Last updated: 18/4/2023

The following is a primer for those of you wanting to get started on both playing and even making modded content for Brigador and we encourage you to read all of it. It is not exhaustive, but it will introduce you to basic concepts for modding Brigador. We will expand this documentation over time, and we welcome your feedback. Use Ctrl+F to quickly jump to a relevant section, or click the contents list at the side.

• Section 0. Do I even need the modkit?
• Section 1. What is the modkit and how do I download it?
• Section 2. How do I install the modkit?
• Section 3. How do I install some mods?
• Section 4. How do I use the debug panel and console?
• Section 5. How do I make my own pilots?
• Section 6. How do I make maps?
• Section 7. Can I customize or add sounds?
• Section 8. Can I add new vehicles?
• Section 9. I think I broke something…
• Section 10. Tools, files and other resources
• Credits

This depends on your goals! If for example you wish to:

• add modded content to Brigador
  
• make your own maps
  
• import custom art content (like pilot portraits) into Brigador

…You WILL need the tools that are in the modkit.

If on the other hand you just want to:

• adjust weapons to have an extremely high rate of fire or make a giant screen-filling laser beam
  
• change the UI colors or the lighting of maps (such as for accessibility reasons)
  
• fool around and “cheat”

…These are simple things that can be done via the debug panel which already exists in the game! We will go into more detail about the debug panel and console in Section 4.

The Modkit & Map Editor is a free collection of tools and assets that are added as a separate folder called “modkit” to the /Brigador directory on your computer when you download it from Steam (or GOG, if you purchased it there). It is approximately 420 MB in size. Please note that only downloading this collection of tools and assets does not immediately affect the game.

Here is the link to its page on Steam
https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/468270
If you are having difficulties downloading the modkit via Steam, such as if the game is launching instead of initializing the download, please do the following:

1. Go to your Library
   
2. Right click Brigador to open the context menu and click “Properties…”
   
3. Click the DLC tab
   
4. Check the box in the “Install” column for Brigador Modkit & Map Editor
   
5. Click close.

The download should begin.

Here is the link on GOG if you acquired Brigador there[www.gog.com].

If you acquired the game through a different platform (like itch.io), or still have trouble downloading it either via Steam or GOG, the modkit can also be downloaded directly from our site by clicking here[stellarjockeys.com].

(PLEASE NOTE that this last download method may not directly go to your /Brigador folder by default unlike on Steam or GOG – your download will go to whichever location you tell your browser to place it)

IF YOU WANT TO INSTALL ANY CUSTOM CONTENT INTO THE GAME, YOU WILL NEED TO INSTALL THE MODKIT.
The installation process is simple (more accurately, you are unzipping an archive .zip file to the proper location), but it requires some very specific steps. Please take your time to read the following carefully, assuming you are on Steam and have also followed the download instructions in Step 1.

1. [Optional but recommended]Make a copy of your /Brigador directory in a new location (e.g. copy the Brigador folder from your Steam games library folder to your desktop if you have the space). The file path for your Steam library of games on Windows is typically C:Program Files (x86)Steamsteamappscommon
   
2. Open the /Brigador/modkit folder to see six items, of which two are zip archive files. You will want to Extract "BrigadorModKit.zip" from the /Brigador/modkit folder into your /Brigador directory. Do NOT extract it to the /Brigador/modkit folder. Done correctly, you will also see “dumppack.bat” and “genpack.bat” have appeared in your /Brigador directory.
   
3. Double click "dumppack.bat" and allow it to run completely (this may take some time even on an SSD, don't worry – it will tell you when it's finished). Press Enter on your keyboard when prompted to complete the process.
   
4. Double click "genpack.bat" and allow it to run completely (this may take some time even on an SSD, don't worry – it will tell you when it's finished). Press Enter on your keyboard when prompted to complete the process.
   
5. Launch Brigador.

If Brigador launches without issue – great! You will probably notice that still nothing has really changed to the game. Don’t worry, we’re almost there.

EXPLAINER

What has just happened is that you have added a number of assets to the game’s assets folder. However, to save on load times, Brigador does not load its assets from the assets folder. Instead, it loads its assets from a single file in its root directory called assets.pack.
As said previously, we have only changed the assets folder, and not the pack file. Therefore, to create the environment for adding modded content to the game, we need to first “dump” the old pack file with dumppack.bat to decompress the contents of assets.pack back into text/image format in the assets folder.
Once that process has been completed, we then need to apply the changes that were made to the assets folder and generate a new pack file, which is why we run genpack.bat afterwards. The genpack.bat batch file looks inside the assets folder, gathers and saves a list of all files and their filepaths, and compresses them inside of a single file called assets.pack in the /Brigador root directory. When the new assets.pack is created, the process is complete.

By this point you have successfully downloaded the modkit and extracted the contents to its correct location as outlined in Sections 1 and 2. We are now ready to add modded content to your copy of Brigador. Remember: you can only add mods once the modkit has been properly extracted.

1. Extract "Modkit_CommunityCompilation_v1" from the /Brigador/modkit folder inside your /Brigador directory (messages will appear asking you to overwrite files like global.json – click Yes to All)
   
2. Double click "genpack.bat" and allow it to run completely (this may take some time even on an SSD, don't worry – it will tell you when it's finished). Press Enter on your keyboard when prompted to complete the process.
   
3. Launch Brigador

If Brigador launches without issue – great! When you boot up the game, you will now see all sorts of things have now appeared, like new campaign missions, new pilot portraits, along with new vehicles, weapons and special abilities. Congratulations, you have successfully added the community compilation to your copy of Brigador!
If you have encountered a crash, please try running genpack.bat again before attempting to undo any changes you made, and refer to Section 9 if problems persist.

EXPLAINER

The reason why your computer asked you to overwrite certain files is because those files have been changed in order to apply or display certain things inside the game, such as new additions to the menus.
Now that you have the modkit properly extracted, you have created a developer environment through which custom content can be added to the game. From this point on, if you make any changes to the files outside of the game or add any new content to the game’s assets folder, you will need to run genpack.bat to create a new assets.pack before launching Brigador in order to properly reflect those changes.
In addition, please note that the community compilation is from 2019 and is over a year old at time of writing. More up-to-date community-made content can be found via our Discord server in the #uploads channel. You might want to check out the Powersuit Contest mini map entries[cdn.discordapp.com] too from earlier in 2020. Here is the Discord server link https://discord.gg/QyCPHwm4T9
We do not currently have Steam workshop support. If you have already followed the instructions up to this point, then congratulations – you now know the basic process for adding custom content to Brigador.

