Modding Star Trek: Armada

The game Star Trek: Armada allows for extensive modding. A few things you should know or start with:

Armada is based on the Storm3D Engine which was introduced with Battlezone. As such it uses basically the same technology. You can see this heritage also in the names of maps. Their extensions are bzn, for Battlezone. Another hint can be found in the file misc\misn18.des:

You will lead a small force behind enemy lines to destroy the Furies launch pad. You will only have a limited amount of time to hit your target and then you must return to the dust off site before the moon explodes.

MISSION OBJECTIVES
- Destroy the Fury launch pad.

This clearly references content that was meant for Battlezone.

Folder Structure

Modding files are to be placed in folder addon. This may include tt, odf, sod and graphics files.
The game as such uses videos in Bink format for the pre-rendered cinematics, which are stored in folder animations.
Graphics of most parts of the GUI are placed in bitmaps and are in bmp format.
The graphics from folder bmp are only used by the Launcher.
The bzn contains the actual maps and tech tree files. bmp files are used as map previews, bzn files contain the actual maps and mdf files contain the information about starting positions of players.
giddi contains mapping files for joystick control and are not used by Armada. Here you can also see the heritage from Battlezone.
misc contains different configuration files, e.g. definitions of the different interfaces for the different Factions of the game.
missions contains the scripts and rules for the single-player campaign.
save contains the saved game states. These are actually also bzn files but with an altered sav extension and ias files for Instant Action matches.
sounds contains all the sounds, music and voice acting of the game in wav format, 16 bit, mono at 44.1 kHz PCM signed data.
Sprites contains the sprite files, that are used to depict a map object on the tactical map.
Textures contains the textures in TGA format, using extensions .tga but also .1 to .6.
The wav folder contains the audio files used by the Launcher.

File Types

Extension	Task
bzn	Map object definition, this defines where and which objects are placed on the map.
bmp	Bitmap graphics, used for different aspects of the game.
odf	Object Definition File, defines the game mechanic properties (e.g. shields, weapons, scanning rang, etc.) of a unit or station or weapon. It contains a lot of ODF directives.
tt	Tech Tree file, contains the rules which objects are available to the player.
dsl	script file
drl	Rules file
sav	Saved game, actually just another extension for bzns.
ias	Additional information on saved games that were made from an Instant Action match.
sod	Storm3D Object Definition files (or short: SOD files), information on meshes, the model hierarchy and sprite markers.
wav	audio file
spr	Sprite, defines the optical representation of an element, e.g. a weapon or a map object.
tga	Truevision TGA graphics, used for textures
1 to 6	Also TGA files, but with a different extension.
zfs	Zone File System, contains data that is not to be presented in plain.

Assets and Overriding with Addons

By default, the odf files and tt files are not available as single files. They are stored in the zfs files. Most of them are password protected. The odf files are stored inside assets.zfs. The game loads these into memory first. Afterwards the files from folder addons are loaded on top of it, overwriting any already existing ones (effectively overriding them). This allows for extensive modding of already existing objects.

Tools

Storm3D Tool

For viewing and slightly altering SOD files, the so-called Storm3D Tool may be used. This tool has one problem: It only works with the CD version of Star Trek: Armada (see also Hashes of the Different Versions). And according to its readme, only in version 1.1 or 1.2. This has been tested under Windows 7 and 10. It can be downloaded from http://armadafiles.com/files/armada/utilities/modeling-tools/armada-storm3d-sod-utilities/details.

[ Modding ] [ ODF Files ] [ ODF Directives ] [ Class Labels ] [ Tech Tree Files ] [ SOD Files ] [ Buttons ] [ Wire Frames ] [ Sprites ] [ AI Scripts ] [ Model Hierarchy ] [ Node Names ] [ Emitter Names ] [ Texture Animation Names ] [ Sprite Names ]

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