Warning, the maximum skies the editor can handle are around 70 total, be aware that the more skies you add the slower the editor will open for you. Especially those with lower end PC. In our patch we released there are 65 skies total.
The first thing you will need to do is have some type of hex editor, Ultra Edit is one of the best around to use, there are several other so any will work for adding skies. Do a search on google for the word "Hexeditor" or "Hex Editor" to find one.
The next thing you will need is a text editor which you will find one built into windows, I use a program called Boxer it has line numbers and can be configured to make text editing much easier. A text editor that displays line numbers is a must if your messing with any kind of script, Context also displays line numbers.
Note: Always make a backup of any files you are going to edit in case of mistakes.
The first step is to make back ups of the skies.build and the skies.hint files. The skies.build is located in the \Mercenaries\Content directory and the skies.hint is located under the \Mercenaries\Content\Skies directory.
Under the skies directory you will see all of the skies that are built into the editor, the first thing you will need to do is find a sky that will match your needs, in my example I used the fact01_sky.ERF file. When you open the .ERF file you will see a lot of hex code, the only thing you are concerned with is the text name of the sky on the far right side. Look for the name of the sky that this .ERF file uses. Example skyd6f1is the texture that this sky uses, there are 5 textures listed in the .ERF file each of these will need to be edited and the name changed to reflect the texture of the sky you want to use.
Notice on the picture above the name highlighted in yellow, this is the sky name, also notice how many chars long this name is 7 chars long. When changing this name if your sky name is 8 chars long you will need to be careful not to Del that extra char in this file. You will need to replace the line of hex with a blank line that is 00. If your texture name is 9 chars long and the ERF file you are using only has 8 chars. If you Del that ninth char then you have just corrupted that file and your sky will most likely show up as a white sky. You don’t want to Del chars in this file what you need to do is over write that last one with 00 then it will work. If you make a mistake you will then need to restart with a new ERF file.
After you have successfully edited your .ERF file you will need to make sure it is named correctly the only way the editor will recognize your new sky is to use one of the existing names that the editor knows, when I created all of my skies I kept it simple, I used the fact01_sky.ERF , You can use any name for your directory, the directory name does not matter, in fact use a name that you will know that is your sky so it is easily found in the listing of skies in the editor. But you must use one of the 10 default names that were used in the Merc’s Editor or when you save your map with your new sky it will give you a texture error. To keep it simple I use only 2 ERF names, fact01_sky.ERF for the day skies and colsm02_sky_night.ERF for the night skies. Its simple and very easy to keep track of.
Now that you have finished editing your sky we will now need to add your sky to the skies.build and the skies.hint files. These files will need to be edited with a text editor.
Again make sure you have made a backup before editing these files.
We will first edit the skies.build this is the easies part of your editing.
Copy the line like I have highlighted with the fact01_sky.ERF, after you have copied it past it below in a new blank line. Once you have copied it you will need to edit the directory name. Notice line 19 I have mine named Desert02\ fact01_sky.ERF The first name is the directory where the .ERF file is located, the second name is the name of the ERF file its self.
Now once I open the editor I will see this new sky there, but I will not show up yet until I have completed a few more steps.
After you have added your new sky, save and close the text editor, we will now move on to editing the skies.hint file so we can add your new textures there.
Adding the textures to the Texture directory is very simple; you must first make sure you have not used the same name as one of the default ones built into the editor already. If you have named yours the same then you will need to change the name of your textures before moving on to the next step.
The next step is copying your sky textures to the \Mercenaries\Content\Textures directory. Once you have copied them over we will now need to open the skies.hint file with a text editor. After you have it open you will see a long list of textures the editor uses. This part can be a little tricky and you will need to pay close attention to what you are doing, if you make a mistake you will have to go back and recheck your work and find your error. This is important, if you have more then one sky to add, do them one at a time or you will confuse your self and forget what you have done. It’s much easier to do one sky at a time. Once you have gotten more familiar with this process of adding new skies it will become much easier to add the skies you want to the editor.
In this example the Talon 3 Sky already exist, you will obviously be using a different name, the name of your sky you intend to add.
The first thing you will need to do is copy a set of textures this will be a long line that will need to be copied. In this example I will use the first line with the [talon03_sky_bk]
What you need to do now is copy the entire line starting from the top and holding your mouse button down and copy all of the lines of code that are for this sky, be careful not to go to far down all we want in this example is the first set of textures, there will be 25 of them total. After you have copied the lines you needed do a copy and past, paste the line of code you just copied ate the very bottom of this file. Once you have pasted the new line scroll back up to the beginning of you new copied lines and edit the first part it will be named [talon03_sky_bk] you will need to edit the first part of this line talon03 this is going to be the name of your new texture directory you have added to the skies directory.
Edit one line at a time renaming these one at a time, making sure you use the correct name. There will be 5 of these to edit. Once you have finished this part move down to the next line where your textures are listed. This will be [skyta3b1] this is the texture for the Talon 3 sky in the editor it is also the name of the texture you will find in the textures directory. You will now need to rename this sky texture to the name of your texture you have copied into the textures directory. There are usually 25 of these that will need to be renamed. Again use caution renaming these. After you have completed this part save the file and exit the editor.
You are now ready to open the editor and see if your new sky is working, if you open the editor and get an error that the /.ERF texture is not found you have made a mistake and will need to find and correct your error. Go back and recheck the .ERF file that its named correctly, also recheck the skies.build and the skies.hint files, this is the only place your error can be.
In my example you can see my sky desert 02 is listed and does work.
Hopefully you can understand this tutorial I know it might sound like a lot to do but it’s really very simple once you catch on. I tried to give you the very simple explanation of how to add new skies, although I do know that this is an unfamiliar process and will take you a few tries to get it right.
Merc Co-op Team
- Rick