INSTALLATION OF THE MODKIT IS NOT REQUIRED FOR THIS SECTION.
Both the debug panel and console exist in the base game of Brigador and are extremely useful for testing things, or simply “cheating” in the game. No special tools are needed to access them.
For the console, press tilde (~) on your keyboard and it will appear at the top of your screen, allowing you to type in various things (if you have ever enabled noclip on a source game like Half-Life this will seem familiar). Both the console and debug panel perform similar things, but depending on what you’re doing, one method may be faster or more useful than the other. There are a few specific things that can only be toggled via the console. You can also run the console in a separate, view-only window on startup. To do this on Steam:

1. Right click Brigador in your Steam Library and click Properties…
   
2. Under General, click Set Launch Options
   
3. In the window that opens, enter “--console” (without quotation marks)
   
4. Click OK, then click Close
   
5. Launch Brigador– an additional window should open as well as the game window.

A separate window will now open that will display all the major operations the game is going through. This has a variety of uses, such as being able to see potential reasons for crashes without having to refer to log.txt (see Section 9 for more details). You may wish to run the game windowed in order to see it side-by-side with the game.
Pressing F1 on your keyboard will open the imgui debug panel on PC (if you are on mac OS, you may need to press Cmd + F1). The first time you do this, you will see a blue/purple bar overlaying the game with several tabs.
https://i.imgur.com/Rx0ZoIu.png
Click and drag the lower right corner of this bar to expand it.
https://i.imgur.com/0ir1PI9.png
Press F1 again to hide the debug panel. Here are short explainers for each tab in the debug panel.

• devmode – checking the box turns on “devmode” and makes several keybinds active when you have deployed into a level. Here are those keybinds, and what happens when you press them:
  Q – teleport to where your mouse cursor is placed
  Tab – toggle between regular camera zoom and full map zoom
  F4 – reloads the level being played with the exact same seed, and maintains your player status and position (will pause the game after reloading, press P to unpause)
  F5 – reset the entire game
  P – pauses the action
  

  While in a paused state
  right arrow (→) – advance the game by a single frame
  left arrow (←) – enable free camera mode and move with WASD keys

  Home – immediately “wins” the current level and takes you to the results screen even if you didn’t get the stated objectives
  Outside of an active level, devmode also makes the “unlocks” option visible at the bottom of Settings > General. Toggling this option removes all progression unlocks and everything in the game can be accessed i.e. as if you have 100%’d everything.
  PLEASE NOTE: “devmode” is the only checkbox that disables Steam achievements when you turn it on.
  
• invisible – Makes you invisible to all enemy units in the game. Enemy units can still “hear” you, however, but they will not fire at you.
  
• deaf – Prevents all enemy units from hearing your vehicle, its weapon fire or explosions. Enemy aggression still functions, but only upon directly seeing the player, or being damaged by the player.
  
• infiniteammo – Player weapons will never run out of ammo.
  
• godprops – Makes all environmental elements that are tile blockers (i.e. building structures) invulnerable. Very small things like signage (known as “minis”) will still be destructible. Projectile weapons with sufficiently high penetration (e.g. the Zeus railgun) will still pass through buildings.
  Checkboxes can be combined and you can still obtain achievements on Steam with them enabled (except for devmode).
  
• Max framerate – An adjustable slider that caps the max frame rate for the game. It is useful if you're having issues with overheating. You can Ctrl+click the number on the slider to manually type in a value.
  
• God mode – Grants three options for invincibility:
  OFF: Default behavior for both player and NPCs
  PLAYER: Player no longer takes damage
  EVERYONE: Neither the player nor NPCs take damage
  Below that on the main tab are a series of expanding menus. Most of them are a series of flags that in their default state set various things to be invisible to the player.
  
• ►Collision avoidance – Visualizes the areas which NPCs will avoid colliding with for the purposes of pathfinding e.g. this tells enemy treadbikes when and where they can go fast.
  
• ►Influence maps – Visualizes the “influence” of the player character and NPCs in a level. For example if the player is shooting a lot into one spot it will lower the path priority of that route for AI to make it more likely they’ll come up behind you and avoid “choke points”.
  
• ►Audio listener debug – A tool for FMOD implementation in Brigador that determines how sounds are played relative to your camera’s current position. You can visualize these things in-engine by checking “Enable debugging draws” and the subsequent spheres that appear. You can also change the min and max radius of this tool via the sliders. Brigador uses FMOD version 1.09.
  
• ►Miscellaneous – This section generally governs what is drawn on screen and shown to the player. Three of the boxes are checked by default like r_props. Unchecking r_props makes all buildings appear invisible, which checking r_prophitboxes will show the hitboxes of environmental props. Other boxes may show you application information and memory usage. The console can also be used to enable these options.
  
• ►Language Select – Allows you to switch between the User Interface languages the game is available in.
  
• ►Steam stats and Achievements – Allows you to reset your achievements and stats.
  
• ►Current Steam Stats In-Memory – Shows you how many faction kills you have of enemy NPCs.

Finally, at the bottom you will see your game’s full version (or “build”) details, and a button that lets you Copy build string. Clicking this button will copy the build string to your clipboard and allow you to paste it into a bug report, for example.

(...continued in part ii)

(...continued from part i)

This tab allows you to jump into any level loaded into the game against any enemy faction at any strength level. This is for if you want to play one-off levels under very specific circumstances.

• Level – Opens a drop-down menu listing all levels loaded into the game, including ones that aren’t normally accessible. For example "level_allprops_01.json" contains every single environment asset (or “prop”) built for Brigador loaded into a single level. This level is also useful for testing weapon efficacy against different environment types
  
• Gang – Chooses which “gang” (or enemy faction) to fight against. Double click to select one from the list. Right clicking allows you to edit that gang in the Data Editor tab
  
• Shuffle depots – Randomizes what ammo types the depots of the level will contain
  
• Unit objective – Check this box to make the level have a garrison objective i.e. kill x number of enemy units.
  
• Boss objective – Check this box to make the level have a captains objective i.e. kill x number of enemies marked as captains.
  
• Prop objective – Check this box to make the level have a structures objective i.e. destroy x number of marked buildings.
  Check none of the previous three boxes and completion of any of these three main objectives will complete the level.
  
• Strength – A slider that determines the difficulty level of the enemy spawns loaded for the level. Range of values available will depend on what gang has been selected.

When you have selected a level and a gang, a Load button will appear. Click it to load the level according to the settings you have chosen. Player vehicle is chosen based on what is currently equipped or what was last used if loading from the main menu. If you want to change your current vehicle in level, you can do so via the MECH DEBUG tab.
This tab lets you change what vehicle, pilot, weapons, special ability and horn you are currently using. Depending on the mech and weapons chosen, the order of these menus may vary slightly in order of appearance.

• Mode – Choose between “Inspect” and “Select Mech”. With the debug panel still open, “Select Mech” will allow you to click on any unit (including your own) to view and change details about it, such as its health values, behavior, and AI state.
  
• Draw target debug – Checkbox that is only for use when an AI-controlled enemy is targeting something while using the “Select Mech” feature mentioned above.
  
