Tools you MUST have:
==============
1.xcc uilities, and i mean all of them (xcc mixer, xcc mix editor, xcc sound plug-in)
2.any text editor (notepad, word pad will do)
3.any picture editor (adobe photoshop, paintshop..you wil use them for the cameos)
Adding units to the game:
=================
First (Tanks): you must have your .vxl, .hva files..which are recognized by the game as 'your tank':
1.xxx.vxl: is the body (base) of the tank
2.xxxtur.vxl: is the turret of your tank
3.xxxbarl: is the barrel of your tank
*some units have only the body (e.g. mirage tanks, demolition trucks, allied war miner...)
*some units have the body and the turret (e.g nighthawks, prism tanks,...)
*some unitsa have the body, turret and barrel (e.g grizzly tanks, rhino tanks, apocalypse tanks,...)
Moving On,
1.copy your vxl, occupied by you .hva files in your .mix file (ecachexx.mix is recommended).and this step is done by two ways:
a. you will have the xcc mod creator, which you'll find a lot of properties for making modding easy. it has a left side bar which contains a lot of categories, here are the ones necessary for you to be used for modding ( hva, vxl, cameo, shp, ini ). these sections are actually the extentions of the file types..to use it just drag amd drop the file types into the previous section.
b. you can use the xcc mix editor to create a new .mix file ( name it ecachexx.mix, expandxx.mix or ecachemdxx.mix, expandmdxx.mix if you are modding Yuri, where xx is a number from 01 to 99) then drag and drop the shp files to the ecache(md)xx.mix and the hva, vxl files to the expand(md)xx.mix
2.go to the art.ini* file
3.make a new entry in it so it will look like this:
[YourTank]
Cameo=YourTankicon* ; g.s the icon that will appear in the RA2 Side bar
AltCameo=YourTankuico* ;g.s the 'veteran' icon that will appear on your RA2 side bar (appears when you infiltrate a war factory, barracks with a spy)
Voxel=yes ;g.s. MUST be present or 1.your tank will not appear in the game 2.the game will crash
Remapable=yes ;g.s. tells the game that the tank will take your side's colour (e.g red,blue..etc)
*the 'xxxicon' and the 'xxxuico' entries are normally the naming of files used by westwood, you can name them anything you want
4.Basically, thats all you need for you Tank artwork
Rules.ini* Section :
*Basically, the Rules.ini file contains all the commands and codes used in the game to make some stuff work such as, Tanks, Infantry, Buildings, even Multi-Player rules (such as max.money and max unit count) could be found here so it is very important not to make any mistake while editing it because it may corrupt the whole gaming system leading the the appearance of the most annoying message a modder can ever see, the 'Internal Error' message, it happens when a given command is typed incorrectly (i.e. RA2 Rules.ini is case sentitive, meaning if you typed say 'requiredhouses' instead of 'RequiredHouses' for say your tank, it wont be buildable)
Now, after you've known almost the ground rules for using Rules.ini, the next steps involves the 'Rules.ini' file, and you will use it to make the game recognize your tank:
1. Open it (Duh??!!?)
2. Jump to the [VehicleTypes] section
3. Add the xx=YourTank to the list, where xx is the last number in the list
4. Then make your 'vehicle' entry here are some helpful commands.
[YourTank]
- UIName=Name: YourTank; the 'Name: YourTank’ enrty must be present in file called ra2.csf; we'll talk about it later
- Name=YourTank
- Prerequisite=GAWEAP ;this entry tells the game what kind of buildings is required in order to produce your unit the GAxxx means an allied building, the NAxxx means a soviet one
- Primary=AnyWeapon ;the weapon used by your tank in its atandard state
- Secondary=AnyWeapon2 ;the secondary weapon used by your tank in its standard state
- ElitePrimary=AnyWeaponE ;the weapon used by your tank in its 'elite' state
- EliteSecondary=AnyWeapon2E ;the secondary weapon used by your tank in its 'elite' state
- Strength=200 ;the determines the HP (Hit Points) of your unit
- Category=Transport, AirPower, AFV, Support ;any of these values are the ones used for the tanks and it determines the category of your tank
- Armor=Light, Medium, Heavy ;any of these armor types also determines the strength of your tanks regaring some weapons (i.e some weapons may have great effect on Medium tanks but a light one on the Light-armored tanks)
- Locomotor=* ;this can’t be written, it’s a sort of codes and here they are:
{4A582744-9839-11d1-B709-00A024DDAFD1} = ground infantry
{4A582741-9839-11d1-B709-00A024DDAFD1} = ground vehicle
{4A582746-9839-11d1-B709-00A024DDAFD1} = ground vehicle
{92612C46-F71F-11d1-AC9F-006008055BB5} = Jumpjet infantry (as rocketeers)
{4A582742-9839-11d1-B709-00A024DDAFD1} = Amphibious
- Sight=6 ;you can use any value you want to determine your tank's sight (how far it will see enemies and attack)
- Speed=7 ;any value you want, determines the speed of your unit
- ROT=4 ;any value you want, determines the rate of turn of the body or the turret (if present).
