Modding the game, requirements??

OK, nearly there now guys.

Got my 14.6 patch sorted, now I want to add a mod or two. That Dark Currents interests me greatly. Assuming I don't have the same trouble as getting the 14.6 patch!

Do I just download and away I go? Do I need to put it somewhere (clean answers only:D)i.e. in a particular folder?

Also, I see one or two additions to the game. Did I see a manual counter measures mod and a starmap mod for starters. Same question. Do I just download and put in a folder (if so, which folder, if not then what do I have to do?)

As always, your help is greatly appreciated and I hope that I can help others with my experiences along the way.[8D]

In your main EoC directory there will be a folder named 'mods'. When you download a mod, just place it in the mods folder (don't unzip it) and then start EoC. After starting, go the the EXTRAS screen from the main menu and activate the mod by pressing the relevent button.

Every mod I've ever seen has a readme file which explains how to install the mod. Some mods require keybinds to be entered. A few require other tasks be performed by the installer. It's always a good idea to completely read the readme file.

Dark Currents, AFAIK, is unfinished. I think it's a code release to assist other developers; not a finished game. But, no doubt, something to check out!

At some point you'll exhaust your supply of mods... you will have played every ship out there; killed stations and amassed a small fortune. When it starts getting boring, post here and we'll get you started making your own mods. That, sometimes, is more fun that playing the game!

Nearly all mods are located on the download pages of this site.

Have fun!

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

Thanks for the reply.

About modding gameplay, I've got multi-mod, manual countermeasures and location finder (the latter 2 being multi-mod versions). I've unzipped them in my mod folder in the EoC game folder. Do I just leave them there now and select them from extras, then they should be useable in game?

When doing this, I noticed a crosshairs mod already in the folder, but this is not 'multi-modded'. Can I use the cross hairs mod along with the other 2?

You should check readmes before you install things. EoC mods are unusual in that you do not unzip them into the folder, just put the zips themselves there. There are rare exceptions to this, but that'll be covered in the readme.

Anyway, when you have the zips in the mods folder, just select them from extras. I can't remember exactly what multimod does, but its involved in working around a limitation in scripting functionality that prevents two non-multimod mods working at once. Crosshair mod just puts a reticle on the screen, no scripting. In fact all it is in an ini file and a graphic. Multimod is irrelevant to it.

Multimod is needed when two or more mods that run scripts have to run simultaneously.

That's because there's one special ini file that runs most of the scripts on startup, and otherwise only one mod at a time could use that ini file.

Mods that replace graphics or most ini files don't need to use multimod, and you should never have two different mods active that modify the same graphics or inifies, or unpredictable results can occur.

-- Steve
Stephen Robertson
I-War series co-designer.