• ►Player Mech – Expands into a lot of options
  Select player – Button that reveals three more menus: Mech State, Guns and AI State. Mech State lets you choose various values for things like health and armor. Guns shows you information on the mech’s weapons and horn. AI State shows you your current AI state is (usually PLAYER).
  Kill – Click this to either kill the player and fail the level, or kill a selected unit.
  Respawn – Button that spawns a player-controlled vehicle according to the parameters set. Like pressing F4 in devmode, but for your vehicle instead of the whole level.
  Pilot – Similar to level select. Left click opens a drop-down menu listing all pilots loaded into the game, including ones that aren’t normally accessible. Right click lets you edit the selected pilot.
  Mech – Similar to level select. Left click opens a drop-down menu listing all vehicles loaded into the game, including ones that aren’t normally accessible. Right click lets you edit the selected mech in the DATA EDITOR tab. Here is a reference list of almost every single vehicle and their associated file name within the game https://i.imgur.com/qAyCTAk.png
  Special – Similar to level select. Left click opens a drop-down menu listing all special abilities loaded into the game, including ones that aren’t normally accessible. Right click lets you edit the selected special.
  Weapon [0] (horn0) – Similar to level select. Left click opens a drop-down menu listing all weapons loaded into the game. Right click lets you edit the selected weapon. Despite the label, you cannot change the horn via this tab – it requires editing the vehicle itself via the DATA EDITOR tab – but you can swap to another weapon in the list. Please refer to Section 7 for customizing sounds.
  Weapon [1] (xxx0) – Similar to level select. Left click opens a drop-down menu listing all weapons of that type loaded into the game. Right click lets you edit the selected weapon. Where xxx = weapon hardpoint e.g. small, auxiliary, heavy, etc.
  Weapon [2] (xxx0) – Similar to level select. Left click opens a drop-down menu listing all weapons of that type loaded into the game. Right click lets you edit the selected weapon. Where xxx = weapon hardpoint e.g. small, auxiliary, heavy, etc.
  Please consult this color-coded reference sheet of weapons[i.imgur.com] to more easily find the one you want for the particular vehicle in use.
  WARNING: CHANGING A WEAPON WHOSE HARDPOINT DOES NOT MATCH WITH A VEHICLE’S DESIGNATED HARDPOINTS MAY NOT WORK AS INTENDED OR EVEN CRASH YOUR GAME.

When you right click any selectable element in the MECH DEBUG tab, it will take that resource file to the DATA EDITOR tab wherein you can adjust the properties of the chosen resource, such as completely removing the cooldown on weapons that usually take seconds to fire. Any changes you make will be immediately live. However, if you wish to KEEP any changes made, you will have to save these data changes. Please read on further to the DATA EDITOR tab for more details.
As mentioned in Section 2, Brigador uses a pack file structure. The interface in this tab allows you to browse the resources within the pack file.
At the top you will see three buttons, with a fourth appearing when a resource is selected

• Write back dirty – This will save ALL files that have been modified (i.e. the ones that changed color from white to red in the list).
  
• Write back everything – This will do the same thing as dumppack.bat (refer to the explainer at the end of Section 2 for details).
  
• Reset columns – Resets the width of columns to their default if you have altered their width.
  
• Clear all selections – Clears all selected resources from appearing in the DATA EDITOR tab.

The drop-down menu defaults to showing ALL resources, but clicking it shows you categories of resources in alphabetical order. For example, if you wish to view all resources to do with the lighting of a level, select RESOURCE_LIGHTING to see all resources of that type.
Below the drop-down menu is a text field for inputting search terms. Multiple search terms need to be separated by commas.
Lastly, the chief thing on this tab is the table that by default displays all resources in the pack file. You can sort these assets by clicking the top of each column.
Left click a resource in the list to select them for editing under the DATA EDITOR tab.
Please note that resources that are packed but that the game doesn’t know how to read are tagged as RESOURCE_RAW while resources that are currently loaded into the game are marked with an asterisk *.
(...continued in part iii)

(...continued from part ii)
This tab lets you alter the data of the majority of resources in use by the game. If you have no resource selected, this tab will be mostly empty. Let us focus on only one example of using the DATA EDITOR with one particular file, which will also be one used a lot in modding.

1. In the PACK FILE tab, search for the word “global” (without quotation marks)
   
2. Left click global.json in the list
   
3. Navigate to the DATA EDITOR tab to see assets/data/global.json listed
   
4. You will now see over 20 different expandable ► menus appear on the right side of the screen, allowing you to adjust a very large number of things mostly to do with the game’s user interface and determines what appears on the frontend to the user.

Depending on what file you inspect in the DATA EDITOR, the available menus will differ accordingly. For example, opening a vehicle resource file will allow you to access and change the values related to acceleration or turning speed, while opening a weapon resource file will allow you to access and change the values related to damage and reload times.
ANY changes you make to a resource via the DATA EDITOR will cause that resource’s entry in the list to change its color to red. This means that the game has registered the values have changed from their initial state, and are live (meaning you can try out the new walk speed or fire rate for the selected vehicle or weapon – although in some cases you may need to either reload the map by pressing F4, or completely restart the level by resigning and re-deploying) but they are unsaved.
If you wish to keep changes made to a resource after you quit Brigador, you should click the Save changes button. Alternatively, clicking Discard changes will revert it to the state you initially accessed the resource.
PLEASE NOTE that saving changes is permanent and can only be undone either by re-entering the exact values you started with for that resource, or verifying the integrity of your game files on Steam (refer to Section 9 for more details).
Check the r_messages box at the top to visualize the AI messages of NPCs in game. This will show you how the enemy’s “senses” and communication works. You can change the color of each AI message’s visualization, and also their duration via this tab.
When this tab is selected and the debug panel still open, you can use select the distance to a point relative to the player’s vehicle by left-clicking once, and then an area from that clicked point by clicking a second time as the circle expands. The numerical values for each are displayed in the debug panel tab. This is useful as a general measurement tool, such as determining the spotting range of enemy units, or weapon impact areas.
The money slider allows you to adjust the amount of money the player has in the bank. Press Ctrl + Left Click to manually enter a value.
The four other earnings sliders will affect the level completion score respectively.

• ►Rendering mode – Allows you to switch between four modes to highlight different aspects of the sprite renders e.g. select “Diffuse” to see a level without any lighting applied.
  
• ►Lighting – Shows you which lighting profile or “weather” is currently in use for the loaded level. You can check “Gamma Compensation” on or off. By default, it is enabled.
  
• ►Occluded colors – Lists the settings for various occluded colors in game. Occluded colors or “occlusion overdraw” is another word for the “x-ray effect” that occurs when units appear behind buildings (or “props”) within the game.
  
• ►Salvage & Damage Darkening – Lists the lighting values related to destroyed vehicles and props. When vehicles are “destroyed” in Brigador (i.e. when their health is reduced to zero), what actually happens is the same vehicle remains in place, usually in a “crouched” state, but to differentiate it from units that have been hit with an EMP, the vehicle’s “hulk” is darkened to show that it’s been destroyed.
  
• ►Active Camo – Lists the lighting values related to the Active Camo special ability.
  
• ►UI – Lists the values related to the User Interface. The UI slider has a default value of 0.000 and you can alter the size of the various MENU elements. Please note that setting this value too high may cause text or clickable elements to disappear off your screen.