- CanDisguise=yes , no ;gives your unit the ability to disguise
- DetectsDifguise=yes, no ;gives your unit the ability to see disguised units
- Cloakable=yes ;gives your unit the ability to be invisible, they'll be revealed when they attack
- CloakingSpeed=x ;Determines how fast your unit will become invisible again after it stops attacking.
- RequiredHouses=Russians,Confederations,Africans,Arabs ;guess you never heared about those sides they are the coded sides of the game :
1.Alliance: Korea
2.Confederation: Cuba
3.Arabs: Iraq
4.Africans: Libya
5.The rest are easy
And this tag tells the game which sides that will be able to build this unit
- ForbiddenHouses=Americans,French,Bristish,Alliance,Germans ;tells the game which sides Won't be able to build/train your unit.
- RequiresStolemAlliedTech= yes, no ;tells the game whether or not your unit is only built when a spy infiltrates an allied battle lab
- RequiresStolenSovietTech= yes, no ;tells the game whether or not your unit is only built when a spy infiltrates a Soviet battle lab
- Deployer=yes ;gives your unit the ability to deploy
- DeployFire=yes ;your unit can fire while it is deployed
- DeployFireWeapon=1 ;index of the weapon to be used when firing-deploy
- Ammo= -1 or any value ;any value will determine the number of ammunition carried by your tank, -1 means unlimited
- InitialAmmo= -1 or any value ;any value will determine the number of ammunition which will be with your tank when it’s produced, -1 means start with full ammunition.
- Passangers= ;any value, it determines the no. of passangers your tank might carry
- Size= ;any value, determines the size of your tank in any another transport (e.g hover missile)
- Storage= ;any value, used by harvesters it determines the amount of ore your unit can store in it
- Immune= yes or no ;your unit is immune to damage
- ImmuneToPsionics= yes or no ;your unit is immune to mind control waves
- ImmuneToRadiation= yes or no ;your unit is immune to radiation.
that is all the things you might need to know in how to code your tank.
Thank you,
DeeZeL
==============
1.xcc uilities, and i mean all of them (xcc mixer, xcc mix editor, xcc sound plug-in)
2.any text editor (notepad, word pad will do)
3.any picture editor (adobe photoshop, paintshop..you wil use them for the cameos)
Adding units to the game:
=================
First (Tanks): you must have your .vxl, .hva files..which are recognized by the game as 'your tank':
1.xxx.vxl: is the body (base) of the tank
2.xxxtur.vxl: is the turret of your tank
3.xxxbarl: is the barrel of your tank
*some units have only the body (e.g. mirage tanks, demolition trucks, allied war miner...)
*some units have the body and the turret (e.g nighthawks, prism tanks,...)
*some unitsa have the body, turret and barrel (e.g grizzly tanks, rhino tanks, apocalypse tanks,...)
Moving On,
1.copy your vxl, occupied by you .hva files in your .mix file (ecachexx.mix is recommended).and this step is done by two ways:
a. you will have the xcc mod creator, which you'll find a lot of properties for making modding easy. it has a left side bar which contains a lot of categories, here are the ones necessary for you to be used for modding ( hva, vxl, cameo, shp, ini ). these sections are actually the extentions of the file types..to use it just drag amd drop the file types into the previous section.
b. you can use the xcc mix editor to create a new .mix file ( name it ecachexx.mix, expandxx.mix or ecachemdxx.mix, expandmdxx.mix if you are modding Yuri, where xx is a number from 01 to 99) then drag and drop the shp files to the ecache(md)xx.mix and the hva, vxl files to the expand(md)xx.mix
2.go to the art.ini* file
3.make a new entry in it so it will look like this:
[YourTank]
Cameo=YourTankicon* ; g.s the icon that will appear in the RA2 Side bar
AltCameo=YourTankuico* ;g.s the 'veteran' icon that will appear on your RA2 side bar (appears when you infiltrate a war factory, barracks with a spy)
Voxel=yes ;g.s. MUST be present or 1.your tank will not appear in the game 2.the game will crash
Remapable=yes ;g.s. tells the game that the tank will take your side's colour (e.g red,blue..etc)
*the 'xxxicon' and the 'xxxuico' entries are normally the naming of files used by westwood, you can name them anything you want
4.Basically, thats all you need for you Tank artwork
Rules.ini* Section :
*Basically, the Rules.ini file contains all the commands and codes used in the game to make some stuff work such as, Tanks, Infantry, Buildings, even Multi-Player rules (such as max.money and max unit count) could be found here so it is very important not to make any mistake while editing it because it may corrupt the whole gaming system leading the the appearance of the most annoying message a modder can ever see, the 'Internal Error' message, it happens when a given command is typed incorrectly (i.e. RA2 Rules.ini is case sentitive, meaning if you typed say 'requiredhouses' instead of 'RequiredHouses' for say your tank, it wont be buildable)
Now, after you've known almost the ground rules for using Rules.ini, the next steps involves the 'Rules.ini' file, and you will use it to make the game recognize your tank:
