Basically Ship and Mission Installation will amount to a drop down boxes and a click of a button.   For Ship installation the user will have to pick what race to install the ships to, and for Missions they will have to pick the mission file to install to and then press the button.   

It's not exactly fool proof but it's a lot closer than having the end user edit the files manually.


It's not fully automatic on the Modder's end, the tool works off of some setting files that the Mod Creator must create.  There are additional screens that the Modder will use to create the required setting files.  I have set them up to be as simple and familar as possible.   There are up to 4 xml setting files that get generated by the modder filling in various screens (1 or 2 for ships and 2 for Missions)

1. The modder will choose which Ships are to be included, choose their Alternate Race if they like.   Such as if the Default race doesn't exist the Alternate race gets chosen automatically when the end user opens the utility.  This Default Race and Alternate Race function is good for something like Section 31 where that would be the default race but maybe Federation would be the Alternate Race.  If neither race is found the race box is left blank for the user to make the decision.
2. If the modder is including new sprite entries for their ships there is a screen where they will enter the sprite pretty much like it's entered in the spr file.
3. If the modder is including new missions, they have a screen that is basically filled in like the mission menu xml plus it lists the actual Mission Display name to choose.
4. When the modder includes a mission they would then go to the Objectives setting screen and pick the objective file for the mission script to include and the utility will pull the proper entries from the main objective file.

The Utility can do either 1 mission or 1 ship or 20 missions or 20 ships or any combination, it's all up to the Modder what to include.




The Modder will then take all their ship files or mission files and put them in together just like they would normally including all files in their proper folder structure, then include the modinstaller exe file and the 1-4 xml files in what would become the root legacy folder when extracted.  After that he or she would just zip or rar the mod.

Then the instructions for installation of their mod to the end user would be:
1. Extract the .zip/.rar to your chosen \Star Trek Legacy\ folder
2. Run ModInstaller.exe
3a. Pick Race for the Ships to go in (for ship mod)
3b. Pick Mission List for missions to go in (for mission mods)
4. Press "Install"
5. "Close" the ModInstaller and run Legacy.


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I had originally intended to have it setup so that if the mod is extracted to an empty folder the mod installer would copy all the files to the legacy folder.  Unfortunately without having a set list of files included with the mod it would copy ALL files and ALL files in ALL SubFolders, even if they weren't part of the mod...  If anyone things that is a good feature let me know and I'll see about working it out, it would involve storing a setting of what files are to be included, it would complicate creating the mod package a little bit.

There are a few things I am finishing up.  A few adjustments here and there as well as writing up documentation and instructions.  I hope to have it finished, fully tested and out in less than 2 weeks.  The timing all depends how much time I can round up to work in it and how testing goes.