Creating A Mod tutorial - Tacos Mod for Soldiers: Heroes of World War II

You must have a functional & clean copy of Soldiers: Heroes of World War II installed, preferably version 1.28.3E (newest I know of). I recommend having a second installation of the game purely for modding purposes as the editor can over-write files & it will dump any new files straight into the installation. If you do not install a second installation you may have issues with multi-player in addition to not being able to truly test your mod, as files might be missing in the mod itself that you have on the installation.

You will require a text editor & a map/mission editor for this tutorial. I recommend Notepad++ as the text editor & the (official?) GEM editor as the map/mission editor. You will also need a un-packing tool such as 7-Zip.

Notepad++ & 7-Zip are easy to download & install, if you manage to have problems with them you should not even attempt modding. When installing the GEM editor you must make sure you select the correct installation target, for me it is "C:\Soldiers - Heroes of World War II", it is the game's root folder, the one with "Soldiers.exe" in it.

In order for a mod to function in SHoWW2 you need 2 things: The mod's folder & it's info file. Create a new folder called "MyMod" & put a new .txt file in it & re-name it "info.mod". Open info.mod with a text editor, and put this in:

{mod
{name "Not A Mod"}
{desc " Tis a mod for 1.28.3E, it basic. \n You create new lines with the slash-n combination."}
{version "Mod Version 1"}
}

Now you must put your indisputable masterpiece in "*\Soldiers - Heroes of World War II\mods\". If you do not have a "mods" folder in your root game folder, you must create one.

You should now be able to see & activate your mod in-game. I strongly recommend you always have the mod you're currently working on activated whilst editing it, otherwise your editor may crash on start-up & you won't have access to any content the mod has (like new missions).

Run "start_editor.bat" NOT "soldiers_editor.exe". The actual editor executable will crash, you must open with the .bat. First thing I suggest you do entering the editor is hit F2, esc, save-as, then name the map file "mymod\resident" (note the \ NOT /). Then hit F3 & save-as "test". Exit the editor, edit "start_editor.bat", make it look like this:

rem to start editor type soldiers_editor.exe -edit :
soldiers_editor.exe -edit mymod\resident:test

Every time you open the editor you will now have a test environment to test all sorts of things in. Feel free to save any changes you do to this map & mission for convenience. This is very useful for quickly trying out exact damages, unit behaviors & when developing new items & weapons.

Now to creating a new map. I suggest you hit F2, save-as "mymod\flat". Click entities tab, uncheck "clip camera position" & then clear out the entire map of entities, use the Delete key. You must hold ALT whilst selecting certain entities, such as bridges.

Click land tab & select Polygons. Press + & - till you get a good brush size. Left mouse button all the black spots that tear up the land in the middle. You may need to right mouse button to tear it in some spots in order to fill it, it's finicky.

When the gaps are filled, select Heights Hold ALT whilst brushing around to level the terrain. You may want to check "heightmap" in order to make sure you leveled everything.

When you leveled the map, select Textures & CTRL click the ground to get a sample of it. Now max out the sharpness & paint everything the same texture.

When textured, select Terrains & select "grounds". Paint the entire map in "grounds".

When done making everything ground, select Colors & CTRL-click a normal-looking spot to get neutral colors. Paint everything with it.

You can now go to clip tab, check "clip camera position" & change the settings to what you want. You should see the boundaries when in clip mode, the cyan one is the player-view one, yellow is the playable area boundary (which the AI ignores). Put those 2 boundary lines near the edges of the map, but within it, use the Polygon tool if you want a square map.

When you are done with all of this, save the "flat" map, you now have a base to start making maps from now. Make sure to use "save-as" when you create new maps in the future to save this one.

It is now time to create a wholly new map, your map. Scroll through all the entity menus, brush tools, etc & familiarize yourself with everything. Once you feel you understand it well enough, load the flat map you made & save-as "mymod\mymap". Do whatever you want to it, create hills, set down forests, make structures, etc.

