Modding:Mod Studio Usage Guide
From RelicWiki
Corsix's DoW and CoH mod studio is the only currently available tool for CoH modding.
Contents |
Download
The first step is to download the latest version.
0.5.5: Download Here
Once you have downloaded the zip file, extract the contents to any folder you want and then run the file called DoWModStudio.exe that you just extracted.
The Welcome Screen
When you first launch the application, you will see a welcome screen similar to the one shown here. The three buttons you need to know about are "Load CoH Mod", "Quit" and "Make a donation". "Quit" will close the application and "Make a donation" will allow you to support the developer and help keep the application free. The most important button is "Load CoH Mod", so press that now.
You will now see a file open dialog where you choose which mod to load. It should by default list all the files in your Company of Heroes directory, if not then go to that directory. The vanilla (unmodified) game is the RelicCOH.module file, so select that file and load it.
One more box will now pop up, asking you which set of language files to load from the mod. In the current release, this feature is not working, so leave it on English and press "Use Locale". Now sit back and watch the loading screen.
The Main Screen
Assuming everything loaded without errors, you will now see the main application screen. On the left is a tree of files and on the right is the current file being edited/viewed (Don't try and edit the .module yet). Above tree of files are two tabs; "Files" and "Tools". Pressing the former brings up the tree of files, pressing the later brings up a list of tools. As you open more files for viewing/editing, they will appear on the left and other open files can be switched to using the tabs above.
When you hover your mouse over a file in the files tree, a tooltip will appear saying where the file is stored and what mod it is part of. Files that are part of the engine and files that are part of relic online are listed in grey, and you probably won't need to edit these for quite a while yet. Have a look around the files tree for now and move on when you're ready.
Viewing and editing files
If you right click on any file in the files tree, a menu will appear with all the actions you can carry out on the file. If you double click on any file in the files tree, two things can happen. If there is an editor defined for the filetype you clicked on, then that file will be opened in the editor. If there is no editor defined then the right click menu will appear with the actions list.
As an example, open the scar\restrict.scar file. On the left the SCAR editor will appear with the file loaded into it. Next close the file, as SCAR is a complicated beast ot try and learn (press the small yellow/black "X" to the right of the currently open files tabs). Something better to begin with are RGD files, so double click on the attrib\sbps\races\allies\soldiers\rifleman_squad.rgd file to launch the RGD editor. RGDs are where all the unit stats are stored. For further details on RGD editing, look here.
WARNING: I recommend only viewing files with the current version of the mod studio, as saving files has not been tested and will probably mess up your game.
Extracting files from SGAs
When using the built-in editors there is no need to extract files from the SGA archives, however if you wish to there are three ways of doing it. The first way is to right click on a file in the files tree and select "Extract this file" - the file will then be extracted into your Company of Heroes\WW2\Data folder.
The second way is to extract an entire folder at a time. As an example, right click on the scar folder and choose "Extract all files in this folder". A window similar to the one shown will now appear. Here you choose where to extract files from. Pressing "Select all" and then "Go!" will extract all the files from the folder you specified, regardless of which SGA they are stored in. Only ticking certain boxes will allow you more control over which files are extracted.
The third method is to switch from the files tree to the tools list and double click on the "Extract all" tool. At which point a window identical to the one shown in method two will appear. The one difference is that you are now extracting everything, as opposed to just one folder. As with the other methods, the files will appear in Company of Heroes\WW2\Data.
Remember: the game loads extracted files over files in the SGAs, so if a patch comes out and you have any extracted files, then these old files will override the new ones in the updated SGA archives.
Where to go from here
I recommend that you first learn how to do some RGD editing, as detailed here
