Community Simple Text Modding Tutorial For New Modders

[Mush Martin]

Subsim Community Tutorial
Simple Text Based Modding for Silent Hunter IV

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR SENIOR MODDERS:

This tut although started by me is meant in the end
to be a running active tutorial thread for the community.
any senior modder with something to contribute friend or
otherwise is invited to post freely here relevant to the
subject. it is hoped that others will share what they know
here too. the first few posts of this thread are mine but
the tutorial is community property and meant to be by
anyone for anyone relevant to the titled subject.
information not shared is lost.

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IMPORTANT NOTE FOR NEW MODDERS:

You will need note pad or word pad or another
text editor to use this tutorial.

always include a readme in any mod you intend to release
there are two basic types of readme a release readme
and a breadcrumbs or changelog readme.

what should be in a release readme ?

A legal disclaimer proclaiming mod is Freeware/shareware the conditions
of its free distribution and a declaration of no commercial
gain or utilization of or from the mod.

Credit to the Game devs

(eg.) SilentHunterIV Wolves of the Pacific
(C)2007 UBISOFT ENTERTAINMENT.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Credit to the authors of files utilized where previous mods are integrated

(eg.) Thanks to and credit to Ducimus who allowed me to utilize portions
of his circus midget crew mod and answered all the questions that
were in the manual that I didnt read.

Credit to the toolmakers
(eg) timetraveller for minitweaker or whoever made your tweak file that
you used.

Thanks to those who helped teachers co modders and testers often as well
those who sometimes need credit for just plain support and encouragement.
like editors and so on.

it should also contain
Features or changes since last release
known issues and any known solutions
compatability statement (what version to use with)
special instructions where needed.


a breadcrumbs or changelog readme is a wordpad or notepad document
you insert into your mod while in development everytime you change
a line in a file you should log it in the breadcrumbs being able
to go back and read where you went wrong will save you countless
hours of frustration.

when making changes to a mod always make few small changes
between tests if you do the sky the subs engines new guns
and a custom crew and then test which one caused the ctd.

if you only test your crew changes which one caused the ctd.

Note: readmes go in beside the data file not in it.

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Tutorial Credits:

SILENT HUNTER 4 - WOLVES OF THE PACIFIC
(C)2007 UBISOFT ENTERTAINMENT.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

This Tutorial wouldnt have happened without the direct encouragement
of the following People.

Reallydedpoet
Thank you for your continuing support of this project.

as well as.........
Capzap70
AVGWarhawk
Clay P
Travis Reed
Xypher
aanker
dmlavan
msb80sc
sirten death
gunner
captainhaplo
nuc
doolittle81
nautilis42
FVD
Yamato9

And Thanks also to SubSim and Neal Stevens for providing us with
a place to hang out and do this stuff. As well as his
own portion of encouragement for this tutorial.
and to JScones for permissions regarding JSGME.

and finally all my teachers from the shIII threads who said I could.

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Introduction:

This Tutorial begins as a Simple man
showing simple ways to make simple changes
in SHIV.

Warning: anyone who wishes to follow along and read this
tutorial as a learning device for modding thier silent
hunter IV install should realize before they start that
such activity can ruin your install if done wrong.
any disasters to anyones install are not the fault of the
author. by reading any portion of this tutorial or utilizing any
of the techniques described you The Reader/utilizer
express your acceptance of sole responsibility for the state
of your own install of your game.

You are warned about that and advised prior to doing anything
else of making backup copies of any file you mod and for that matter
everyfile you mod so as to have uncorrupted copy if everything
goes wrong. segment one will contain also the assembly instructions
for a mod folder system for use in my preferred method of mod
activation.

JSGME from Jonesoft
http://www.users.on.net/~jscones/software/

a JSGME mod is better than modding your own install
because if you mess it up you can undo it at the touch of a button.
when you activate a mod in JSGME it takes the mods files and
overwrites the games files with them That is it does so immediately
after it has made backups of the game files. When you deactivate
the mod in jsgme the installer then overwrites the files it
modded with the backups it made before the mod files were inserted.
what used to happen is you would put in mods say five of them
but if for example you only deactivated the first one by itself and left
the other four active the backups would be out of sequence and when
you deinstalled it all you would find your game install would
still retain some features of mod number two.
In the latest version of JSGME sequencing issues have a built in safeguard
in that you now can no longer uninstall your mod out of sequence.
you can download the latest version here.

http://www.users.on.net/~jscones/software/products/jsgme_setup.exe


even so.......
screw it up, So what!, your here learning what you need to know
to fix it anyway.

one final note to readers.

as you follow along you will see comments by me beside file segments
or highlighted arrows. when you look through your own game files
they will not be there, you will however see Comments from the devs.
that are commented out.

;commented out means that if a line has a semi colon at the begining
;like these three lines then the game ignores that line as its a comment
;not an instruction

it is a good modding technique to just comment out the original
line and put your modded line of code in underneath then its
just delete and uncomment to revert if you need to.this technique
also makes it much easier to spot your own changes than if you
just delete the original line.

For those that want to read ahead as it were. the devs comments
in game are where I learned all this. Nobody taught me, I just applied
what I kneew about gamefile structure and interaction and figured
it out by trial and error.

a perfectly sound method. though wrought with errors misses and blind alleys
but if you want to not wait around for the next tutorial segment then thats
how.

Enjoy MM

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