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Advanced Modding Tutorial

This is the more advanced modding tutorial. This is for the really serious modders out there, covering the more advanced features of the .shp files, as well as the more advanced tools. Let's begin.

Advanced .shp File Features

I'm assuming you've already read my Basic Modding Tutorial or know how to do a basic mod. If you do, you've probably come across the problem of replacing a Mass Driver turret with an Ion Cannon - the turret disappears. Well, you should have figured out by now that there are different types (sizes) of guns and turrets. Since you're usually using the Ion Cannon Frigate's weapon specs and it doesn't have any turrets, what did you expect? I'm not going to give you a whole table on gun types, so you'll just have to look them up yourselves.

You should have realised that you simply replace GUN_Gimble with Gun_NewGimble to give you an Ion Cannon turret. You can also play around with the sounds of the guns, the type of beams they shoot (thick or thin Ion), etc.

Replacing Ships with Other Ships

If you've ever tried to replace one Homeworld ship with another (or your own - more on that later), you've probably come across the texture problem. That is, you replace the ship (say a Kushan Interceptor with a Khadesh Swarmer) and you run the game, expecting it to work properly. The game itself is fine, but the Swarmer model looks all horrible and untextured. Well, it's because the Swarmer's texture (.lif) files have different names to the Interceptor's LiFs. The game is looking for the Interceptor's texture files. It only loads what it finds, and since only a few Swarmer/Heavy Interceptor LiFs share the same names, it'll only load those, and you end up with an ugly-ass looking Swarmer. Well, this is all due to a file called textures.ll, which has the names and locations of all textures in the game. In my Replacing Ships Guide I'll tell you how to fix this problem.