A huge cry out for help, can anyone tell me how to make a mod for this game

[William Stapleford]

Im at my wits end and about to give up on modding and EM5 in general. Its quite obvious to everyone that once 16 tons got their money and steam got their little cut as well they could care less about anything.

I have now lost weeks of work due to simple things that any editor could or should do. The first time was because the game editor wasnt even finished when I bought it. (What a joke guys) then thw patch from steam killed everything. The second time was because I attempted to get one prefab I created into the actual game. Results I lost all prefabs I created. They no longer show up in the editor.

Im lost as to how this works.

I created a New project file, then created a new prefab I used the save as command to save the prefab as new_police_stw (for example)

I made all my changes to that prefab model making sure to keep the default prefab untouched for fear of messing it up.

When done I tried to load the mod at the EM5 splash screen and it and all the others show up. I click on the empty square to the right of it and choose apply.

This SHOULD have loaded the new vehicle and I start a endless game and call a police car.

The default EM5 car shows up.

I close the game and quit the mod. I assume based on other things I read that the car has to be the same name. So I make sure im in my project folder and chose my prefab named new_police_stw place it in the editor.

Right click and chose save as rename it to police_stw.

I do not get a warning or anything about the file existing already.

I choose to save and then find that all my prefabs with new_before the name is gone. not only that but the prefab with all my lighting has reverted back to the default EM5 police station wagon.

Im lost.

If I click on the project folder I see in contents the prefabs are there but no way to access them or edit them. None appear in the editor anymore.

The only success I have had was when I created a new project for the tow truck and did all my changes to the default truck saved it as the default truck and loaded it into the game via the mods. It worked the truck showed up but back in the editor I lost the original truck.

Please help what am I doing wrong

[sls_16]

There isn't a lot of support on EM5 because the Germans made it somewhat complicated, there is a tutorial but its in German.

[swatlord5000]

William i'm right there with ya man.  I've been utilizing this forum for years to mod EM4 for my personal use, and this is my first time i'm commenting actually, I feel that strongly.  I'm not ready to give up on 5 yet... i've only been playing in the editor for a short time, but I feel the potential.  I understand everyone's frustrations with the new release, the community had pretty high expectations, what with all the talented people who worked years to make some awesome mods.  That generation of modders may have moved on, but i'm willing to try to pick up and keep exploring our options.  We need to start an open dialog with anyone else out there experimenting in the EM5 editor.  Lets work together to figure this thing out, and who knows... we could set the stage for future awesomeness LAMOD style. As I recall, the vanilla version of EM4 wasn't that great either compared to what followed.

[Newfoundking]

The problem doesn't lie in the fact that it's a crappy game, the problems are that it is not friendly to us, nor is there any documentation being provided to anyone in the English world. The skilled modders have called this game quits for now, not willing to pay their hard earned money to a company releasing what equates to a bargain brand title at brand name prices

[William Stapleford]

Ok well here is what I posted in another forum if you want to try messing around with some files just beware this game at least the steam version doesn't like to be messed with.

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Ok so here is some more information on my problem.  i checked the folders and here is what i found.

I'm using the Steam version so this could also be part of my problem.  

My files are located in the following folder.

 

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Emergency 5

 

Inside the Emergency 5 folder the data folder is located.  I see all the mods and/or projects that i created here is an example

 

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Emergency 5\data\new_ambulance_car\content\prefab\vehicle

 

inside this folder is the vehicle that i named as "ambulance_nef_trial"  this is the json

 

I loaded the mod for this vehicle using the EM5 splash screen and loaded up a free play game.  I called for a large ambulance (not the Dr vehicle) The counter shows that the vehicle was dispatched but it never shows up at the scene.  When the mod is deactivated the vehicle shows up.  My guess is this is because EM5 is looking for a file called "ambulance_rtw"

My file on the other hand is called "ambulance_nef_trial"  So if the game cant see the file it is looking for then it wont launch the prefab and it wont show up.  The odd thing is that I expected to see an error or something indicating that a problem had occured in the files or that a file could not be found.

 

So not the question becomes how do I get the prefabs that I made (like the ones you have in the photo above) into the game without losing them.  Also why in the world did the World editor get rid of the ones I created simply because I renamed one of them?

 

Here is what I dont understand.  I hit f11 to bring up the window that shows the asset browser in the asset browser are all my projects listed to the right of the main window.  Just so you understand I set up each vehicle as its own project.  I thought that this would make things easier but so far that not the case.  Using my above file / project for example here is what I'm doing.

 

I right click on the project name "new_ambulance_large" and choose from the list running project. (I assume that this means that this is the "Current" project that i want to work on.)

The words for the project turn white all others become greyed out. The asset browser now diplays the id, project, and name of any items needed for this project.

 

From this point is where I get lost, if i look to the right window prefab browser and look for the files for the prefab, I cant find it.  The way i got some of my modded prefabs back was to create another project and then go through each and every project and choose move to the new project folder.  I then selected the new project and found my lost prefabs once again.

 

now when i go to load some of the custom presets and even some of the default vehicles i get a red debug message that says this

 

""Could not create prototype by the given prototype ID 7624639940970882561, prefab asset 1003411487 ("em5/prefab/vehicle/new_ambulance_large_with_added_strobes") already created a prototype instance with this ID. Choose another prototype ID, in case of an prefab the local asset ID is a good candidate.""

 

This happens with several prefabs and the only thing that changes in the sentence above is the prefab asset number.

 

Dont understand this message as at one point everything worked.

 

Could you please explain how the projects actually work or tell me if I'm right about this.

 

I guess that a project file allows the use or change or certain files to change things in EM5.  So if create a new project and then edit a vehicle but leave the default name as is.  Then the vehicle should remain as a MOD in the project file but in the original EM5 game the files should not be affected.

 

From what I have found though is that when I made changes to a default model in the project file I lost the original files to go back to.  I wonder if this is because when I create the project file in the asset browser I just went right to prefabs and started making changes.  Am I supposed to find the asset i want to mod in the asset browser and then move that file to my project file before editing?  It seems that whatever model I mod it shows up in the content folder but I cant do anything with it because it is a special name.

 

Can someone please tell me step by step what I am supposed to do if possible and also tell me if I can back up all my project files so if i have to reload the game i can keep my hard work intact?

 

Hopefully you can get me back on track and again thanks for all the help to this point.

 

Also you should note that i now show multiple prefabs with the same name now in the prefab browser and I have no clue why.

 

For now I'm going to make a copy of all the project files and mess with some stuff.  Maybe i can fix it before breaking it more.

 

Bill

[Ami89E1234]

I have been working on an English translation of all of the tutorial videos Sixteen Tons made for the EM5 editor; you can find what I've done so far in a topic a few below this one if they'd help anyone.