I've never used TibEd, so I don't know. It depends on how flexible the program is; does it load the files it edits automatically or are you able to select which files you want to edit yourself? If you are able to chose the files to open and edit yourself, then you should be able to use TibEd perfectly fine, otherwise it's not going to work.

However, like pretty much all experienced modders are going to tell you, you're much better off not using ini editor programs such as TibEd or SunEdit2k. They do indeed make modding a lot simpler when you first start off, but they'll restrict you from trying out new things, they might create problems that you'll be unable to fix from the program itself and it'll be impossible to create more sophisticated mods with them.
Instead you're best off using XCC Mixer (which comes with the XCC Utilities) to extract the ini files you wish to edit (that'll be rules.ini for starters) from the appropriate mix files (being dta.mix\local.mix in DTA's case) and then editing the ini files in wordpad. It might seem a little incomprehensible at first, but after you get used to it a little you'll find it to be rather self-explaining and you can always take codes of existing units, buildings or weapons as an example when you don't know how to do something.

There's of course also tutorials you can use. For starters, have a look at the following tutorials:
- Creating a new unit
- Getting started with Tiberian Sun modding
- the newbie guide to modding
and after that you can also have a look at PPM's other TS modding tutorials.
Take in mind however, filenames mentioned in any of these tutorials refer to the filenames of Tiberian Sun's original filenames and they might differ slightly for DTA.

I actually was pretty big into modding TS and RA2 a while back. I've done a little of everything: made voxels, made shps, inserted them into the game, made new units, new maps, etc.

I remember most of how to do this manually, but this was just part of the trailer I'm doing (~25% done btw).

Tibed looks for an installation folder, and failing that, asks where the folder is for certain games. I'll try it out when I'm at home tonight.

It seems I got ahead of myself again and explained things unnecessarily

Well, even if TibEd doesn't allow you to chose the files to open yourself, I imagine it might be possible to open TibEd with a HEX editor and then replace the filenames it looks for with DTA's (although I don't have any intention of doing that; IMO if people are unable to use an ini editor and are forced to edit ini files in wordpad, it's only a good thing ).
I doubt anyone will do this to begin with however, considering anyone who can probably wouldn't bother with an ini editor to begin with.

I appreciate the long reply As one who does that often explains what I can, it's good to see there are others who will do the same.

Okay I've modden DTA successfully, But how do I get the AI to be able to build these units in Skirmish mode?

You'll have to edit AI.INI to control which units the AI builds.
Given that you haven't done this before, the easiest way to do this is by replacing all instances of the ID of an existing unit with the ID of your new unit in AI.INI (via the 'Replace All' function of notepad or wordpad) so that the AI will build your new unit instead of the unit of which you replaced the ID.

Ok sweet deal! thanks man, also I saw that the Nod Hijacker is all black...how did you recolor an infantry unit all black? And I'm trying to get the Tanya .shp into this game as well. How would I do that?

Edit: Also, I want the nod AI able to build the heavy tank that would be adding a whole new unit in its arsenal. do i just add the ID in there?

Also, (Sorry for barraging you with questions)....how would I change the color scheme for the color options in the skirmish menu?

I used photoshop.

Extract it from the Red Alert mix files, convert its palette to DTA's unittem palette, create an ecache01.mix file in DTA's main directory, insert the Tanya .shp into it and write the necessary code for it in art.ini and rules.ini (don't forget to create a new sequence for it as well).

The easiest way is to add it to existing taskforces in AI.INI, but if you don't want to do that you'll have to create new taskforces, teams and AI triggers for it.

Open Rules.ini, go to [Colors] and edit the ones that you want to change. Mind that this only affects the ingame color and not the color of the color names or color names themselves. To change the color of the color names you'll have to open dta.dat with a hex editor, goto offset 305E34 and change the HEX RGB codes there (the colors there are in order, starting with gold). To change the color names themselves you'll have to open Language.dll with a resource hacker and search and replace their names there.

Mind that most of the things you asked are for somewhat experienced modders, so if you're having trouble getting this done you can get more detailed tutorials here: http://www.ppmsite.com/forum/index.php?f=30

Ok great, Thanks man!