Some pointers:

• Water altitude controls how high up the water is.
• water terrain turns the area into a water zone, regardless of how it looks. Only water terrain acts like water. ground for example will never behave like water, even if you put water effects on it.
• For units to be able to go in and out of water, like a beach, you must first smoothen the ground enough & then use the water terrain tool. Beaches have light blue color instead of dark blue.
• swamp terrain kills all units that enter it, it is the quick-sand from the swamp mission.
• Most vehicles drive better on roads.
• Make sure to use grass terrain instead of ground on actual grass, otherwise vehicles will kick up absurd amounts of dirt when driving over grass.
• When you CTRL-click textures, you do not copy it, but rather you get access to the actual texture. This means you can change textures directly without having to paint over them if you choose the wrong texture.
• Textures have both right & left mouse button versions, which will blend when next to each-other.
• Shift smoothens height.
• Right & Left mouse buttons lowers & heightens the height.
• Don't forget about the "stamps", like roads, curbstones, etc.
• Most buildings are split into multiple pieces, it takes time to get used to setting them up.
• You can use CTRL+C & CTRL+V to copy & paste most entities, including fully made buildings.
• Many buildings & flora have texture varieties in "view .texture".
• Use save-as to make copies of your work, as there are ways to corrupt maps, so you don't lose all the progress.

When you are pleased with your map, it is time to create a mission for it. When on your map, hit F3 & save-as "m1". Press 1 (view) & click Setup. Make it 7 players for coop.

Click Diplomacy. Players 1-4 should be green (allies) for coop. Player 5 can be red (enemy) as an AI enemy. Player 6 can be used as a friendly/neutral AI, put him yellow (neutral, so not to be confused with players) for 1-4 & red for 5.

Now click 2 (entity) to put down whatever units you want. You can use the numpad keys to switch between which player they spawn as, but it can be changed manually on the unit's Properties tab (lower right when selected). Player units should start as player 1, even for coop.

When making infantry, use whatever "-human" base you want, then scroll down Properties tab to "breed", select whatever "breed" you want. Without a breed units won't have proper stats. You may manually change the inventory after you've selected the breed.

Players' units should have "brain .control" put on user. This will make them use up ammunition as well as be able to swim. They should also have the tag "pl_assign" for coop player assignment. CTRL+T for tags, make sure to click both Add & OK.

Click "ables" & check "personage" for player units if you want them to be able to be revivable. Check "ally_crew" if you want them to be able to enter allied vehicles.

To create waypoints, click 4 (waypoint). Click add & add one, then right click & select the one you created. When you create more now they are linked. You can give custom commands to waypoints in "Commands" section, those will trigger when the unit moves over the waypoint (ONLY those assigned to walk to that waypoint, simply walking over it will not trigger it). Failing to arrive to a waypoint won't trigger it's commands.

To make zones click 5 (zone). You can create either circles or polys. Polys can be more advanced, but also finicky to deal with.

To make triggers (such as making units follow waypoints), click 6 (trigger).

To make a good start-up trigger that will always work (condition-less triggers at start-up won't always work), make an event with "set" mode & 1 delay. Then make another trigger with the condition of the event, this trigger should trigger 1 second after start-up & should always work.

To make units follow waypoints at start, put in a "actor_to_waypoint" command in a start-up trigger. "Selector" are the units effected, I recommend mids for few units or tags for many. Drop makes them forget what they were doing. Waypoint uid is the number of the waypoint you want them to follow.

For a fail-trigger, first put the tag "playerunits" on all player infantry. Make a trigger with the "actor" condition. Actor condition should have "playerunits" tag in selector & "not_dead". Limits should be ".>=" & ".<=0". Now put in gameover command & add music command if you want.

For a basic "kill all enemies" win trigger, copy the fail-trigger. Remove "playerunits" tag from the win-trigger & put in "player 5" in the player section instead. Change gameover "loose" to "win" & if you made a music command, change it to the win tune.

