Difference between revisions of "Modding Guide"

Revision as of 16:25, 29 June 2014

SAVE FILES / WORLD FILES

Every world you generate is saved in its own folder that can be found in c:\Users\{YOUR WINDOWS USERNAME}\AppData\Roaming\SpaceEngineers\Saves\{Your Steam ID}\

File types:

• Sandbox.sbc – basic description of a world

• SANDBOX_0_0_0_.sbs – detail definition of a world, positions and states of objects (we don’t have more details at this moment, but it should be pretty self-explanatory – run some experiments)

• .vox – binary voxel data for an asteroid (we don’t have more details at this moment)

• .xmlcache – don’t modify these files, they are cache files regenerated on each save

SHADERS

Files with FX and FXH extension are vertex/pixel shaders for various rendering operations and can be found in steamapps\common\SpaceEngineers\Content\Effects2\Every shader file gets recompiled on game launch. If you modify one, restart the game. If the game crashes on launch, it’s probably due to a compilation error caused by your changes.

TEXTURES

Almost all textures are in DDS format (DXT compression). You will need an editing program that can manipulate them. If you use Adobe Photoshop, we recommend installing this plugin: https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop and use these settings for exporting:

Settings for exporting textures

Textures can be found in: steamapps\common\SpaceEngineers\Content\Textures\ There are multiple categories of texture files: GUI, particles, lights, models, voxels, etc. Model textures with “_ns” in their name contain “normal map” in RGB channels and “specular” in ALPHA channel. Model textures with “_de” in their name contain “diffuse” in RGB channels and “emissivity” in ALPHA channel.

3D MODELS

Models are stored in steamapps\common\SpaceEngineers\Content\Models\ and can’t be modified at this moment – you would need a tool for converting FBX to MWM and we haven’t made it publicly available yet.