• ►GL Info – Tells you information about your Graphics Library.
  
• ►Draw Buffers – Provides you debug info on what’s going on in a particular level
  
• ►Memory usage – Shows you how much GPU and RAM is in use
  
• ►Fonts – Shows you Font information
  
• ►Gibs – Gibs are anything that “come off” a building or a vehicle, or effects like sparks.

This tab is intended for internal use and is a detailed profiler for the various subsystems in the game.

PLEASE NOTE: Any changes to game data that are saved while in-game will propagate to the local .json files and this is permanent. If you have any unsaved changes to game data when you attempt to quit Brigador by normal means (e.g. not Alt + F4 or hitting your computer’s power button), you will see a message stating “There are unsaved data changes!”. If you wish to keep changes you have made in game, please save your data via the F1 debug panel’s PACK FILE or DATA EDITOR tab. If you wish to undo changes made, please refer to Section 9.

INSTALLATION OF THE MODKIT IS REQUIRED FOR THIS SECTION.
PLEASE REFER TO SECTIONS 1 AND 2
It is possible to add your own pilot portrait art to the game, but the process begins outside the game. Adding a new pilot requires the creation of four things:

• a new folder in Brigador/assets/_modkit/ e.g. pilot_test
  
• a .json data file for the new pilot for the new folder e.g. pilot_test.json
  
• an RGB .png image saved at 8 bits per channel with the dimensions of 450x800 pixels (i.e. pilot image in menus) e.g. pilot_test.png
  
• an RGB .png image saved at 8 bits per channel with the dimensions of 72x128 pixels (i.e. transparent pilot image in level) with _hud added to the end of the filename e.g. pilot_test_hud.png

The folder is to keep the data file and two image files in the same place and will help with file pathing. Most image manipulation program such as GIMP[www.gimp.org] can be used to export your image files with the above specifications.
The .json file must be in the following layout below. We are using the existing “Steve” pilot as an example. Try to find pilot_steve.json in Brigador/assets/data/pilots and open it via Notepad on Windows.


Let’s save this file as pilot_test.json in our new Brigador/assets/_modkit/pilot_test folder to avoid disrupting the original file. Now for the implementation:

1. Before launching Brigador, change the file path contained within the “portrait” and “hud_portrait” fields of your pilot_test.json pilot file to match the file path of the new portrait and hud images e.g. assets\_modkit\pilot_test\pilot_test.png and assets\_modkit\pilot_test\pilot_test_hud.png respectively. Save and close the file.
   
2. Return to the Brigador root directory and double click "genpack.bat" and allow it to run completely (this may take some time even on an SSD, don't worry – it will tell you when it's finished). Press Enter on your keyboard when prompted to complete the process.
   
3. Launch Brigador.
   
4. Press F1 to open the debug panel, check the box marked “devmode” in the MAIN tab, and press F1 again to close the debug panel.
   
5. Go to SETTINGS > GENERAL in the game and scroll to the bottom to disable the UNLOCKS option. Everything that costs money in the game to acquire will be 100% unlocked and accessible.
   
6. Go to FREELANCE (or ACQUISITIONS) in the game and press F1 again to open the debug panel.
   
7. Navigate to the PACK FILE tab, and enter “global” (without quotation marks) into the filter field below ALL.
   
8. Left click global.json and navigate to the DATA EDITOR tab.
   
9. Scroll down through the menus in the tab to find ►Pilots and click the arrow to expand the menu. You will be presented with an ordered list of pilot files.
   
10. Scroll down to the bottom to find the “Add new…” button and click it.
    
11. Click *NONE* in the new pilot entry to open a drop-down menu. Double click to select your recently-created “assets/_modkit/pilot_test/pilot_test.json” from the list. Press F1 again to close the debug panel.
    
12. Scroll through the list of pilots on screen. Your new pilot and its portrait image should now appear within the list of pilots (likely at the very bottom). To change the position of the pilot in the PILOTS list, press F1 to open the debug panel again and click and hold the “Drag” button and move the new pilot element up or down the list.
    
13. Play a FREELANCE mission with your new pilot to check the HUD version of your portrait in a level.
    
14. If you are happy with your new pilot entry addition, press F1 to open the debug panel and click the “Save changes” button in the DATA EDITOR tab to permanently add it to the game. If you are not happy with the new pilot addition, click “Discard changes” and all the changes you made to global.json will be reverted to their initial state. If you encounter any bugs, please refer to Section 9.

Congratulations on adding your own pilot portraits to the game.

EXPLAINER

In order for us to add an art asset, we require the installation of the modkit outlined in Section 2 and specifically the genpack tool. The genpack tool knows to look in Brigador/assets/_modkit/ for any new files, and writes them to the assets pack file, making it possible for the game to load the new portrait art assets in the game. Without doing this, the game will not be able to display the new assets.
We use pilot_test for the file and folder names, but these names are purely placeholder and are not frontend-visible – you can call these files whatever you think is most convenient to you. We also keep the files within one folder within Brigador/assets/_modkit to keep the file pathing consistent, particularly if we wish to share this content with other players– all they need to do is save that one pilot_test folder to their own Brigador/assets/_modkit and just follow the steps after successfully running genpack.bat.
Proceed to part ii of this section to learn how to change other parts of the pilot.json.

INSTALLATION OF THE MODKIT IS REQUIRED FOR THIS SECTION.
PLEASE REFER TO SECTIONS 1 AND 2
After we have added pilot portrait art, we will also want to give the pilot a name, a text description and configure the pilot's characteristics (Start Difficulty, Victory Bonus, Payout Multipliers, etc.). We do this via a combination of the debug panel (detailed in Section 4) and using a file contained in a separate folder outside the game. We can use the existing test "Steve" pilot from before, or any pilot of our choosing.

To find a pilot's .json file in the debug panel:

1. Launch Brigador and arrive at the game's main menu.
   
2. Press F1 to open the debug panel
   
3. Navigate to the PACK FILE tab, and enter “global” (without quotation marks) into the filter field below ALL.
   
4. Left click global.json and navigate to the DATA EDITOR tab.
   
5. Scroll down through the menus in the tab to find ►Pilots and left click the arrow to expand the menu. You will be presented with a list of pilot files that is in the same order as the list of PILOTS within the in-game menu (e.g. pilot_loy_02,json at the top is Norman Osberger)
   
6. Scroll down to find either your test pilot or the pilot you wish to edit.
   
7. Right click the relevant pilot.json file to examine it within the data editor tab. You should see something like the image below

This window contains the name field, a description field, and a number of sliders and other drop down menus that allow the user to configure that selected pilot's characteristics. Please keep a note of the text in the description field as we will need it for later, e.g. pilots.pilot_steve.description or pilots.pilot_loy_02.description

To change a pilot's name via the debug panel, you can simply overwrite the string that exists in the name field e.g. pilots.pilot_steve.name or pilots.pilot_loy_02.name with whatever text you want the name to be. When a .json file has been modified in any way, you will see the file name change to the color red in the list. In order for your changes to take effect and persist between game sessions, you will need to click the Save changes button that appears in the DATA EDITOR tab when a .json file has been altered.

