to use only one gif file you would change the 3B and 3C to 3A that way it would only use the
512x512 gif. that would free up the 3B and 3C texture slots for 2 new textures.

Note; Keep track of the gif files you are not using you might want to use them later. So in this case the list I would start would look like this:
unused gif files

ch1_b.gif = 3B

ch1_c.gif = 3C


Sample 2 cl1_a.hob file made by most mesh builders

The highlighted area in this sample 31 represents the 512x512 gif file and it is the only gif file it uses.

In most cases the cl1_b.hob and cl1_c.hob files have the same number in the same place.

You will need to change this number on all 3 hob files if you change name of the gif file.


_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
How to find what gif is being used by a mesh in use in a mod

With the mod installed open Ultimate Editor 6.2b go to graphics - hob files see below;



In the drop down menu select the prefix you are wanting to know the gif files as shown below;

You should look at all 3 hob file to make sure if it is using 3 gif files or just 1 gif files



I don't plan on going into any more details on advanced install cause every install will be different depending on the mod
you have installed so most of it will be trial and error

good luck I hope this tutorial helped.

thunderchero
Last edited by thunderchero on Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:27 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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thunderchero
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