AI War 2:Making Quick Starts

How to make a quick start

Go through the custom lobby and set things up just the way you want. Start the game, and then pause it.

Making The Core QuickStart File

Open the chat/command interface by hitting enter. Now type in "cmd:makequickstart,[the folder for the quickstart],[the name of your quickstart]", and it will generate a tiny file in the quickstart folder for you. You'll then need to navigate there and add a .tooltip file, but that part is just text editing.

Details Of The Command

• makequickstart, [folder name], [quickstart name]
  • Causes a new quickstart to be saved to the quickstarts folder in the new ultra-brief quickstarts format.
  • This quickstart format is required if you want to have future-proof data that does not break with future versions of the game.
  • Example usage:
    • cmd:makequickstart,1-Basic,Helping Hands
      • This would make a replacement for the basic helping hands quickstart.
  • Please note that you need to still add a .tooltip file next to any quickstart. You'll have to do that in your filesystem on your own, but it's just an ASCII text file with narrative information inside it about what the quickstart is about. Otherwise that tooltip will come up blank.
  • When you do this process, it also gives you a note telling you which dlc and mods are going to be required for someone to play that quick start. We had lots of cases in the past of accidentally requiring more than we meant to.

Adding The Tooltip File

Now quit the game and find your quickstart file; it will be in ~/AIWar2/GameData/QuickStarts2/[The folder you said]/.

Now you'll want to create a tooltip file so people will know what sort of game they're getting into. The tooltip file is names [the name of your quickstart].tooltip. That is just a .txt file that happens to have an extension of .tooltip instead.

So at the end of this you have a file called YourQuickStartName.save and YourQuickStartName.tooltip in ~/AIWar2/GameData/QuickStarts2/Community. Now you'll be able to find that quick start under the "Community" section of the Quick Starts menu

If you have one you really like then upload the save and tooltip to the forums and they might get added to the base game!