HowTos

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Game HowTos

Modelling

This series of How-to articles is intended to take you through the full process of creating a model and adding it to Vega Strike.

• Adding your ship to Vega Strike - An overview of how to create and add ships to the game
  • HowTo:Create Models - A summary on how to create a new model for Vega Strike
    • Brad Mick's video tutorial on ship modelling - using Lightwave, but the concept is general: Rapid Prototyping
    • Creating a 3D-model using Wings3D - includes general guidance for other modelling programs
    • A basic Blender3D tutorial - not specific to ships, though...
  • Understanding "Smooth Groups" - a Blender tutorial on splitting smooth groups...
  • Getting bevels to look good - a Blender tutorial on smooth shading and beveling...
  • Smoothly Welding complex shapes - a Blender tutorial on smooth welding...
  • Unwrapping your model - How to UV-map your ship so it can be textured
    • Using Blender to unwrap your model - A blender UV-mapping tutorial
  • Creating your own textures - A summary on how to make texture maps
    • Texturing your model in Wings 3d
    • WIP VegaStrike texturing page by Major
    • Texturing tutorial by Duality
    • Tips for realistic-looking textures
    • Using animated textures on a model
  • Editing BFXM files (format spec)
    • Editing the xmesh file of a ship
    • Adding Levels of Detail
    • Adding an engine glow to your 3D model
    • Adding per-pixel lighting to your 3D model
  • Editing units.csv
    • Editing the xunit file of a ship - Deprecated, but can be converted easily to .csv format

Advanced Topics

• Editing HUDs, placing radars, ...
• Creating a 3D cockpit for your ship.

Artwork

Artwork related Howtos

• Generating cubic or spherical backgrounds for star systems
• Making splash screens that display at startup
• Making backgrounds for bases and capships
• Making autopiloting leave behind star dust
• Radiosity baking in Blender

MODs

• You want to create your own mod for VS? Start here.

Miscellaneous

• Game related:
  • Adding new weapons to the game
  • Adding new upgrades to the game
  • Adding new cargo to the game
  • Creating or editing star systems
  • Creating or editing Ship AI's
  • Taking really awesome screenshots
• Information related:
  • Putting ship and goods descriptions into the game
    • Editing the Master_part_list.csv file
  • Adding more conversation lines to the game
  • Edit the relationships between the existing factions (the factions.xml file)
• Event related:
  • Creating or editing your own missions
  • Creating or editing news events
  • Creating or editing campaigns

Sourcecode HowTos

Obtain a copy of the development-version files

• Checkout Vega Strike's Subversion (SVN) modules.
• Checkout Vegastrike CVS modules with various programs.

NOTE: vegastrike-devel has moved to SVN. Anonymous CVS is extremely unstable at the moment. It is highly recommended that you use Subversion instead.

Compile the Vega Strike sourcecode

• Compiling from SVN under Visual C++
• Compiling from SVN under Cygwin (may not work--enter at your own risk)
• Compiling from SVN under your favourite Unixlike OS
• Compiling from SVN on Mac OSX
• Debug a Vega Strike Compilation
  • Debugging on your Unixlike OS using GDB
  • Debugging on Windows using Dr Watson

Miscellaneous HowTos

• The Vega Strike Contributor's Guide
• Wings
  • Compiling CVS version of Wings 3d (Linux)
  • Installing Wings 3D and the Xmesh Plugin

See Also

• Installing
• Development
• For related tools see the Links section.