Hey, I just started modding this game, and I have a good grasp on what I'm doing. I'm just curious if any of these are possible, and if so, how:

Change the names of your units (I.E. the starting 4 chars)
Make all energy cells take up one slot (Width=1)
Make Defense buildings instantly populate with Recruits/Minutemen/etc
Change defense stats on armor (I can't even find a file that refers to armor...)
Make Humans trainable to use cyborg parts/implants?
Make guns shoot faster

Any help would be appreciated. I've looked through these forums, and I at least didn't find anything that would help me. I've tried to change the names by editing 'initial_troops.txt' and 'troopname.txt' but it didn't change any names, and actually ended up replacing all four of the default people with four completely different people.

Cannot be done without invalidating all existing savegames. If you don't care about this, then there is a mod that already does so. However, FYI, that mod is not compatible with Weapon Rebalance.


If you search this modding forum far enough back and thoroughly enough you'll find the answer to how to do this. (You must learn the structure of the data records in equipment.txt) My Weapon Rebalance has already made changes to guns and armor, so you should study how I did it.


Probably cannot be done. And even if it can it's totally unrealistic and a helluva cheat.


Cannot be done.

I don't have any saved games, so it's no big deal. I've been trying my hand at this mod thing, so I haven't bothered with any important games. So what mod changes names? I haven't seen anything that mentions name changes...then again, I could just be blind :-P

And just because I can open mods, see the files they change, doesn't mean I know what I'm looking for in them! There are hundreds of lines in those files, and I don't understand half of them. I can live without the guns and armor changes, I'll probably eventually get bored and figure that out one day. Other than that, I appreciate your response!

Also, I did at one point dl and run your weapon mod...excellent job, I must say. It was just too...advanced for me, I guess. I'm still trying to get used to all the original content in the game :-) Once I get bored with that, I'll start using your mod (and the heroism one.)

A question about the barracks/etc...if it can't be edited, how DO you get people to populate defensive structures? At one point, I had most of the bases on the map, and put nothing but defensive structures in them, and I never saw any of them full. What 'population' do they pull from to make minutemen/recruits? This was why I wanted to edit it...I never get any in the first place >.>

the defence buildings are automaticaly filled as time passes by (or should, if it isn't working for you you might have hit a bug), they don't pull from any population they just get "filled"

as to finding what to look for:
-use the search functionality of this board, you will find post upon post with information on the different modifiers in equipment.txt
-compare an original equipment.txt with the one from shadowarrior's mod, search for known items, like armors and weapons, see what's changed and evaluate the effect

that's about all I can recomend

Thanks for the info.

But what about names? I've tried editing troopnames.txt, initial_squad.txt, and Pack.txt, and nothing's working. (Using SNShockTroopers to edit the pack.txt, and the game loads fine.) Do I need to change them in 'listofpeople.txt'? if so, where do I get this file? It wasn't in my gamedata.vfs file.

EDIT:
I've downloaded Weaponbalance again to check the equipment.txt. All the energy cell type ammo is still 2x1...so I started editing equipment.txt. I've changed 'shape INT' to everything from 0-10, and it doesn't change how much space reticulan cells, batteries, energons, or E-cells take up in inventories. shape INT for these cells are all INT 3, which I'm assuming by the comment means they are 2x1, and INT 0 is on all the things that are 1x1...but changing it to INT 0 didn't do a damned thing.

Also, I've tried changing the resistances on all the armors...and nothing changes in game. Unless, of course, the numerical changes don't actually show on the equip. page. I tried setting them all to 0.1, 0.9, and 0.5, just to see what I could do, and none of them actually changed in game. I have my equipment.txt in C:\Program Files\CENEGA\UFO Aftershock\mymod\strategic\configs\stratgame\equipment, 'mymod' being the base folder that all others are in. (The file structure and actual equipment.txt file are all from the weaponbalance vfs file.) It seems that nothing I change in equipment.txt is actually getting changed in game...Am I missing something? Doing something wrong?

please be warned that changes don't take effect in an allready ongoing game! (unless you go trough the trouble of editing your savegame)

also you must be aware that you cant just drop the edited files in your gamestructure and think that it will work, the game only reads data from .vfs files

if you haven't done so allready, be sure to read this post by shadowarrior for the most complete modding information around, this will help you avoid mistakes

Yes. You aren't doing an adequate job of reading this forum, or SEARCHing to find the answers. If you had followed Shadowkeeper's suggestion to SEARCH this forum you would have discovered the answers to your questions as they are mentioned in various threads.

You cannot reduce the size of an object in Aftershock unless you also either change the associated image file to a smaller one (for example, replacing the 2x1 battery image with a 1x1 ammo image) or modify the image file to a smaller size (which is by far more complicated, and requires an expert at graphics editing). This is clearly explained somewhere in my mod's thread (where I was changing the size of 5x2 weapons to 5x1).

