Category:Modding SotS

From SOTS

Here you will find information that will aid you in modding SotS.

Contents 1 Summary 2 Mod Installation 3 New Race 4 Forum Links

Summary

Kerberos Productions encourages player mods.

"We've always felt this way and have always kept this in mind – on our last two titles, it wasn't our call on the first (plus the engine we were working with wasn't designed with easy modding in mind) and the second, Disney was initially curious about the prospect (there was a lot of pondering new things there, at the time), but ultimately they passed as the idea of players creating anything they wanted using a Disney product was a whole can of worms they didn't want to get into."

"I rambled about it on Penny Arcade, but that's the short version. I can tell you, Treasure Planet was all ready for hot modding action though."

"I, and the rest of the team agrees, don't think we've seen enough 4X modding. There's a lot of room for people to tailor the game to reflect whatever they like, and I would love to see it."
Martin "Mecron" Cirulis, Lead Designer, CEO

Be assured that when I and the other SotS programmers have more time we will be happy to provide direct support for anyone who wishes to get down and dirty with the real modding.
Darren "Kludgy" Grant, Lead Programmer

It is important to note that the availability of modding tools for Sword of the Stars is publisher–dependant. The team at Kerberos have expressed that they are, as stated above, quite willing to provide tools for modding SotS to the public and encourage modding by the community.

For all the things that make a ship a ship and a race a race, modders have been given access to that stuff. As for tearing into the guts of the engine so that ships can pick up planets and roll them around the map — more power to you if you can pull it off.

On this Wiki there is an Introduction to modding.

Mod Installation

Before a Mod can take effect, the game has to be told that the changes made by the Mod supercede the Vanilla resources used by default.

The place to tell the game which Mods have precedence over the Vanilla resources is in the file sots.ini, which is found in the Sword of the Stars install directory.

It is recommended that you create a ./Mods/ directory under the Sword of the Stars install directory and then place the Mod you wish to use within that directory before modifying the sots.ini file from something like this:

  [Modules]
  Mount1=sots_local_en.gob
  Mount2=sots.gob

to something like this:

  [Modules]
  Mount1=Mods/
  Mount2=sots_local_en.gob
  Mount3=sots.gob

or this:

  [Modules]
  Mount1=Mods/my mod/
  Mount2=Mods/some othermod/
  Mount3=Mods/smallmod/smallmod.gob
  Mount4=sots_local_en.gob
  Mount5=sots.gob

The game will check each mount, starting with Mount1, and will always use the first file it finds. If a file is missing, corrupted or otherwise unreadable, the game will check the next entry in the mount list until it finds a working file.

For this reason, it is highly recommended that you do not remove the Vanilla files from the Mount list, but instead progressively move them down the list, even if you are installing a Total Conversion Mod.

For those unwilling to play around with the files involved themselves, Bromoc has created a Mod Management Tool.

New Race

The developers of SotS have agreed to support the addition of a Mod Race to the game with the required in game code alterations to be done by the developers once the race has been finalised.

To assist in the development of the new Race, please go here.

Forum Links

The Official Kerberos Modding Forum.

The Official Fan Mod Race Forum.

A very fine tool you might enjoy for use with mods is the Mod Management Tool created by Bromoc.