Introduction to editing

Well, if you came here then you wanted to learn how to modify X-Rebirth; like adding a ship, changing the map, or removing something. If you are an experienced X3AP/TC modder and/or scripter, then you got to a lot of new things to learn.

X-Rebirth is based on a completely new engine, which means many of the old ways of doing things is now redundant. For example, the types folder is gone - meaning there are no more CSV files to edit (yay). However this means a lot of the old tools will no-longer work for X-Rebirth.

Instead, we use XML files. XML files are much better because they allow for more freedom and expansion than before. No longer are we limited to 6 turrets, with 12 guns. We can now have 50-60+ turrets on a single ship, or none. However the only downside to XML is it can be a bit harder to read due to the nesting of text.


You may have seen XML creep-in on X3TC/AP with the introduction of the Mission Director (MD). The bulk of XML's can be found in a library folder, which pretty much refines most things.

This brings me onto the next issue; since we are using XML's , we quite often requiring to look other XML's up. Take the Arawn (ship); it has 60+ subsystems, each one linking to an XML. This can mean there are a lot of look-ups required to completely decode the Arawn statistics (and hence the result is cached on my site).

To edit XML's you don't need any special tools; notepad can do the job but I wouldn't recommend it. So I recommend looking for some good XML's tools before you start.