> Home
> Command Line Switches
> Misc. Downloads
> Links
> About

> Walkthru
> Maps
> Patches
> Screens
> History of the Kushan
> History of the Taiidan
> Fiction

> Walkthru
> Maps
> Patches
> Screens
> History of Kiith Somtaaw
> History of the Beast
> Fiction

> Storyline
> Information
> Concept Art

> Mods
> Modding Tools
> Ship Replacing Guide
> Basic Modding
> Advanced Modding

> Map-Making Tools

Basic Modding Tutorial

Modding. All Homeworld players have heard of it, and almost all have done it. So, if you've only recently acquired Homeworld or Homeworld: Cataclysm, then this tutorial is for you. Modding isn't all that hard to do and it's a lot easier than you'd think. All you need to do a basic mod is one program and some common sense. This tutorial will tell you how to make a very basic mod and whatever else you should know about modding.

Tools You'll Need

For any mod you'll need Taleisin's Bigfile Viewer - this handy program, which allows you to view the contents of the Homeworld/Cataclysm .big files, is now at version 3. Download it here.

You'll also need some other programs if you're going to do some serious modding.

LiF Edit: This program lets you edit the existing ship textures (.lif files) and cutomize them for your own use.
LiFList: If you don't want texture corruption, you'll need this program!
ModMan: Allows you to switch between mods (if you have more than one installed); also serves as a "launchpad" for other modding programs.
Quick Edit: This makes editing the ship statistics a breeze, much easier than using a simple text editor.
3D Exploration: Makes importing and integrating your own custom ship models into Homeworld easy, also lets you view .peo/.geo (geometry) and .lif (texture) files.
B5 Team's MexEdit: Lets you edit the .mex files which tell the game where things like guns, nav lights etc. are positioned on the ships - a must for custom ship designs.
VME: The Visual Mex Editor is the same as the B5 one but with a better interface, it also allows you to see updates to your models in real-time.

Basic Modding - Making a Super Scout

Finally we get to the body of the guide. Well, let's begin then, shall we? To modify the ships, we'll need to extract their information files. This is what we need Bigfile Viewer to do.

1) For a start let's make some Kushan Super Scouts. Make sure you have the Bigfile Viewer and it's in your Homeworld directory, then open it.
2) At the top you'll see a button that says "Load Bigfile", click this and locate the Homeworld.big file.
3) Double-click the file and Bigfile Viewer will load it; this may take a while (up to five minutes), so be patient. Watch the progress bar at the bottom of the screen to see how large Homeworld.big really is.
4) After the Bigfile has loaded, you will see what looks like a series of folders on the left.
5) Scroll down until you find a folder called r1. Highlight it.
6) On the "File" menu, click "Save Files (Recursive)" to save the r1 folder.
7) Once this is done, find the r2 folder and repeat the process.
8) A good idea is to save the other non-playable folders as well. So, find the p1 (Turanic) and p2 (Kadeshi) folders, and again choose "File, Save Files (Recursive)".
9) Close Bigfile Viewer.

Now if you go to you Homeworld folder, you'll notice 4 new folders called p1, p2, r1, and r2. These are the folders you just saved. Below is a description of these folders, plus info on the files/folders contained inside them.

r1 folder - This is the folder that has the Kushan ship files in it.
r2 folder - This has the Taiidan ships in it. (For some reason, it also contains the Kushan Cryo Trays.)
Ship folders - Beginning with advancesupportfrigate and ending with targetdrone, these are the folders that contain the .lif, .mex and .peo/.geo files for the Kushan/Taiidan ships. Each ship folder contains another folder called rl0, which in turn contains more folders named lod0 to lod4. These lod folders contain the different ship textures/geometry files for the different viewing ranges of the ship.
.lod files - Tell the engine which model to use and at what range (the Homeworld engine uses 5 different models per ship and each one has less polygons than the first, this way up close you get good detail but farther away from the model, less detail). lod0 is the largest folder (closest view to that ship - more polygons) and lod4 is the smallest (furthest away - less).
.mad files - These are only for special ships that can do special things (like Salvage Corvettes can salvage enemy craft). These are not files containing the special actions, but rather the animations that must occur when these actions are initiated (e.g. when the Turanic Ion Array Frigagte opens its mag-arrays).
.shp files - These are the files that we're mostly concerned with in this tutorial. They contain the important information about the ship that they're named after. Editing them changes what/how the ships fire, move etc.

