HowTos

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Game How-Tos Introduction

Note: This page presents a very limited listing of some of the tutorials available for creating Vega Strike Engine content for space simulator and game Mods. For a complete and structured overview over the content pipeline including content requirements, creation and modding tools, loan modification assets creation, integration, testing, and submission process, please refer to the main Development Portal. </div>

Modeling

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 modeling 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
    • Full ship unwrap tutorial (Blender) - Full ship UV unwrap, from A to Z
  • Creating your own textures - A summary on how to make texture maps
    • Texturing your model in Wings 3d
    • WIP VegaStrike texturing page by Major (web archive)
    • 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.

Shaders

• Introduction to shaders, and what they mean for you --Bumpmaps, Normalmaps, Shininess maps ...

Artwork

Artwork related Howtos

• Radiosity baking in Blender

Modding

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

Sourcecode HowTos

Obtain a copy of the development-version files

• Checkout Vega Strike's Subversion (SVN) modules.
• Checkout Vega Strike's Subversion (SVN) modules in Ubuntu.
• Checkout Vega Strike's Subversion (SVN) modules on Mac OSX.
• Use GIT to work on the Vega Strike Subversion (SVN) modules.
• Checkout Vegastrike CVS modules with various programs. - Deprecated

NOTE: Vegastrike development has moved to SVN. CVS is still theoretically accessible, but the repository is months out of date and will never be updated again. There is no reason not to use Subversion instead.

• Moving data4.x to data - We recently (on May 1, 2008) moved the data4.x repository to "data". This has instructions on how to update your repository without checking out everything again.

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
• Compiling from the released source
• 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
• Installing Wings 3D and the Xmesh Plugin (deprecated)

See Also

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