1. Open it (Duh??!!?)
2. Jump to the [VehicleTypes] section
3. Add the xx=YourTank to the list, where xx is the last number in the list
4. Then make your 'vehicle' entry here are some helpful commands.
[YourTank]
- UIName=Name: YourTank; the 'Name: YourTank’ enrty must be present in file called ra2.csf; we'll talk about it later
- Name=YourTank
- Prerequisite=GAWEAP ;this entry tells the game what kind of buildings is required in order to produce your unit the GAxxx means an allied building, the NAxxx means a soviet one
- Primary=AnyWeapon ;the weapon used by your tank in its atandard state
- Secondary=AnyWeapon2 ;the secondary weapon used by your tank in its standard state
- ElitePrimary=AnyWeaponE ;the weapon used by your tank in its 'elite' state
- EliteSecondary=AnyWeapon2E ;the secondary weapon used by your tank in its 'elite' state
- Strength=200 ;the determines the HP (Hit Points) of your unit
- Category=Transport, AirPower, AFV, Support ;any of these values are the ones used for the tanks and it determines the category of your tank
- Armor=Light, Medium, Heavy ;any of these armor types also determines the strength of your tanks regaring some weapons (i.e some weapons may have great effect on Medium tanks but a light one on the Light-armored tanks)
- Locomotor=* ;this can’t be written, it’s a sort of codes and here they are:
{4A582744-9839-11d1-B709-00A024DDAFD1} = ground infantry
{4A582741-9839-11d1-B709-00A024DDAFD1} = ground vehicle
{4A582746-9839-11d1-B709-00A024DDAFD1} = ground vehicle
{92612C46-F71F-11d1-AC9F-006008055BB5} = Jumpjet infantry (as rocketeers)
{4A582742-9839-11d1-B709-00A024DDAFD1} = Amphibious
- Sight=6 ;you can use any value you want to determine your tank's sight (how far it will see enemies and attack)
- Speed=7 ;any value you want, determines the speed of your unit
- ROT=4 ;any value you want, determines the rate of turn of the body or the turret (if present).
- CanDisguise=yes , no ;gives your unit the ability to disguise
- DetectsDifguise=yes, no ;gives your unit the ability to see disguised units
- Cloakable=yes ;gives your unit the ability to be invisible, they'll be revealed when they attack
- CloakingSpeed=x ;Determines how fast your unit will become invisible again after it stops attacking.
- RequiredHouses=Russians,Confederations,Africans,Arabs ;guess you never heared about those sides
they are the coded sides of the game :
1.Alliance: Korea
2.Confederation: Cuba
3.Arabs: Iraq
4.Africans: Libya
5.The rest are easy
And this tag tells the game which sides that will be able to build this unit
- ForbiddenHouses=Americans,French,Bristish,Alliance,Germans ;tells the game which sides Won't be able to build/train your unit.
- RequiresStolemAlliedTech= yes, no ;tells the game whether or not your unit is only built when a spy infiltrates an allied battle lab
- RequiresStolenSovietTech= yes, no ;tells the game whether or not your unit is only built when a spy infiltrates a Soviet battle lab
- Deployer=yes ;gives your unit the ability to deploy
- DeployFire=yes ;your unit can fire while it is deployed
- DeployFireWeapon=1 ;index of the weapon to be used when firing-deploy
- Ammo= -1 or any value ;any value will determine the number of ammunition carried by your tank, -1 means unlimited
- InitialAmmo= -1 or any value ;any value will determine the number of ammunition which will be with your tank when it’s produced, -1 means start with full ammunition.
- Passangers= ;any value, it determines the no. of passangers your tank might carry
- Size= ;any value, determines the size of your tank in any another transport (e.g hover missile)
- Storage= ;any value, used by harvesters it determines the amount of ore your unit can store in it
- Immune= yes or no ;your unit is immune to damage
- ImmuneToPsionics= yes or no ;your unit is immune to mind control waves
- ImmuneToRadiation= yes or no ;your unit is immune to radiation.
that is all the things you might need to know in how to code your tank.
Thank you,
DeeZeL