SEV shipset instructions?

[Q]

Very interesting indeed.
At the first look however I am a little bit scared that creating new races or modifying races may be much more complicated than in SE IV. It reminds me of Starfury where you need a large manual just to understand what the different lines in the campaign/empire files mean.

[Captain Kwok]

It will be more difficult than SE:IV to make new races, mainly because of the items connected with the ship models. Otherwise, most of the AI files are straightforward and like their SE:IV cousins.

[Xrati]

I don't care much for the "one page" format where all the images are on one big bmp/jpg file and the pics are identified by the x,y coordinates. I've tried those in the past as in 'War Engine' and it just confusing when your working in the middle of the set on a blank image. You have to set rulers and guidelines up for all your images and remember what coordinate has what pic in it. It's much easier to just have one pic for one file. OR have a program that will edit the pic files on the larger one eliminating the need to track locations.

The cruiser looks like a varient of the 'battlestar' minus the fighter bays.

[Captain Kwok]

I usual make a standalone image of the correct size and then paste into the final image. Having a template file with an appropriate grid is not a bad idea either.

[Q]

What is a .CSF file and what do you need to create/convert one??

[Captain Kwok]

Space Empires V has a script parser that creates the .csf file - which is the actual compiled script used by the game. Essentially you're just editing various AI text files and then compiling them into a .csf file.

[Q]

Thank you for the answer Kwok.
But what do you do if you want to modify an existing .csf file? Can you convert it back to a text file or do you need the original text file??
Anyway it seems to me that modifying will be more complicated compared to SE IV.

[Aiken]

First look at data files:
- ***_Main_Script.txt and ***_Setup_Script.txt are written in some sort of prog language (prior to be compiled into .cfs). What is this language? Looks like Delphi to me, but I'm not sure.
- Other .txt files keep following an old se4 style (no char for comments, tabs and blank line problems)

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Captain Kwok said:
It will be more difficult than SE:IV to make new races, mainly because of the items connected with the ship models. Otherwise, most of the AI files are straightforward and like their SE:IV cousins.

This is why the SEV image mod needs to include ships.

[Captain Kwok]

Empire styles / Ship sets are already "plug-ins" so I don't see how including them in the Image Pack would make much sense.