Topic: How do you eliminate the ??? for the ships' names?

[Captain Evans]

What needs to be changed is in the shipnames.txt, correct? So what programs can I edit this file with? I recall that a hex editor can be used on the strings.txt file to make it readable. Can this be done on the shipnames.txt?

Need correct an error in one of the MODs I downloaded.  

[The_Pelican]

You can edit shipnames.txt (& strings.txt) with a program that might be extremely difficult to get hold of, you can search the web, and find millions of references to it, and not find one place where you can download it. This despite the fact it's by far the most popular editing program ever created. This stunningly amazing program is known as........

notepad

Okay, that's enought of the sarcasm, I think. Pretty much every file in SFC3 can be editing using notepad, all the .gf files(save the ones in the model folders) & .txt files can be editing using nothing other than notepad.

[Teeth_03]

Use notepad.No spagetti like the strings files.It looks like this:

Fed-Cruiser|USS Repulse
||USS Berlin
||USS Excelsior
and so on
 

[Captain Evans]

Alrighty... just didn't know what things like <U S S   S e n t i n e l   [square] [square] ÿþ [square] [square]>  meant. Anyway I solved the problem by changing what was in the Classname (defaultcore.txt & defaultloadout.txt).  

[Reliant37]

^
Yeah, the shipnames.txt file looks like gibberish when you open it. I tried converting it into a regular text file, so that the entries looked the way Teeth 03 suggested. The file looks okay to me, but when I tried it out in SFC3, EVERY ship was named ??? -- so that didn't particularly work.

Sarcasm is fine and dandy, but Notepad does not suffice. Unless The_Pelican uses a different kind of Notepad than what Captain Evans and I are using...

Any helpful suggestions? I read somewhere around here that it takes SFC3 a while to recognise newly-added ships during a campaign (i.e. you started a campaign, saved your status, added a new mod, loaded the campaign again, and only after a while does the new ship appear). Could the same be true for the shipnames.txt file, or am I talking complete nonsense?  

[Reliant37]

I don't have Excel--might have to try that at university. I tried Works, but that didn't work. It's not really a spreadsheet file, as far as I can tell, or at least not of a type that I'm familiar with. I'll check out if I can locate the application you mentioned, but in the other thread on the same topic (and at this same forum), it was said that Windows XP users have no problem reading the file, and that they should be able to convert it for use in W98 (which is what I, and others who are wondering about this, are using).