To change a pilot's characteristics like the price or victory bonus, you can adjust the values by using sliders found below the description field when a pilot's .json file is selected. You can also press Ctrl + Left Click on a slider to manually enter an exact value.

Changing a Brigador pilot's text description requires a different set of steps outside the game.

1. Before launching Brigador, navigate to the directory on your computer where the Brigador executable is found. For Steam users on Windows this is typically found in C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonBrigador.
   
2. If you have already installed the community compilation, you should see a folder titled strings in that directory. If you do not see a folder with that name, but have installed the modkit as outlined in Sections 1 and 2, then create a new folder titled strings (all lower case letters).
   
3. Open Notepad on your computer, or any text program capable of saving files as the .json type.
   
4. In this program, copy and paste the following template of text
   
   { "DESCRIPTION STRING":"DESCRIPTION TEXT" }
5. Replace DESCRIPTION STRING with the exact string from the pilot's json whose description we wish to change e.g.
   
   { "pilots.pilot_loy_02.description":"DESCRIPTION TEXT" }
   Note that the string MUST be nested within quotation marks.
   
6. Replace DESCRIPTION TEXT with whatever text you want for that pilot's text description e.g.
   
   { "pilots.pilot_loy_02.description":"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. In eu mollis quam, eget lacinia eros. Vivamus nisl est, euismod blandit orci vitae, viverra molestie nunc..." }
   Note that the text MUST be nested within quotation marks.
   
7. Save this file as a *.json type in Notepad to the strings folder that should be located in the strings folder you found earlier i.e. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Brigador\strings. If you cannot choose the file type, append .json to the file name e.g. pilottest.json
   
8. Close Notepad and, as in Section 2, double click genpack.bat in Brigador's directory and allow it to run completely. Press Enter on your keyboard when prompted to complete the process.
   
9. Launch Brigador and inspect your pilot's new description text.

Congratulations on changing the text to your pilot.

EXPLAINER

The debug panel's DATA EDITOR has a character limit on how much text can be manually inputted into the description field due to how Brigador's localization feature works. However, we can replace what description text appears for a menu entry through the use of the strings folder and a separate .json file, provided that the description string nested in quotation marks in the file that has been added to the strings folder is the same as the string found in the description field in the relevant pilot.json. Lastly, we need to run genpack.bat in order for this new asset to be added to the game's packfile.

INSTALLATION OF THE MODKIT IS REQUIRED FOR THIS SECTION.
PLEASE REFER TO SECTIONS 1 AND 2
It is possible to create and add your own maps to campaign and freelance to the game, but the process begins outside the game. We recommend watching this recorded stream that will take you through the map-making process while you go about building and exporting your own level.
https://youtu.be/yGlhwe8hxTc

1. Make sure you have installed the modkit as outlined in Section 2.
   
2. Go to the Brigador/modkit folder and double click TiledMapEditor_installer.exe to install it on your computer. Tiled is the map editing program we use to make the game’s levels. Files can be saved as .tmx file types for use in the editor and exported as .json file types to be played in the game.
   
3. Open level_ALLSTARTER_usethistobuildnewlevels.tmx which you will find in the Brigador/assets/tiledmaps folder. This provides you with the bare minimum to make a functional level: a single player spawn point, a single objective, and a single exit gate all on a walkable area.
   
4. Save this starter map under a new name in Brigador/assets/tiledmaps/ to avoid overwriting the template. The name should follow the format “level_YOURNAMEHERE” e.g. level_testlevel
   
5. Start experimenting with placing various things in the editor as you follow the video above.
   
6. Export your level into the Brigador/assets/levels folder as a .json file.
   
7. Launch Brigador, press F1 to bring up the debug panel and use the LEVEL SELECT tab described in Section 4 to load up your level in the game.
   
8. Enjoy your creation.

Here are some IMPORTANT things to note about Tiled:

• If Tiled is not working properly or not displaying any placeable assets, make sure the .tmx file you are using is located in Brigador/assets/tiledmaps/
  
• Always save editor-only files as a .tmx in Brigador/assets/tiledmaps/
  
• Always export levels to be played in-game as a .json in Brigador/assets/levels/
  
• If your editor or game is crashing during or after export, it is highly likely you have placed the wrong thing on the wrong layer, e.g. tiles meant for the prop layer must not go on the map layer. Toggle each layer’s checkbox on and off to double check that maps, props etc. are in their correct layers.
  
• Each level at minimum must have a player spawn, an objective, and an exit.
  
• Always use the correct tileset with the correct layers.
  
• Place your ground tiles on the “map” layer (e.g. flat squares of road and such) and be sure to have the map layer selected.
  
• Place your so-called ‘flypaper’ tiles on the “traps” layer (e.g. mud, railway tracks etc.) and be sure to have the traps layer selected.
  
• Place your props on the “props” layer (e.g. buildings, trees, walls, orbital guns etc.) and be sure to have the props layer selected.
  
• The “walk” layer is usually autogenerated as you place ground tiles on the “map” layer. If it is not, you can press A on your keyboard to force the editor to autogenerate the walk layer. PLEASE NOTE that this can take several minutes depending on your level’s size.
  
• File naming conventions are important: “level_” is used for freelance levels, while “mlevel_” is the used for campaign missions. If you plan on adding the levels either to Freelance of Campaign, you will need to do this via editing the global.json in the DATA EDITOR tab. Otherwise, you can manually load your level by using the LEVEL SELECT tab in the debug panel.
  
• Do not place more than eight turrets on a map – it will crash the game when it attempts to load it.
  
• Sometimes a layer may just disappear while you are using Tiled. Simply restart the program.
  
• The very last tile in t_alltiles is the “objective” tile. The “objectives” layer is where the “objective” tile is placed. Anything that shares a tile with the “objective” tile will be designated as a mission objective.

Here are some USEFUL things to note about Tiled:

• Despite the above statements, it IS possible to double stack tiles from props and traps, allowing you to do things like combine two sets of walls, or mix buildings with train tracks on the same tile. This is very useful for adding extra detail to your levels.
  
• Brigador has three “zoo levels” in which every single vehicle, building, light etc. is placed in a level for you to inspect. These levels can be loaded up via the LEVEL SELECT tab in the debug panel and are called level_allmechs_01.json, level_allprops_01.json, and level_allprops_lighttest.json.
  
• A single tile is 2x2 units. Vertically the game is 70 units tall, 56 units across on a 1920x1200 screen. You can use the RANGE FINDER tab of the game’s debug panel to measure distances. The tool works when using the paused free camera (Press P to Pause, then left arrow to toggle when paused and WASD to move the camera) allowing you to measure multiscreen distances if you need to.
  
• To make the trigger volumes for level exits visible inside the game, open the console by pressing tilde (~) on your keyboard and type in r_debugexits 1. Type in r_debugexits 0 to make them invisible again.
  
