The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

So, I have absolutely no programming skill at all, but feel confident I can follow directions if they're explained as if to a child.  I tried going to the Ship Edit search and came up with some techno jargon people toss around, and it also seems that the link for the source file is no longer available.  What can I do to get into a means to edit some ships?

There is no such thing as ship editing for beginners. Adjusting the basic variables such as weapon damage, acceleration or starting crew is not difficult, but good luck figuring out how to do anything more particular if you don't know how to program. I have been told that ship editing will be much easier in UQM 0.7.0, so my advice to you is to wait for that. Regardless, here is what I did:

* Download 0.6.2's source code (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/sc2/uqm-0.6.2-source.tgz?download) and extract it somewhere.

* Figure out how to compile this source code into its own exe file. I followed these instructions written by Novus (http://koti.mbnet.fi/lonnberg/MinGWUQM.txt). If you are not a computer whiz, this part will piss you the hell off.

* The ship files you want to edit are contained within \uqm_0.6.2\sc2\src\sc2code\ships. The exact file names are things like urquan.c and androsyn.c. Notepad++ can edit these files. I'm sure many other programs can as well.



If you want to edit the game's graphics, that is an entirely different bag of apples.

Just learn the basics of c++ / java and then try playing with the numbers. Also, programming is dangerously addicting.

Fixed that for you. Knowing what you're doing doesn't really help; it's still a pain (under Windows at least; simplifying this stuff is one of the primary reasons why Linux distributions exist!), just a more surmountable one.

I can warn you in advance that the instructions are probably not entirely accurate, either due to changes in the libraries since they were written or human error on my part. They are, however, very useful as guidelines.

hrm, best I could do it point at it and stare blankly.  I could have my friend do it, but he probably wouldn't care to, haha.  Any idea when 7.0 comes out?

OK, so I've made some little tweaks to the ships. Now I'm having a little trouble:


How do I do this?

I've tried doing it myself, but I just don't get how to do it. I tried entering the directory, pressing enter, and then entering that stuff. But it didn't do anything.

Forgive me, I didn't grow up with MS-DOS, so Command Prompt (and similar stuff like this MSYS thing) is something I've never really done before.

Haha, windows losers :P

jaychant: Novus's directions are for compiling UQM source code to work on Windows. Unless you've recently switched operating systems, the end result won't do you any good.

You're worrying me, Shiver. Surely you understand that, since I use Game Maker, which is forcibly tied to Windows because of its use of DirectX, I must be on Windows?

But those instructions aren't good enough. I tried, but I just couldn't understand it. It didn't help that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing either. (You're right; that part DID piss a non-computer wiz off.)

You are mistaking me for someone who is good at using computers, which I am not.

Clearly you must be better than me if you understand Novus's help. And clearly you also have some understanding of C if you're really creating that balance mod.

You don't need to be good at computers to understand that DirectX is not exactly very portable. Why heck, I don't even know what DirectX is or what it does, and I still know this. (Isn't OpenGL the same kind of thing that DirectX is?)

The target audience is people with at least a passing familiarity with any one of the major DOS, Windows or Unix shells (i.e. command prompts) and developing software in C. For the record, to go to directory /this/directory, type:
Also, the instructions are geared toward helping someone who may or may not be using the exact same versions of everything.

If there's a demand for it, I'd try to automate the whole process. I could probably write a script to handle the installation starting from a working MSYS environment (i.e. getting all those libraries in place).

DirectX is a bunch of libraries for multimedia (especially game) development. The most important parts are Direct3D, DirectSound and DirectInput. OpenGL and Direct3D do more or less the same things, as do DirectSound and OpenAL. SDL is often used as an equivalent to DirectX, with OpenGL and OpenAL replacing SDL's limited graphics and audio functionality.

That would be great! Then all we would have to do to compile the source is download all that stuff and run the script (and tell the script where the stuff is).

SORRY FOR THE DOUBLE POST BUT I NEED HELP NOW, AND YOU WOULDN'T SEE MY EDITED POST.

I finally tried to do this again. I made it to the very last command, but I got this error:

Can somebody help, please?