Colour By Race
Colour By Race is an AL plugin which colours the names of ships and stations across the galaxy. It makes for a cool looking and easier to parse sector map. Most objects only have part of their name coloured, usually the name of their race or corporation.
I've put in substantial effort to make it as performance friendly as possible - it must obviously consume some CPU cycles but I haven't noticed any slowdowns during gameplay.
Hopefully there's still some people left playing X3 who will get some enjoyment out of this. Do let me know if you find any bugs!
I'm posting this to the FL Scripts & Modding forum because as of version 1.1 Colour By Race is compatible with Farnham's Legend.
Colour By Sector
As of version 2.0.0 you can colour the names of sectors by race in X3:FL only. Sector colouring is activated as a separate AL plugin so you can use it standalone or alongside colouring of ships & stations.
- The FL version of Colour By Race requires the [latest version of Cycrow's unofficial patch](https://www.xpluginmanager.co.uk/downlo ... ial-patch/).
- Border sectors can be set to use different colours to core sectors.
- Sector colour will automatically change when the sector changes owner.
- Default sector colours can be changed in the 9964 t file similar to changing default colours for ships & stations.
- Thanks to Cycrow's unofficial patch, coloured sectors are still searchable in the universe map search bar!
Screenshots
You can get a better idea of what the plugin does in the screenshots at this Imgur Gallery.
Installation
Download the latest release at the Github repo. More detailed instructions can be found in the readme.
Colour By Race @ Github
Race Colours
- Argon - \033B - Blue
- Boron - \033G - Green
- Split - \033M - Magenta
- Paranid - \033O - Orange
- Teladi - \033Y - Yellow
- Pirates - \033R - Red
- Goner - \033B - Blue
- Independant - \033C - Cyan - - - (Only applied to XRM Privateer Trading Posts and Strong Arms Weapons Dealer)
- ATF - \033A - Grey
- Terran - \033A - Grey
- Yaki - \033R - Red
Examples
- Argon Freight Transporter
- B. Large Orbital Weapons Platform - - - Example of colouring shortened race name.
- Military Base - - - Example of an object without a race specific string. In this case I've simply coloured the first word of the name.
- Paranid Trading Dock
- NMMC Security Buzzard - - - Corporation names are coloured in the same way as a race.
- Pirate Blastclaw Prototype
- Goner Ozias
- Privateer Trading Post
- ATF Escort Vali
- Orbital Defence Station - - - This is a rare example of an object where I colour the entire name. Some stuff just looks weird partially coloured or prepended with a race name.
- Yaki Assassin Fujin Raider
- Objects which are coloured:
- Most ships.
- Fighter Drones.
- Stations:
- Shipyards
- Docks including Equipment Docks, Trading Docks and Stock Exchanges.
- Corporate HQs.
- XRM Weapons Dealers.
- Any player property is untouched.
- Factories.
- Jump beacons.
- Xenon or Kha'ak (by default). I saw little value in colouring ships which are always hostile.
Explained in detail in the readme.
Optional Files
Optionally files to improve the functionality with certain mods.
- Modified 8513 translation files for Pirate Guild 3. PG3 dynamically renames pirate stations which overwrites any previously set coloured names. I've modified PG3's t files so that pirate stations will include colour in their name. Paste these files into your X3/addon/t/ folder overwriting existing files if necessary.
- Modified ship naming script plugin.mbase.create.ship.name.xml for Military Base Response Revamp. Colours the race name during ship creation. Without this optional script, MBBR ships will remain uncoloured for about half a second after creation.
- Modified ship naming script plugin.salv.al.ship.cfg.xml for Salvage Commands & NPCs. Colours the race name during ship creation. Also added setting of pilot name, skill, morale and aggression and addition of Explorer Command software.
- TC - Yes
- AP - Yes.
- Farnham's Legend - Yes
- X3 Reunion - No
- XRM - Yes, I developed this while playing on an LxXRM installation. The plugin includes code to handle several XRM specific objects.
- Litcube's universe - I've never played so I'm not sure. One player using this plugin with Mayhem 3 reported that it was working fine. Try it and let me know!
- Military Base Response Revamp - Yes, especially if you overwrite MBBR's ship naming script with the included optional script.
- Pirate Guild - Yes, though station names will be overwritten so I strongly advise the optional included translation files.
- Russian (provided by Alexalsp)
- English (my native language)
- German (checked and improved by Olsch)
- French (dubious Google translate translation)
- Spanish (dubious Google translate translation)
- Italian (dubious Google translate translation)
- Czech (dubious Google translate translation)
- Polish (dubious Google translate translation)
- Japanese (dubious Google translate translation)
I post changes in this thread, view the changelog in the readme.