• Be careful with using the fill tool. Your computer may be brought to a standstill if you accidentally fill the entire available map, so be sure to only use the fill tool on small sections that will not spill over to fill the available map space.
  
• A gap of two tiles wide between buildings should be considered the bare minimum for a vehicle to pass through. A width of three or four tiles is recommended for good “game feel” purposes.
  
• Too many lights placed in a level can cause performance issues, especially if the lights overlap.
  
• If a level has no comm stations, the game will behave as if the comm station has been destroyed, which means spotters will take longer to raise the alarm. If a level has no power stations, panic walls can never be permanently lowered once they are raised.
  
• Empty spaces that players cannot walk over will not block projectiles (providing there are no indestructible walls).
  
• If your objective is a large structure that covers multiple tiles, such as one of the suburban prefabs, avoid making every single tile it’s on an objective marker – the end result will look cluttered.
  
• Put train tracks down before you place trains.

Once again, we recommend watching the video at the top of this section for an in-depth explanation and general advice on level design.
We will expand this section at a later time to explain how to make loadouts and other more advanced mapping techniques.

INSTALLATION OF THE MODKIT MAY BE REQUIRED FOR THIS SECTION.
REFER TO SECTIONS 1 AND 2 IF INSTALLATION IS REQUIRED.

The short answer is yes! The longer answer is: it’s complicated. Let’s start with a simple one, such as changing a vehicle’s default horn to something else.

There are several ways to adjust the horns in the game, but let’s go with changing the horn for one vehicle.

1. Load up any level in any mode in Brigador (Freelance or Campaign – it doesn’t matter)
   
2. Press F1 to open up the debug panel and select the MECH DEBUG tab.
   
3. Left Click ►Player Mech to expand the menu and right click “Mech” to be taken to the DATA EDITOR tab.
   
4. Click ►Guns and in weapons(0) left click the .json file to open up a searchable list
   
5. Type in “horn” (without quotation marks) in the field above the list to filter all available horns found in assets/data/weapons/
   
6. Double click whichever horn you want to swap to from the list.
   
7. Press F1 to close the debug panel.
   
8. Press Esc on your keyboard, click RESIGN, then click DEPLOY and ENGAGE to completely reload the level.
   
9. Press H on your keyboard, or whatever button you have bound horn to. Your vehicle should now play a different horn from its default.
   
10. When quitting Brigador, if you wish to make this vehicle’s horn change permanent, be sure to click the Save changes button in the DATA EDITOR tab. Otherwise, quit the game to keep it as the original default

EXPLAINER

We need to completely reload the level because it’s not possible to “hot swap” horns via the method described above. We can hot swap horns via a different method, but it involves inspecting (right-clicking) the selected horn in the DATA EDITOR tab, scrolling down to ►FMOD params and making changes to either firing_event or the two looping events if it’s marked as “use_looping_sound”. HOWEVER, unlike the method we propose above, this hot swap method will apply the horn’s changes to ALL vehicles that use the same horn and not on an individual vehicle basis.

If we want to start changing or adding sounds to Brigador, we will need both a tool called FMOD Studio and the original Studio project file for it. FMOD is not included in the modkit but you can acquire a license to use it for personal use via signing up on their site.

1. Download and install FMOD Studio version 1.09.21[www.fmod.com] from FMOD’s site. You will need to register to use this product for free.
   
2. Download and unarchive the sound archive[drive.google.com]. PLEASE NOTE file size is nearly 1.9 GB.
   
3. Open the FMOD Studio project file in FMOD Studio. Wherever you unarchived the BrigadorSoundsArchive.zip, you will find the project file in soundsstudio.
   
4. Have fun!
   
5. Replace the .bank files found in BrigadorsoundsstudioBuildDesktop

Currently, this section is unfinished, because we have not explored making audio changes sufficiently to write comprehensively on the subject. Depending on what changes you make to Brigador, such as if you have added certain sound events, you may or may not require the use of genpack.bat from the modkit. On the other hand, if you have a modified audiobank that has no additions to it, it should be possible to copy and paste that audiobank into BrigadorsoundsstudioBuildDesktop without needing any of the modkit tools.

EXPLAINER

You will notice that in BrigadorsoundsstudioBuildDesktop you will see three BANK files, as opposed to various folders of .wav files like in BrigadorSoundsArchive.zip. This is because all the sounds are compressed into these bank files. The audio bank functions as something the game simply references, in that the game searches for what it's told to in the audio banks (e.g. explosion_huge is referenced when petrol stations or orbital guns explode).
The events are identified by their GUID codes, not event names, so you can rename explosion_huge to “boom” and move it from the “Explosions” folder to a new “not explosions” folder. The game will still know where to find the audio event and use it.

INSTALLATION OF THE MODKIT IS REQUIRED FOR THIS SECTION.
PLEASE REFER TO SECTIONS 1 AND 2

There are 126 vehicles that appear in Brigador. At least 60 of them have been balanced for the player and are available for selection in FREELANCE mode. This section will show you how you can add the non-player vehicles and will expand on what was introduced in Section 4.
If we wish to make an existing vehicle playable, we need to know what *.json filename the vehicle uses. The filenames for Loyalist vehicles are prefaced with “loy_”, Corvids are “corv_”, and Spacers are “spc_”. Examples:

• The Loyalist “Prowler” tank is loy_tank_01.json
  
• The Corvid “Eightball” light-mech is corv_lmech_03.json
  
• The Spacer “Sledger” power suit is spc_suit_03.json

You can refer to the Vehicles Reference sheet[i.imgur.com] for the majority of the vehicles, but please note that this image dates back to Brigador’s 1.0 release in 2016, so a handful of post-release vehicles are missing.
Alternatively, to browse all the vehicles the game knows about while in a level:

1. Load up any level normally (CAMPAIGN or FREELANCE mode).
   
2. Press F1 on your keyboard to open the debug panel, and navigate to the MECH DEBUG tab.
   
3. Left-click “Mech” found under ►Player Mech to open a list of available vehicles.
   
4. Left-click to choose an a different vehicle *.json file from the list.
   
5. Click “Respawn” in the same tab then press F1 on your keyboard to close the debug panel and view your chosen vehicle.

Whatever method you use, once you have chosen a vehicle, you will likely need to balance it to make it suitable for player use. Let us use the Loyalist Light Mech “Marlowe” as an example, which is loy_lmech_01 and normally only found in the INTEL section of the game. We want to find four main files associated with it.
In the PACK FILE tab in the debug panel, enter “loy_lmech_01” (without quotation marks) into the filter. You will see a number of files show up. Left click the four main .json files listed below, the first three of which are contained within the player subfolder.

• player/loy_lmech_01_lo.json – type “RESOURCE_LEG”, this is the vehicle’s “lower” or the “legs”. These are the treads of a tank or the legs of a mech. This file is where we’ll find the movement stats.
  
• player/loy_lmech_01.json – type “RESOURCE_MECH”, this is the vehicle’s “unit” file which tells the vehicle which “upper” and “lower” to use, as well as the main vehicle stats like health and shields.
  
