Modding introduction
Welcome to your first step in modding Halo Wars: Definitive Edition. We used the listed programs before when creating our mods, and suggest you do as well to ensure a seamless tutorial.
>Phoenix mod tool created by kornman00<
^May be abbreviated "PHX" in tutorials
>Notepad++ created by Don Ho<
>Sublime Text 3 created by Jon Skinner, Will Bond<
>WinRAR created by RARlab<
>Paint.Net maintained by Rick Brewster<
^Or any other photo editor, I use this as its light weight
>Visual Studio 2018/2015 created by Microsoft<
^I personally use 2015, 2018 should work the same
Once downloaded, open the RAR for Phoenix, and drag the folder somewhere where you can find it. Open "PhxGUI.exe".
>Phoenix mod tool created by kornman00<
^May be abbreviated "PHX" in tutorials
>Notepad++ created by Don Ho<
>Sublime Text 3 created by Jon Skinner, Will Bond<
>WinRAR created by RARlab<
>Paint.Net maintained by Rick Brewster<
^Or any other photo editor, I use this as its light weight
>Visual Studio 2018/2015 created by Microsoft<
^I personally use 2015, 2018 should work the same
Once downloaded, open the RAR for Phoenix, and drag the folder somewhere where you can find it. Open "PhxGUI.exe".
Once opened, press "Edit ModManifest.txt for Steam".
Select "Add", select the empty space underneath "Directory"
The next step is up to you, you can create a new folder within a directory you know or,
you can create a folder in your C drive, called "Backups". Inside that folder, create "HalowarsDE",
then create inside that a folder called "Overides".
This collection of folders I personally use for my Mod, so that these files are never accidentally deleted or modified.
It is up to you if you want to click the check-mark next to "Always build XML instead of XMB".
If you do it now, its less work for you in the future.
Select "Add", select the empty space underneath "Directory"
The next step is up to you, you can create a new folder within a directory you know or,
you can create a folder in your C drive, called "Backups". Inside that folder, create "HalowarsDE",
then create inside that a folder called "Overides".
This collection of folders I personally use for my Mod, so that these files are never accidentally deleted or modified.
It is up to you if you want to click the check-mark next to "Always build XML instead of XMB".
If you do it now, its less work for you in the future.
To double check to see if this process worked, in "Steam ModManifest", the popup window,
(with your directory selected) press "Open Mod Folder" as well as "Open ModManifest Folder".
These should both open up to your newly created folders / directories.
Next, you're going to want to go back to the "HaloWars1 tool" and click "Browse"
On both "ERA Expand Path" and "ERA Build Output", select your output file, which will be identical
to the directory in the earlier image under "Directory".
Next up, as long as you have Halo Wars Definitive Edition installed via steam, navigate to:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\HaloWarsDE
and then find "root.era", select this file and drag it into the the blank space in the "HaloWars1 tool".
(with your directory selected) press "Open Mod Folder" as well as "Open ModManifest Folder".
These should both open up to your newly created folders / directories.
Next, you're going to want to go back to the "HaloWars1 tool" and click "Browse"
On both "ERA Expand Path" and "ERA Build Output", select your output file, which will be identical
to the directory in the earlier image under "Directory".
Next up, as long as you have Halo Wars Definitive Edition installed via steam, navigate to:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\HaloWarsDE
and then find "root.era", select this file and drag it into the the blank space in the "HaloWars1 tool".
Once dragged into "HaloWars1 tool", give the program some time as its de-compiling thousands of files.
Navigating back to your Overide folder (recommended you have multiple windows open),
you should see all of the extracted files.
Congrats! You have successfully de-compiled the standard game. This is just the multiplayer assets meaning,
campaign assets are not apart of this, just standard units / leaders from the playable UNSC and Covenant.
Every PHX_##.era file is a campaign map, while labelled era files are multiplayer maps. There are some exceptions to this,
like UI Data, you can de-compile these all the same way as "root.era" by dragging the files into "HaloWars1 tool"
you should see all of the extracted files.
Congrats! You have successfully de-compiled the standard game. This is just the multiplayer assets meaning,
campaign assets are not apart of this, just standard units / leaders from the playable UNSC and Covenant.
Every PHX_##.era file is a campaign map, while labelled era files are multiplayer maps. There are some exceptions to this,
like UI Data, you can de-compile these all the same way as "root.era" by dragging the files into "HaloWars1 tool"
Note: To be able to use campaign assets in skirmish or multiplayer, you'll need to de-compile all PHXscn##.era files into your overide folder.