Dante_pff

Do you have more info on it? What OS? Did you install .Net 2.0? Do you have EAW Demo installed? (stupid question, but gotta ask)

Game designer The game designer is responsible for understanding, refining, maintaining, and disseminating the game design vision, game design, mission building, gameplay balancing, and game proposal development. Duties include Responsible for designing and developing project story lines, including writing proposals, treatments, levels and scenarios. Develops concepts and treatments for products. Writes AI and game scripts using C/C ++ or similar structured language. Works with the team to define the creative vision and fun factor, as well as product content and schedule. Updates design documents as needed. Works closely with members of the production team to execute design and work though design revisions as needed. Typically reports to Lead/Sr. Designer or Producer. Qualifications Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience. Minimum of 3 years game design experience. Exceptional organization, communication, and writing skills. Expert knowledge of game design trends. Self-directed, detail oriented, problem solver with a burning desire to contribute to a uniquely creative environment. Knowledge of scripting languages and A.I. Basically what a game designer will do is create new gameplay ideas, create the devices to make those ideas happen, and do documentation and balance testing throughout the entire process. This process is generally done in chunks, or bits at a time, for example: New Game Mode First create a design document on how the game mode will be played from the user experience (will need to be approved) Identify the changes/additions needed to the core game code (if any, and not fully script based) Identify any new art assets that will be needed for the game mode to work (flags for CTF, GUI graphics for user experience, etc...) Create test maps to develop the game mode (usually a small shell building block, depending on the complexity of the game mode) Script and work with coders on the new game mode (only working with the coders if the game mode involves core additions) Script and work with art department to get any supporting art (GUI) Optimize the scripting and code for speed while doing balance passes on the front end. (with 3rd party input from team) Create a production quality map for this game mode Playtest and test and test and balance core mode items If this map is MP, have multiplayer playtest with other people, getting feedback Compile all documentation to readable format (type up all those stickies) Submit "your" finalyzed alpha version of the game mode Get your idea ripped and shredded apart, and go back to an earlier step for changes from the lead game designer(s) Hope that helps a bit

I wouldn't trust that, as this directory structure is the default install.

Thanks, hope to keep the momentum going.

did you extract it from the .zip/.rar, or just put the .zip/.rar in your gamedata folder?

Could you be a bit more informative about your issue, such things as this will be helpful: 1. what mod you are trying to install (link if possible)? 2. did you read the readme (if available) with that mod? 3. where you able to view the .zip or .rar file? 4. are you opening it from (open) or (save as...) then opening it from your desktop? Just thought i would toss some of those out, would help us figure out what was wrong a bit better.

lol

that i was Only reason i stopped being staff was due to time constraints and items that needed to be done on the site, i figured instead of dragging them down, i would have them replace me when they found a new asp developer and keep the site stable until that time. One of my main things i wrote was the file download system that is in place, and a behind the scenes admin section you won't ever see

vertices are normally not that bad, its the material structures and formats that make it a pain lol still, what you write is pretty accurate from my own findings, but i am waiting to find out if Petro is going to be supplying us with a way to create/import models before i start any hard research on it.

Not a problem, glad to see them get some use.

hmm, for good formatting rules on tutorials such as this, you should provide exact relative paths to the files you are editing, a before and after [ code ] block with line references (around line x) for the edit, and include all edits that you make so people can get an understanding of what they are doing. In a tutorial such as this, you are trying to get people comfortable with opening the files and editing them to do something they can see right away, and you have to remember that you need to show all the steps in the tutorial otherwise people will get lost along the way. Its a good start though p.s. you should never mod off of a mod, use a file extractor and explain how to start from scratch, rather then using a mod (with unpredicted changes a user might have thought they did).

Hey guys, Thought I would chime in and let everyone know a bit about myself, and why I just popped out of nowhere and started answering questions and posting applications. First off, I am a long time C&C fan all the way back to playing C&C TD to now creating my own fan game to fill in a huge time gap in the series. I have been modding C&C games (mostly Renegade) for the better part of 5 years, and have had quite a bit of success with making utilities, working with the developers at some points along the line, as well as trying to help others figure out how to mod new aspects of the game. I am a fan, but I am also a Sr. Software Developer for a large company in southern california working with .Net, XML, SQL, and Web Development. Basically I do this in the little free time I have available, as well as the time that I am bored at work (hey, it happens). I will try to answer any questions that I know the answers to, will chime in to help others figure things out when I have ideas, and create programs to make tasks easier when I see a need. My Current Plans Are: Continue work on the main .meg utility to add full creation and editing of the file format. Create a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to manipulate the XML configuration files used by the game (timely one). Assist in any way for modding to become more user friendly then it might already be. Anyway, just thought that I would chime in and say hello, especially to some of the Petroglyph guys that I haven't talked to in a while (Delphi). Good luck, and hopefully I can contribute a bit to the community that is already rapidly growing. ~Tom "Dante" Anderson http://www.renevo.com

Trying my best, this work is done along with Scorpio9a (another C&C modding veteran) so i can't take all the credit.

also of note, the Lua files are compiled, i am trying to get more info on these as soon as possible if we will have utilities and/or documentation to create our own, as of yet, it is unknown

Given the history, you should only need to download one file and put it in your gamedata (or maybe? a mod folder), and that should be it.