• player/loy_lmech_01_up.json – type “RESOURCE_CHASSIS”, this is the vehicle’s “upper” or the “chassis”. These are the turrets of a tank, or the torso of a mech. This file is where we’ll find information on what behavior the vehicle’s weapon hardpoints has.
  
• mechs/loy_lmech_01_up.json – type “RESOURCE_SPRITE”, not to be confused with the file of the same name above. This resource is the sprite file and resides in a different folder to the other three. You need to modify this file if you want to change the hardpoints on a vehicle.

Before you continue, it would be best practice to note the file paths of the files you wish to modify, then close the game. Copy and paste those files into a new subfolder(s) in Brigador/assets/_modkit/. If some files share the same name, simply put them in a separate folder within /_modkit/ to avoid overwriting them. Finally, run genpack in order for your new copies to later appear in the PACK FILE tab. By finding and using these copies that are now in /_modkit/, we do not have to worry about preserving the integrity of the original vehicle, especially if it’s an enemy NPC vehicle, and it will make it easier for us to find the data resources we wish to use.

Now, let’s create a new addition to the FREELANCE menu. To do this, we will need to access global.json to make these changes.

1. In the PACK FILE tab, search for the word “global” (without quotation marks).
   
2. Left click global.json in the list.
   
3. Navigate to the DATA EDITOR tab to see assets/data/global.json listed.
   
4. Left click to select global.json, which will display over 20 different ►expandable menus on the right side of the debug panel.
   
5. On the right side of your debug panel, scroll down to find ►Mechs and left click it to expand it.
   
6. You will see a numbered list of “mechs[x]” entries. Each “mechs[x]” entry is a vehicle and faction category in the same order as presented on the FREELANCE menu e.g. “mechs[0]” corresponds to the MECH | Loyalist category.
   
7. Left click ►list in mechs[0] to see every vehicle listed in that category. Click “Add new…” to create a new entry in the category.
   
8. Left click “*NONE*” to open a list. Double click the path to the appropriate RESOURCE_MECH *.json file we wish to use from our /_modkit/ folder to add it to the mechs[0] category.
   
9. Right click the .json we have added to open up a new menu.
   
10. Scroll to the top of this menu to see “leg” and “chassis”. If both fields next to them are marked “*NONE*” or are using the original path to the Marlowe (i.e. assets/data/lowers/etc…), left click each and find the relevant path to the resources for the RESOURCE_LEG and RESOURCE_CHASSIS from the /_modkit/ folder respectively.
    
11. Scroll down and expand ►Guns. It will appear to have no entries. Left click “Add new…” and type in horn0 into the newly-created empty “socket” field
    
12. Left click “Add new…” in the new entry and type in “horn” in the Filter field to see a list of available horns. Choose any horn but remember which one you selected – we will need to “mount” this horn in a later step.
    
13. Save the changes you have made via the data editor to both global.json and other .json files you have modified.
    
14. Exit Brigador and double click genpack.bat and allow it to run completely.
    
15. Launch Brigador again and try out your new playable Marlowe in a FREELANCE operation. You should be able to equip a small and auxiliary weapon along with a special, but you will notice the horn does not function.
    
16. Return to the FREELANCE menu, press F1 to open up the debug panel, navigate to the PACK FILE tab and find the RESOURCE_CHASSIS file for our Marlowe test vehicle. Select it and open it in the DATA EDITOR tab.
    
17. Left click ►mounts: (2) to expand the menu to see our small and auxiliary mounts we tried earlier. Click “Add new…” at the bottom and type in horn0 and mark its weapon_group as Horn. Save your changes and load up a FREELANCE operation again with your Marlowe as the equipped vehicle.
    
18. Test your horn by pressing H on your keyboard (or whatever the horn is bound to).
    
19. If you wish to change your new playable vehicle’s horn, follow the steps outlined in Section 7’s “CHANGING A VEHICLE HORN”.

By completing these steps you will have successfully added a new vehicle to the FREELANCE menu and given it a horn.

Here are a few additional explanations for what you can find in the four types of RESOURCES used for a vehicle whenever we examine them deeper via the DATA EDITOR tab.

(...continued in part ii)

(...continued from part i)

• Overcharge – Shield overcharge capacity, the light blue part of the health bar.
  
• Overcharge_decay – Rate at which the overcharge drains.
  
• Health – Hull/Armor points, the green part of our vehicle’s health bar.
  
• Armor – Shield capacity, the blue part of our vehicle’s health bar.
  
• Sight_radius – only affects the AI. Dictates how far AI units can see when the game is controlling the unit.
  
• Damage_modifiers_ – Decrease or increase the directional damage. 0 means no change. 1 means 100%, e.g. twice the amount. Negative numbers means less damage.
  
• Price – Price to unlock in freelance
  
• Finesse_multiplier – Payout multiplier in freelance

• Move_type – Dictates the movement type of the unit i.e. infantry, tank treads, mech legs, or agrav.
  
• Max_side_speed & Max_side_acceleration – Applies only to agravs.
  
• Linear_damping – How fast the vehicle decelerates.
  
• Min_angular_velocity – Minimum turn speed when the vehicle is at top speed.
  
• Max_angular_velocity – Maximum turn speed when the vehicle is at a stop.
  
• Height – The “hitbox” height of the vehicle. If the box pokes over cover, enemies can see you. Check r_unithitboxes in the MAIN tab of the debug panel to show it.
  
• Size – The hitbox radius of the vehicle.
  
• Ability_data – Separate file that decides the stats of your tank’s ramming ability, mech’s stomp, and agrav’s smash. You can take a copy of one of existing ones and link to it here for an ability unique to your vehicle.
  
• Sound_radius – How far away enemies can hear your vehicle. Go to the MESSAGE DEBUG tab of the debug panel to turn on r_messages, and SOUND_MECH, to get a visual representation of this value.

• This is where we can alter which weapon hardpoints are primary or secondary. We can also change their turret behavior where applicable, as well as assign a horn.

• To change what weapons a vehicle can use, look for ►mount names and expand it. If you’re still using the Marlowe example, try changing aux0 to main0 in the RESOURCE_SPRITE. Do the same for your RESOURCE_CHASSIS .json file. Once done, look at the new PRIMARY weapons available for your Marlowe – it will now have MAIN weapon hardpoints available for use in the FREELANCE menu.

The short answer is it’s possible and we’ll expand on how to do this in a future update to the documentation.
The longer answer is that one of the final tools available in the Brigador Modkit is the SJSpritePackerGUI, which we have not mentioned yet. It’s a tool we can use to make sprite sheets for use in Brigador and while it’s almost possible to completely import sprites of your own making, a few issues still remain.
For the meantime we recommend looking up the community-made Brigador Renderkit that you can download from this link[drive.google.com].

It is to be expected that altering the content of the game in any meaningful way will cause problems. There are a number of steps you can take, depending on what you have done.
Before anything else, if you installed a new mod, and the game was working fine up until then but is no longer functioning appropriately, then we can try to look for the source of the problem.