On to the Super Scout. Go into the r1 folder and find the lightinterceptor.shp file. Double-click to open it and when the "Open With" dialog box comes up, choose Wordpad.exe and make sure the "Always use this program to open this type of file" box is ticked, so that all .shp files open with Wordpad. Now let's make our Super Scouts.

1) Once you've opened lightinterceptor.shp, right at the top you'll see some parameters with values. Thoughtfully, the guys at Relic included their own comments in the .shp files (were they expecting mods?), which makes it quite easy to tell what most of the parameters mean.
2) You'll see a parameter called maxvelocity. At present its value is 1000, change it to 2000 to make your Scout twice as fast.
3) Find maxhealth and change that from 110 to 1100.
4) But there's nothing really cool about a Scout that's twice as fast or 10 times stronger than normal. What about firepower? Well, how about a Scout firing twin Ion Cannons then?
5) Keeping lightinterceptor.shp open, find ioncannonfrigate.shp and open it as well.
6) Once in ioncannonfrigate.shp, scroll down until you find the ;Weapons section. Copy all the text from { to }, and then close the file.
7) Back in lightinterceptor.shp, find its ;Weapons section and paste the info from ioncannonfrigate.shp over the info for Gun 0, from { to }. Repeat this for Gun 1.
8) Now you have a twin Ion Cannon Scout.

Run Homeworld and start a "Skirmish vs CPU" game, using Hyperspace Arena as your map. Since you're the only Kushan player on the map, wiping out all the other Taiidan players should be easy. If you like playing as Taiidan instead of Kushan, repeat all the steps in the Super Scout guide, except modify lightinterceptor.shp in the r2 folder.

Notes On Modding

1) If you want to replace a Mass Driver with an Ion Cannon, always use the specs from the ioncannonfrigate.shp file. Why? Well, since the Ion Cannon Frigate has only a non-turreted forward-facing gun, there are no funny parameters (e.g. with the Heavy Cruiser's slaved turrets) - it's a "clean" file. Replacing a Mass Driver with an Ion Cannon Frigate's gun will result in the turret disappearing, but the beam will still fire. There is a way to fix this - it's explained in my Advanced Modding Tutorial.
2) Never exceed the maximum game values! For example, never set maxspeed to over 4000. This is the maximum speed of a Probe, and the most the game can handle - besides, anything going at that speed will find it very hard to stop (try attacking an enemy Mothership and see what I mean). Going over the game's maximums will cause it to crash. (But going lower than the minimums is okay - although who would want to do that?)
3) If you want to get back to Homeworld's defaults, you'll have to open up Bigfile Viewer and save the r1 and r2 directories recursively again, or just delete the modified r1 and r2 folders. If you want to keep your mods and get your defaults back, though, then just rename the r1 and r2 folders to something else. (Like r1_mod or r2_tweaked.) Homeworld always looks in the folder it is installed in for its special game folders, and, if it can't find them, it loads the defaults from the Homeworld.big file.
4) If you've modded your Heavy Corvettes and replaced their guns with Ion Cannons, never use Charged Burst Attack! Homeworld will just close and you'll be thrown back onto the Desktop with no warning at all. The same goes for any other ship with a special function - if you mod anything to do with that function (usually weapons), and then try to use that function, the game will crash.
5) If you find Homeworld is crashing after you've modded it, create a shortcut on your Desktop to Homeworld.exe, and in the command line, add the /debug switch. For more info on command line switches, go here.

Best Quick Mods

• Try modding Multi-Gun Corvettes so that the front 2 turrets have Ion Beams. That way, a pack of about 15 can easily take out any Capital Ships, while also being able to take out faster Fighters with their remaining four turrets.
• Change the 2 Plasma Bomb Launchers on Assault Frigates to Ion Cannons, don't forget to change their firing angles/range though!
• Make the 2 Very Heavy Mass Driver turrets on the Heay Cruiser (the ones on the very left/right hand side of the ship, that can rotate to aim up or down) into missile launchers.
• Modify the drone.shp file to give each of the 24 drones an Ion Cannon. With that type of firepower, you can't lose!

In Conclusion

This is just a very basic tutorial for the newbies out there, if you practice a lot, modding will soon be second nature to you. I have a more advanced tutorial for if you're thinking of making your own ships, textures etc., so view it here.