This is a similar file format to the W3D file format that they used on Renegade, Earth & Beyond, as well as the SAGE game engine that EA owns. (Generals, BFME1 & BFME2). It is a tree based structure, and isn't easily converted, hopefully (still trying to find out) Petroglyph will supply us with at least an exporter and sample models, I currently have a w3d importer for 3ds, but would take some modifications to it to make it work with .alo, although, Renegade included a W3D.h in one of its releases, so that made it quite a bit easier. For objects, think we will have to see what kind of tools are available before we jump the gun and start hacking those type of files.

Could you be a bit more informative about your issue, such things as this will be helpful: 1. what mod you are trying to install (link if possible)? 2. did you read the readme (if available) with that mod? 3. where you able to view the .zip or .rar file? 4. are you opening it from (open) or (save as...) then opening it from your desktop? Just thought i would toss some of those out, would help us figure out what was wrong a bit better.

The files are not stored in a compressed format, only an indexed file archive. Thus why you see so many extractors on the market so quickly. Currently you can just extract all to your gamedata folder, and then mod the files it creates, and the game will read them, although there are plans for many updates for this application, including, edit, delete, and create new .meg files. Hope this answers a few of your questions.

Here is the file list for the demo in /gamedata/data as the root folder. Before modding it is ALWAYS recommended that you backup the directory (zip or rar it with max compression and backup to dvd/cd if needed) and start from there. Folders and file paths Audio/SFX/SFX2D_English.meg Audio/SFX/SFX2D_Non_Localized.meg Audio/SFX/SFX3D_Non_Localized.meg Text/CreditsText_English.dat Text/MasterTextFile_English.dat Root Files Acclamator_Assault_Ship.txt Alliance_Assault_Frigate.txt Broadside_Class_Cruiser.txt Calamari_Cruiser.txt Cinematics.meg Config.meg Corellian_Corvette.txt Corellian_Gunboat.txt EnglishSpeech.meg (may vary by language?) Interdictor_Cruiser.txt Maps.meg Marauder_Missle_Cruiser.txt MegaFiles.xml Models.meg Movies.meg Music.meg Nebulon_B_Frigate.txt Shaders.meg Star_Destroyer.txt Textures.meg Victory_Destroyer.txt

you should update that one, and let the website know there was an update to 1.0.0.1 http://www.renevo.com/downloads/eaw/EAWExtractor.zip Fixes some crash issues most users will not encounter, but fixes a major issue with invalid file naming.

Utility for viewing and editing the Empire at War .dat files. Click here to download the EAW DAT Editor 1.00 Beta 1 The .dat files are located in your EAW directory at the location: GameData\Data\Text. These files contain all the ingame texts. This release allows you to add/edit/delete strings located in a .dat file also has full support for unicode texts. Please report any problems/feature requests in this topic. *Note: This is a beta version, and will have more functionality at a later time. This software is copyright 2006 RenEvo Software & Designs. You may distribute this software from your own internet site, as long as you provide a link back to this thread for support.

yes, that will probably solve 90% of the issues with that extractor, and yes, you are right, the files are way more complex then notepad can handle for editing, and most people don't understand drag & drop command line programs, which is why i made the .Net 2.0 GUI version, its fast, its the latest tech (for me thats good to get practice on) and its friendly to use. as far as the directorys go, most games will use the files before archives (i.e. xml/*.xml before config.meg/xml/*.xml) so just open up the extractor, double click on a .meg, and tools->extract all, choose your EAW Demo/GameData folder, and click ok. Then mod away like mad as much as you want, and to un-install those mods, simply delete the folders you created (i.e. xml/scripts/etc...) Hope that helps a bit, notepad was good to peak, hex is good to discover, apps are great to edit with reliability.

Good thread, do you mind if i use the lua as a resource for my GUI for editing the game files?

Hello, as the author of this application, i will explain why i did that in the first release, and didn't do a common file->open routine. There is an xml file in the data folder called megfiles.xml, that is the file that i am reading in order to get a list of the actual used meg files in the games, if you would like to open other ones (temporarly) you can add them in the same format to the megfiles.xml file in that directory. I will be modifying it to allow file->open on any .meg file, but first i wanted to make sure that my .meg reading was perfect before starting the modification process and creation of .meg files. But as a poster stated above, the game will run faster with a files in the folders rather then in the .meg, the .meg are just a way to clean everything up, although this file format is definately much faster then some of the previous westwood/ea file formats i have seen. Any more issues, please let me know, there was an updated version of the application, make sure you have the latest version.