Bittah,

i wanted to edit the red Color scheme, I want to make it so it looks like the single player "Nod Red Color scheme" You know, where the light tanks bikes and buggies are grey. and the buildings are red. Yea I'm not that experienced in coding...lol

Also, how would i change the REPORT for the sounds of the explosions?

In TD you didn't have the Nod red/grey color scheme in multiplayer to begin with (or all player's playing as Nod would've had grey vehicles) and I doubt you're making singleplayer missions (and if you were, the only way to make Nod's vehicles grey would be by recoloring their SHPs).

To replace a REPORT sound, just replace whatever ID is entered there with any other ID from Sounds.ini and if you want to add a new sound you'll simply have to insert that sound into ecache01.mix or Sounds.mix and add it to Sounds.ini.

If you want to improve your coding experience, just play around a bit, look at how other things have been done and look at the tutorials I linked to before. Try to get some experience with the basics first however and only then move onto more advanced things.

Ok, last question, how do i change what a unit looks like?

did you say it has to do with DTAs unittem palette? how would i go about doing that?

Extract the unit's SHP from Cache.mix, edit it with OS SHP Builder while having the unittem palette selected (you can extract unittem.pal from Cache.mix as well) and insert the SHP into a new Ecache01.mix file once you're done.

ok sounds good thanks again

Bittah, is it possible to give a unit 3 weapons?

No.

Bittah, Im trying to enable the Airtike for GDI. I made the prerequisite building for the Airstrike the GDI helipad. but when the airstrike is ready. I select the target and nothing happens. Why is this?

You also need to add NukeSilo=yes to the building to make it able to fire the Airstrike superweapon. Mind that one faction can only own one building with NukeSilo=yes at the same time (GDI currently has none however, so adding NukeSilo=yes to the GDI helipad should work fine).

Done. so three more things, I want to make the HunterSeeker like the Airstrike where i can select the target. And How do I make a weapon's warhead spawn a gas cloud on top of the explosion? And finally, The tiberium fuel for the power plants, how to I edit it so it doesnt damage the power plant?

Not possible.

Add Particle=GasCloudSys to the weapon's warhead.

Remove the Damage= key from [NUK2_UP] in Art.ini.

ok i'm trying to put the hunter seeker icon in for the sidebar into the conquer.mix and the color for the icon .shp is coming up all distorted :/ am i supposed to put it into the art.ini instead?

and whenever gdi sends in an airstrike EVA says "nuclear weapon launched." wtf lol

Make sure you're using Cameo.pal for the cameo. Also, it's better if you use a new Ecache01.mix file for new SHPs you add to the mod instead of inserting them directly into one of the existing .mix files.

That's because the Air Strike replaces the Multi Missile superweapon from Tiberian Sun and it's hardcoded for the game to always warn the player with the "Missile launch detected" speech (which has been replaced with "Nuklear missile launched" in DTA) whenever a Multi Missile or Chemical Missile has been launched in TS. The only way to get rid of this is by replacing 00-i150.aud by a blank audio file; you can use the dummy.aud file in sounds.mix for this (just extract dummy.aud, rename it to 00-150.aud and then insert it into your new Ecache01.mix).

Ok, So I'm trying to give GDI the SAM Site. I've done that but I want to give them a different SAM Site (the soviet sam site just want them to be different.) So I remember what you said about importing tanya into the game but you said "write the necessary code for it and dont forget to make a new sequence for it as well" what did you mean by that? now I'm still undecided what I want to give GDI, either the AA Gun or another SAM Site but I Imagine the necessary code would be "Image=SAM" underr the sam site?

When the tiberium fuel gets destroyed, I want it to spawn a bunch of gas clouds. How would I go about doing that?

Also why is it that the Apaches and Chinooks aren't the regular .shps from the original cnc95 game? As for the Hunter Seeker, I put the icon.shp in Ecache01.mix and the color is still all distorted. I even tried to open the icon up in .shp builder. I also tried to save it as the proper palette, still nothing

Only infantry have a sequence specified after Sequence=. The SAM-site is structure, so it doesn't need a sequence.
The easiest way to figure out what code is necessary for an infantry, unit or structure, just search the ini files (Art.ini and Rules.ini) for a similar infantry, unit or structure, copy the code of it and then modify it however necessary. Also view the SHPs with OS SHP Editor or XCC Editor to get a better understanding of what frames are referred to in the code.

ok so how would i do the same thing as i did the d particle warhead for the gascloud particle system?

also, do you happen to know why the regular chinooks and apaches arent in the mod?

