Modding my newly downloaded digital SH4 Gold Edition from Amazon?

[hunter301]

OK..
I have always owned the older CD version of SH4 and bought and downloaded the Uboat extension pack which brought my version to the latest and greatest.
Keep in mind this was way back when it first came out.

I have mentioned in some of my earlier post I have been absent from the Subsim or any type of game for the past 5 years now. But since cleaning out the old man cave and my son going off to FSU (Florida State University) I have had some spare time on my hands to enjoy my old hobbies.

I am doing a lot of work on the road now so I decided to buy the digital download version of SH4 Gold Edition off Amazon so I'm not carrying the old DVD around with me to chance forgetting it at home or worse having it damaged in a suitcase.
I stayed away from Steam because of all the copyright issues I've heard with trying to make changes.

Anyway I would like to start doing some modding to get the game to were I like it but I don't want to start downloading files and doing mod installs that will mess up my original version and make it unplayable.
I'm more concerned with the mods that will make the game more realistic such as the one that makes the destroyer/escorts behave more to their original design instead of as I read in another post "Pop the clutch and be on you in a second."
I'm not really computer "savy" so it takes me a while to get the modding thing straight.
How do I go about having 2 set of base files. One to play and one to MOD and how do I access them separately?
I have seen a lot of recent dates on threads as to the modding and was wondering what would work for me best that wouldn't mess my original files up but allow me to play mods or remove them if I didn't like them?

[Webster]

the important thing to do before adding mods is to make a backup copy of the "data" folder in the mains SH4 directory. i like to copy it to a disc so i always have it handy rather then risk misplacing the file

once you have that, then if you get game corruptions or "mod soup" issues, all you have to do to fix it is to delete the games data folder and then replace it with your backup copy and the game is brand new again.


have a look at my mod list, most all of them are about fixing issues i found with the game

modding can be as frustrating as it is rewarding but be aware some parts of the game as well as some game files are "broken". what i mean by that is not all files you change give the desired results they are supposed to. some ships dont have damage zones or the areas of sim or dat files that "should" control them dont and something in an unknown file somewhere else is what controls them like possibly another ships files are what is used for them.


its going to turn into a lot of time consuming fun to see the results of your mods and the main key to remember is test, test, test, and then test again. test in good weather and bad as well since some changes to ships can cause them to sink in bad weather