For mission objectives, click "Tasks" in 1 (view). Add a new task, "name" won't show up for players, name it whatever makes it easy for you. "desc" is the actual text players see, put something in directly, don't use the "..." button. Primary makes it a primary objective, non-primary tasks automatically become optional. State is whether it is shown, completed, failed or hidden, "-" means it shows. "point" requires a pointer entity with the same tag. I always leave "team" empty.

Click 9 (environment) to select what weather you want. Edited environments don't stick, they will revert when you load the mission again.

All maps & missions you create will be put straight into the installation itself, NOT your mod folder. You must now go fetch all the files & put them into your mod folder. Make sure to create the folder structure as well, not just the files.

Your landscape files, which are the files for the land itself, are located in "\Soldiers - Heroes of World War II\Resource\entity\landscape\map\120_3m\mymap.mod". "120_3m" might differ. The files should be placed in "\Soldiers - Heroes of World War II\mods\mymod\resource\entity\landscape\map\120_3m\mymap.mod". Change the "120_3m" part if it differs.

Your map & mission files are located in "\Soldiers - Heroes of World War II\Resource\map\mymod\mymap". Put them in "\Soldiers - Heroes of World War II\mods\mymod\resource\map\mymod\mymap".

In order for the mission to show up in-game you must copy & then modify said copy of a file. Go to "\Soldiers - Heroes of World War II\Resource\Patch" & open "1.pat" with 7-Zip or equivalent. Get the file "games.reg" from "\1.pat\set\registry\". Put "games.reg" in "\Soldiers - Heroes of World War II\mods\mymod\resource\set\registry".

Open "games.reg" with Notepad++ or equivalent. Find "{"5. Bonus missions"". Add this:
{"MyMission"
{name "mission/b_8/name"}
{coopBreed "usa.infantry_smg"}
{scene "mymod/mymap:m1"}
}

Right below this:
{scene "single/town_officer:0"}
}"

Replace the "coopBreed" with whatever breed you prefer.

Add "{"mymod\mymap" 1}" right below "{"single\hutor_chepel" 0}". Replace 1 with the correct number for the mission you made. Refer to the number list above that segment.

Now get the file "mission.lng" from "localize.pak". Put it in "\Soldiers - Heroes of World War II\mods\mymod\resource\set\text".

Add this:
{"b_8"
{"name" "My Mission"}
}

Right below "{tags "english"". These files & tweaks will make the mission show up properly in-game as a bonus mission.

To get a preview in the multi-player menu, take a screenshot in-game, then crop & scale it to 200x150 & save it as myprev.tga. Create a text file & re-name it "preview.ebm", put it in "\Soldiers - Heroes of World War II\mods\map\mymod\mymap\". Put this in "preview.ebm":

{bitmap
{Filtering 1 }
{AlphaChannel 0 }
{Blend None }
{Frame "myprev.tga" }
}

In order to have a mini-map back-ground, you must go into the editor, load the map & only the map, disable camera clip & zoom out till you can see the entire map. Now neatly line the map up as squarely as possible, take a screenshot & crop out everything that is not the map. Scale down the image with locked ratio to either "*x350" or "350x*". One dimension should be 350, other should match with it's down-scale & ratio. Save it as "mymapminimap.tga". Put it in "\Soldiers - Heroes of World War II\mods\mymod\resource\interface\minimap". Make a text file and re-name it "mymap.ebm" in the minimap folder. Open "mymap.ebm" and make it look like this:

{bitmap
{Filtering 1 }
{AlphaChannel 0 }
{Blend none }
{Frame "mymapminimap.tga" }
}

Now your mission mod should be fully functional & coop ready with preview and all. However, before you spread it like the plague all across the world, first create a readme text file, detailing how to install it. The readme should at least mention the need of a "mods" folder & that you put "mymod" folder in it.

Now feel free to compress it using 7-Zip or an equivalent & send it to wherever.