Please do your homework before asking questions. If you were in school you could not reasonably expect a teacher to grab a textbook and point to a page and read to you your assignment, so please don't expect folks here to do a similar thing for you.

As I stated before, I'm not using save files. I'm testing everything on a new game each time. Also, I'm fully aware that you have to put everything into a .vfs file.

Anyway, I'm done here. Getting straight answers seems like pulling teeth. Apparently, I'm required to spend hours a day reading over a post that has, what, 122 pages or more? I don't think so. I appreciate the help you guys DID give me, though, and @$%^ me for being lazy.

well thank you for shooting the guy that's trying to help you
from what you had written it looked like you where just dropping stuff into the games structure instead of reimporting it into a vfs, my mistake

also you clearly underestimate this forums search function, if used correctly it can put you at the correct page and line in a thread pertaining your search parameters so you don't need to read the entire thing, just hit search, it doesn't take that much effort

also note that this will probably be the last time anyone will try to help you, if someone tries to help you you don't yell at them

I'm curious now. I was also interested in making the power cell type items in the game smaller, but changing them in the equipment.txt file doesn't do anything, and ran across this forum by googling my problem.

Is the image file for all the batteries in the gamedata.vfs file? I think I'll give editing them a try. I'm at work at the moment, so I can't check if the image files are there. Also, will MS Paint work on editing them? Or do I need another editor?

Darien_stryfe, don't be rude. You asked a question (or a few) and they gave you answers. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Amazing, isn't it, what you can discover by spending a few seconds, or minutes, doing some searching, eh?


Yes, they are.


TheSpaceMan resized the katana for me from 5x2 to 5x1. You'd need to ask him how he did it, though I'm pretty sure that you cannot do it in Paint since the files have a .txt extension, rather than one of the extensions you'd normally associate with Paint. All I remember is that the files were located in \share\models\interface\opt\shapes\inventory.

Is 'thespaceman' on this forum? I looked at the members section and couldn't find anyone by that name.

I've looked at the files in that folder, and I found 'button_item_cell.txt' which makes references to 000(32).tga and 001(32).tga. Both of these files contain the item backgrounds, which I'm assuming will either need to be edited, or the items will need to call a different spot on the pic. I also noticed that in equipment.txt, each item has its own .dds model file. Would that have anything to do with the inv. spacing? Or is that for when the item is laying on the ground? Hopefully, I can find this TheSpaceMan guy, and he can explain to me how I can get this done :-)

Something else I wanna try, but am too scared to make any changes to...is it possible to give Cyborgs and Psi's the same amount of belt slots as humans? I've found the inventory.txt file, but I don't wanna push my luck.

Now, a question about your weapon balance mod. I've researched up to heavy duralloy armor, but I can't actually make any of the items you've added in. No flame throwers, duralloy armor, duralloy katanas, etc. I have all the research completed, and I have an Adv. Weapons factory. Am I missing another prereq to make these items?

flamethrowers where built in basic weapons factory I believe, not sure, and I can't check right now (still need to reinstall due to a format)

check the "other research" and "no factory" tabs to be sure you're not missing anything

I don't know. When I was getting started with my mod, I tried making the cyborg's backpack the same size as a human's, but it didn't work. I don't know whether I did something wrong, or whether it just isn't possible. I have never revisited the issue after learning much more about modding AS to see if it could be done. I suspect that it requires editing some graphics-related file which I cannot do (but someone else may). If anyone figures out how to do it, I'll be more than happy to add the feature into the next release of my mod. I simply don't have the time, nor the motivation, to investigate it now.


Please ask questions about my mod in my mod's thread, so that we don't clutter up other threads with off-topic issues. Having said that, I'll be nice and say that flamers require a BASIC Factory and Duralloy items require an ADVANCED Weapon Factory. If you still cannot make these items, follow shadowkeeper's advice and check your OTHER and NO FACTORY tabs. And if you still have problems, take your questions over to my mod's thread, please.

I used the cheat full_store to give myself all the items, and they didn't even show up then. So I took the mod out, deleted my savegame, put the mod back in, and it started working. /shrug
Sorry, I'll post stuff dealing with your mod on that forum next time My appologies.

Anyway, about the belts. I'm assuming the equip screen isn't...I guess modular. As in, Humans always have helm, armor, backpack, belt; cyborgs have head, body, arm, etc... And these are all one 'picture'. In order to make your backpacks and my belts bigger, we probably need to edit that pic :-) If we can find it, that is.

Wow, I'm just a WORLD of help, aren't I? Theories, theories, theories. I need to get more programs so I can start fooling around with more files.

They are NOT one picture. The size of the backpack is defined seperately from the belt.