Alright, let's do cover altering weapons & stuff:
NOTE: the following is unnecessary if you just want to create new missions.
First, if you are going to override tables and stuff, I recommend creating a new mod, preventing your modifications from altering balance in other mods & campaigns. To do that, create a new folder in the game's directory. In this folder, create a text file called
mod.ini. This file tells the game that this is a mod folder, various information about the mod (name, website, ...) and whether it requires other mods to run.
Basically, the inside of that file should look similar to this:
[launcher]
modname = my big badass mod;
image255x112 = image.bmp ;
infotext = Small descriptive text
;
[multimod]
primarylist = ;
secondarylist = zathras;
Then, you need to create a folder called
data in your mod, then a couple of folders called
missions and
tables.
Missions will contain your mod's missions, while
tables will contain your altered weapon data.
So, now you new to create a modular
weapon table, which is a text file called
something-wep.tbm that looks like this:
#Primary Weapons
;; my altered primary weapon data goes here
#End
#Secondary Weapons
;; my altered missile data goes there
#End
Note: *.tbm & *.tbl files are text files, you can open them up in notepad or whatever text editor you want.
So, at this point, you should have something like this:
The Babylon Project\My Mod\mod.ini
The Babylon Project\My Mod\data\missions\
The Babylon Project\My Mod\data\tables\something-wep.tbm
Now that you are all set, you need to know what to alter, which will requires you to extract the game table from the game's
*.vp files. Download one of the programs listed at that link (VPView32 should do), use it to open the .vp file that contains
data\weapons.tbl (I suspect it's got "core" in its name). Extract
weapons.tbl to someplace (desktop, whatever), find the weapon you want to modify.
Copy the
$Name: line to your .tbm file, under
#Primary if it's a gun, under
#Secondary if it's a missile.
On the line below, add
+nocreate, this will tell the game that this is a partial table entry, altering an already existing weapon. All you need to do now is copy the fields you want to alter and put new value in front of it. Like this:
#Primary Weapons
;; my altered primary weapon data goes here
;; note: this is a comment, anything after a ';' will be ignored by the game
$Name: EA red beam ; note: not an actual TBP weapon
+nocreate
$Damage: 450 ; was 150
#End
#Secondary Weapons
;; my altered missile data goes there
#End
There's additional information on how to create your mod on the wiki, see the
modding portal.
Hope you enjoy the game
ps. If anybody sees anything wrong, misleading, unclear or else in that post, please point it out.