Freelancer Modding Tutorials

[Dusty Lens]

[color=#33FFFF]= Ini and Ship Editing =

By Seth Karlo

How to get any ship you want in SP

Here is the Seth Karlo handy guide at how to get any ship into SP. I accept no responsibility AT ALL if it messes up or CTD's.

Right, I am going to show you how to put a Spatial into open SP. Reason? I just did it so I could fly around in the spatial blowing up Tekagi's forces (Forgot how much fun that was).

Ok, things you will need:

-Ioncross Character Editor. (Available from my FL pack)
-Disco Ioncross files (Available in your mod)
-Notepad

Ok, go to Start>My Computer. Then to Program Files>Freelancer Mod Manager. Then Mods>Discovery484>IONCROSS

Select all the files in that folder and COPY them. Now go back to program files. Go to Program Files>IONCROSS Character Editor.

Paste those files here. Overwrite when nessacery.

Now, open IONCROSS Char editor, select which ship you want etc etc, it's pretty user friendly. I selected the Spatial, gave it a couple of Excaliburs, couple of Archangels, 2 Nuke Mines, a SN cannon, Infinite powercore.

Now, save your changes. DO NOT START THE GAME YET.

Spatial, like Gunboats, Cruisers and Battleships etc, is "big". I.E.: Freelancer doesn't let it use Docking rings or ordinary docking bays.

What we're going to do is fool it into thinking it can.

Go to your Freelancer Directory (Usually Program Files>Microsoft Games>Freelancer)

Go to Freelancer>DATA>SHIPS and locate a file called Shiparch.INI.

Right click on it, select properties and uncheck "Read-Only".

Now open it. Press Ctrl+F, and type in "Spatial". Voila! There is the Entry for the Spatial (It'll say dsy_spatial)

Underneath that will be a bunch of data, skim through it until you see the words "can_use_med_moors". Itshould be about 5 lines under dsy_spatial.

Now, change "can_use_med_moors" into "can_use_berths"

Save.

NOW open the game and play to your hearts content. Your ship can now use docking rings, and FL will try and put it into regular docking bays.

Therefore, using a Battleship won't really work... I think...

If you get stuck when docking, after about 10 seconds press Esc, and it SHOULD skip it, and send you straight in. Also, try and quick dock.

Good luck guys, and REMEMBER TO CHANGE IT BACK BEFORE YOU PLAY ONLINE!!!

Or even better, save a copy of shiparch somewhere before you edit it.

Seth
Some basic INI editing tutorials

To start we shall change where a ship is sold.

BACKUP market_ships FIRST!!!!!

Required tools:

-Notepad

Goto your Freelancer directory (Program Files>Microsoft Games>Freelancer) and proceed to DATA>Equipment.

Within we will find a file called market_ships.ini. Right click, and select Properties. Uncheck the "read only" button. Close Properties.

Lets open it.

You will see a list of bases, in their INI code, and then underneath a list of ships that are sold at that base.

WARNING: NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER put more than 3 ships at a base. EVER. FL can't handle it.

Anyway, where were we? Ah yes. Scroll down until you find Planet Manhattan. It will be called li01_01 (I think, not on a PC with it on atm)

Underneath it will be 3 "packages". The first will be the Startracker, then the Patriot, then the CSV. Note afterwards there are a series of numbers. Don't alter them for now, I'll explain more about what they do later.

Now, think of a ship you want to move to Manhattan. I thought the Titan would be nice, so I proceeded to planet Crete and looked under it. (Will post a list of codes tonight after work)

There will be the titan package. It will be called dsy_titan or summat. Copy ALL of the code and return to the manhattan entry.

Remember what I said about 3 ships max per base? Well, we need to remove one of the others then. I usualy remove the CSV, but whatever takes your fancy.

Paste the titan entry in over top of whichever ship you don't want anymore. Examples will be up later:)

Save, and then proceed in game (NOT on disco server) The titan will now be sold on Manhattan. Enjoy!

Will put more INI editing tut's up later.

How to put a ship you've made ingame

Oh yes, this IS a big one. Make sure you have the folowing:

My Freelancer Pack

A ship you have made.

Right then, I've realised that the ship making tutorial in my pack is being used without the owner's permission, and I am unable to locate him or email him, so it won't be in the next update of the flPack. However, I am now writing my own.

Lets assume you have made your ship in GMAX. I like this program, and it's in my FlPack, so it's nice and simple to get hold of.

Open Gmax, and open your ship that you have made. Give it a name now. I'm going to call mine PwnShip. So, for the purposes of this tutorial, wherever you see PwnShip, replace it with whatever name you've given your ship.

Save your ship first. Trust me, Exporter's can be a pain.

Then, goto File>Export and export your ship either in MD3, or .3ds format. .3ds is nice becuase almost every single model making program supports it.

So export PwnShip.3ds in My Documents. Trust me when I say that the programs will try and save them in the stupidest places on your PC.

Now, open my FLPack and find Ms3d. Milkshape 3D is a very powerful program that is useful to our needs. However, trying to Model in it is about as painful as rubbing your *ahem* private parts against a cheese grater for half an hour. Trust me, Don't.

So, goto File>Import and select .3DS. Find your ship. Oh yes, there it is in My documents where we left it. Perfect. Import it and Voila! There is PwnShip in all it's glory.

Now we need to Texture it. Texture's are made up of .TGA files that are overlapped onto the ship model. Ms3d label's them as "Materials".

Firstly though, if you exported/Imported using .MD3, this next part should be nice and easy for you, as all of the groups you made when creating your model should all still be under the "Groups" tab. (Cylinder 1/Cube 2 etc etc)

If you used .3DS, you have a painful job ahead of you. Use the select tool to select a group of faces and press Ctrl + D to duplicate them. They will appear in the Groups tab as duplicate 1. Rename it to whatever you want, and continue until your model is split up into your groups.

Now to texture!

I decided that PwnShip will have a Libertonian look, so I will use Libertonian textures, however, there are 2 way's of getting our textures:

From the Texture's already in FL

You need to get hold of a program called the Freelancer UTF editor. (Will link later) This program is incredible.

So then, open it up and select "open". Goto your Freelancer folder and then to DATA>SHIPS. Here you make your decision.

For Bretonian Textures, goto SHIPS>Bretonia and open playerships.MAT

For Libertonian Textures, goto SHIPS>Liberty and open playerships.MAT

For Rhienland Textures, goto SHIPS>Rhienland and open playerships.MAT

For Kusari Textures, goto SHIPS>Kusari and open playerships.MAT

For Outcast Textures...you get it.

So, open your .MAT file. In the UTF editor you'll see a tree and then 2 branches. Not literally, but that's what the folder and sub folder's are called.

Expand the Texture library folder, and there will be several textures there. Texture's can either be in .TGA format or .DDS format.

.DDS is Soooooooo much nicer to work with.

expand any branches, and select either MIPS (.dds file) or MIP0 (.TGA file)

As you might be able to see, the .TGA files are actually not one file. There are 8. TGA0 to TGA7.

Oh yes, now you see why .DDS is nicer? There is 1 .DDS file to every 8 .TGA files.