I don't think I understand your question.

If I wouldn't happen to know why a certain unit isn't in my mod, who would?

To answer your question, I'm not using the original SHPs for the aircraft in DTA simply because SHPs don't work as aircraft with Tiberian Sun's engine. So all aircraft had to be remade as voxels.

Ohhh its your mod?? dude this thing is siiiiick. as you can see i love this thing... nice little sandbox to mess around with too. Thanks for makin this available for everyone.

oh and for the particle system for the tiberium fuel upgrade, what i meant was how do i get it to spawn gas clouds when it gets destroyed...lol sorry

You're welcome. Part of the idea behind (the classic mode of) this mod was also to create something that would allow people to mod TD without the restrictions of TD's engine and with all of the extra features that the TS engine has to offer.

You can't make the power plant only spawn gas when it has the tiberium fuel upgrade; you can either always make it spawn gas when its destroyed or never.

To make it spawn gas when it's destroyed you first need to create a new animation in Art.ini. To keep it simple, just copy this code over to Art.ini:

This animation needs to do at least 1 damage or it won't use the warhead (and thus won't spawn the gas).

After adding this in art.ini, add this new animation (FBALL1GAS) to the [Animations] list in Rules.ini, then go to [NUK2] and change Explosion=FBALL1 to Explosion=FBALL1GAS and you're done.

ok sweet now for that piece of coding...did you just write that up? because how did you know to write something like FBALL for the name?

FBALL1GAS is a name I made up myself. I basically just based that name on the already existing FBALL1 animation since this animation looks the same (it uses Image=FBALL1 after all), but spawns an additional gas cloud.

ahh ok, and im not gunna lie I'm really confused on the AI's taskforces. I'm trying to get NOD to build the heavy tanks, hijackers and cyborgs, and GDI to build the Medics. I'm stuck lol maybe if i see it done i'll be able to get a better picture on how to do it.

As mentioned before, the best way to get the AI to build units when you don't have experience with editing the AI.INI file is by simply editing already existing taskforces.

Hijackers don't work properly most of the time when used by the AI however, so it's not recommended to make the AI build them and the same thing goes for medics, which are in fact completely broken in DTA 1.11.
A medic will simply just start healing a single infantry and then keep healing that same infantry over and over and over again, even if that infantry's health has already been fully restored. The cause of this is an exe hack, which I fixed for the upcoming release (1.12) of DTA.

So concerning the Heavy Tank; you simply look for an existing taskforce that has light tanks in it, like this one for example:

And then either just replace AILTNK with MTNK2 or if you instead want to add the heavy tank as an additional unit to the taskforce, just add it like this:

That 2 indicates the number of MTNK2s (heavy tanks) that will be present in the team.

Oh ok, thanks so much man, I never knew why westwood never gave one of the factions the heavy tank....it was a pretty useful vehicle. now I got a better picture and can mess around with the AI alot more.

You know what would be cool, if someone made like a game like this with the factions in battlefield (United States, Russia, and China) how much time do you think that would take? wouldn't you have to go the .shp builder and make your own buildings and import them into this game? I know you'd have to include the animations of the building being built and all that...be pretty cool

Also the engine these games are run on, i think are the best for RTS games...IMO they never should've went to 3D because this is just too good.

It would have messed up the balance between the factions. Nod is supposed to be a stealthy factions with mainly sneak attacks and hit-and-run attacks, while GDI is better at more frontal attacks. Giving the Heavy Tank to Nod would've completely messed this balance up and giving it to GDI would've simply made the Medium Tank redundant.

Anyone is free to make such a mod for DTA if they want to, but it'd indeed take quite a bit of time since making completely new factions from scratch means they'll also have to create all infantry, vehicles and buildings from scratch and not everyone is capable of doing this. Things made from scratch are also rarely created in OS SHP Builder, but they're first created as 3D models, which are then rendered and converted to SHPs.