Chapter Approved (making your own vehicles)

[Icedust]

Hi everyone, I'm new to this forum bit so bare with me.
Games-Workshop came out with a series of articles by one of their peeps that figured out an awesome system to making your own custom vehicles. My problem is I don't know how to program it into Army builder.. I've tried to look at the manuals and the various tools. Unfortunately I don't know how to add fields and values to make my own Vehicle.

I tried to go into an existing dat file and take an existing vehicle but after all my futzing with it Army Builder told me the file was not readable and would crash my 40k dat file when i tired to open it.


Please Help!! anyone who can A. Point me to an existing forum that shows how to edit existing 40k dat files or B could give me a simple leymens term break down of what i should do in Army Builder to input my vehicles?

Thanks!!

Icedust~

[Mathias]

When selecting the size and type of army, click the clipboard icon in the center of the window. Select roster options, then turn on VDR.

Everything you want has already been implemented, but since it's an optional rule, it's not available in a default roster.

[Icedust]

I went to where you suggested and did find alot of cool ships, unfortunately the one I'm looking for was not in there..

[Mathias]

The Vehicle Design Rules are a framework for getting a rough point value for whatever you create - I didn't think there were any pre-generated vehicles in there.

Where exactly is the source material you're using from?

[Icedust]

I'm using the official GW Chapter Approved book they came out with a while back.. its on page 82. one of the guys that made the model from their staff..but he put in all his stats and rule for it in the book, so all i want to do is create a tag or function or whatever its would be defined as in Army builder and input it into the roster..problem is i dont know how to do that with army builder. and the construct kit that comes with AB does not show you (as far as i can see) what the set up would be useing the Warhammer40k dat setup.

[Mathias]

That's the VDR I've been talking about.

Oddly enough, the VDR unit doesn't appear in Dark Eldar like it does in most other races. You may want to ask about that at ab40k.org. If it were there, it's a simple matter to enter your vehicle one time, then go to the unit menu, and the second to the bottom item is save unit. Then it's just a matter of loading it when you want to use it.

As for entering it into a .dat file, study the ravager and raider in deDat.dat - that'll give you a look at the other DE vehicles and how they're entered.

Also, one of the other roster options is "generic unit" - you could always use that to charge the correct points and force org for your roster, then bring your unit writeup along with you. I know I'd want to see the calculation worksheet before I fought against a VDR unit.

[Icedust]

I don't understand. I've opend up the deDat.dat file for Darkeldar and has done all the inputing of the actual vehicle i used the Ravager as a base, but when i loaded up the file in AB it told me there was an error with the .dat file and locked me out .. ive just posted on the other website you mentioned.

[Mathias]

Remember, unless you create a new .dat file in the same folder, if you make your changes in the deDat.dat file, they will be over-written with the next file update.

There are quite a large number of mistakes I've managed to make while writing datafiles, you'll have to be more specific.

Also, to check for errors without ending the AB program, within AB, go to the settings menu, then "data file debugging", then check "enable data file debugging" (this will stay checked until unchecked, so it only needs to be done once.

After that, while in AB (rather than ABcreator), go to the tools menu, "data file debugging", then "compile data files", and select the 40K files.

ctrl-c is the keyboard shortcut to that command.

Once the files compile without errors, then you can "switch game system" to re-load them and try out your changes.