If our game is crashing even on startup after modding something, we can run the console in a separate window.

1. Right click Brigador in your Steam Library and click Properties…
   
2. Under General, click Set Launch Options
   
3. In the window that opens, enter “--console” (without quotation marks)
   
4. Click OK, then click Close
   
5. Launch Brigador – an additional window should open as well as the game window.

Look for any ERROR messages in the console window to help you identify the problem. You may see broken links associated with the thing you had attempted to install or modify.
If you are not sure what the problem is, then one thing you can try doing at this stage is simply to run genpack.bat again before launching Brigador. It is a common issue that modders forget to run genpack before relaunching the game and encounter unexpected crashes as a result. Running genpack can also produce additional ERROR messages that we would not see on regular launch.
If this doesn’t help, then we may need to restore the game.

If you wish to return the game to its default state, then please follow these steps:

1. Go to your Library
   
2. Right click Brigador to open the context menu and click “Properties…”
   
3. Click the LOCAL FILES tab
   
4. Click the button VERIFY INTEGRITY OF GAME FILES…
   
5. A download should start. Click close.
   
6. When the download finishes, launch Brigador.

PLEASE NOTE that by doing this you WILL lose the various changes made to global.json and other game data files. If you wish to restore mods like the community compilation, you will have to repeat the steps in Section 2 all over again.
If you are still having problems despite verifying the integrity of your game files, please get in contact with us (see below).

If you acquired the game on another platform like GOG, Itch.io or direct download, you have two main options.

• Uninstall and reinstall Brigador from your GOG/Itch.io library OR
  
• If you followed the optional step in Section 2 i.e. you made a copy of your /Brigador directory in a new location before you started modding, then restore your old Brigador directory to its original place, which will overwrite the modded Brigador folder.

PLEASE NOTE that by doing this you WILL lose the various changes made to global.json and other game data files. If you wish to restore mods like the community compilation, you will have to repeat the steps in Section 2 all over again.
If you are still having problems despite redownloading or restoring your original copy of Brigador, please get in contact with us (see below).

By fully restoring the game, it is possible that you will lose all saved progress. Here are a few ways to quickly return to what you once had via the debug panel:

1. When Brigador is running, press F1 on your keyboard to open the debug panel, and left click on the MONEY DEBUG tab.
   
2. The money slider allows you to adjust the amount of money the player has in the bank. Normally, this slider will only have a range from zero to ten million. Press Ctrl + Left Click on the slider, and you will be able manually enter any value you require.
   
3. Press F1 again to close the debug panel.

1. If you have lost progress in CAMPAIGN mode, when Brigador is running, press F1 on your keyboard to open the debug panel and left click on the MAIN tab.
   
2. Check the first box marked “devmode” and then press F1 again on your keyboard to close the debug panel.
   
3. With devmode enabled, new keybinds become available. Press Home on your keyboard when in a level to instantly win that mission and be taken to the results screen. The game will mark you off as having completed that CAMPAIGN mission (N.B. Please make sure that the devmode-only UNLOCKS option is still set to ENABLED in SETTINGS > GENERAL).
   
4. Press F1 again and turn off devmode once you have reached the point you require - devmode actively blocks the game from sending achievement information to Steam, so you will not earn any Steam achievements when devmode is active.

1. If you wish to access all the game’s content, when Brigador is running, press F1 on your keyboard to open the debug panel and left click on the MAIN tab.
   
2. Check the first box marked “devmode” and then press F1 again on your keyboard to close the debug panel.
   
3. On the main menu of Brigador, click SETTINGS and scroll down to the bottom of GENERAL - you will see a new option marked UNLOCKS.
   
4. Left click to set UNLOCKS to disabled. All content in the game is now accessible from the menus - this means you are free to try any campaign mission, read any lore entry and try any operation and loadout in FREELANCE mode.
   
5. Disabled unlocks are only available when devmode is active. Turning off devmode will return the game to the state it was before you disabled UNLOCKS. You will not earn any achievements when devmode is active.

EXPLAINER

Brigador keeps a record of the player’s progress and unlocks via the profile.json file, which is stored wherever your /Brigador folder is on your computer. However, unlike most of the data files that are accessible through the debug panel’s DATA EDITOR tab, it is not possible to access profile.json through normal means. It is possible to edit profile.json yourself via Notepad or a similar program, but it is not recommended.

If you continue to have issues with your copy of Brigador, you can contact us either via a relevant thread or our Discord server’s bug reports or maps and modding channels[discord.gg].
Before submitting a bug report, we ask that you check that your graphics drivers are up to date. Multiple issues in the past have been resolved by updating or reinstalling graphic drivers.
When submitting a bug report, we ask that you provide a few things:

• A copy of your log.txt file which is found in your /Brigador folder and is overwritten every time you launch the game.
  
• Your system information (see below).
  
• Your game’s version number e.g. v1.5 cc57f4ce (visible in the top left of the main menu screen).
  
• A description of what you were doing immediately before the bug occurred in game (e.g. tried to launch from desktop shortcut; crash during certain mission/map or with particular pilot/vehicle/loadout etc.).
  
• Screenshots (where applicable).

System information with bug reports is important, especially if they're performance-related in nature. Please provide the following:

• Operating system version
  
• CPU model and clock speed
  
• RAM amount in MB or GB
  
• Graphics card model and driver version
  
• Your display resolution and viewing mode (windowed, fullscreen, or fullscreen windowed).

A good example is:

Windows 10 Professional 64 bit.
Core i7 5820k @ 3.3 ghz.
32 GB RAM.
Nvidia GTX 970 driver 361.43.
1920x1080 fullscreen.

A bad example is:

Windows 10.
Core i7.
32 GB.
Nvidia GTX 970.

(...continued in part ii)

(...continued from part i)

If you are on Windows, the best information you can send us is a dxdiag report. Please do not copy and paste the contents of your dxdiag report file in your post. Instead, rehost it on pastebin.com or a similar service. Windows has instructions here for how to find your dxdiag[support.microsoft.com]

For Apple products, you can find out where to see your Mac’s specs here[www.macworld.co.uk]. If you cannot figure out the specs of your Mac product, tell us what model of machine you are using (e.g. MacBook Pro 12”)

This section is a collection of various links and general advice as well as other bits of information.

• Brigador Modkit direct download[stellarjockeys.com]
  
• GitHub repository of Tiled[github.com]
  
• Six tips on making a new level[designreboot.blogspot.com]
  
• Vehicle reference sheet[i.imgur.com]
  
• Weapons reference sheet[i.imgur.com]
  
• List of community mods
  
• Stellar Jockeys Discord Server[discord.gg]
  
• Powersuit Contest Mini Map entries[cdn.discordapp.com]
  
• GNU Image Manipulation program[www.gimp.org]
  
• FMOD home page[www.fmod.com]

Here is a list of helpful questions compiled from our community of experienced modders that we recommend you ask yourself before, during and after modding:

• Did you plan on paper first?
  
• Did you make a backup?
  
• Did you run genpack and check for ERROR messages?
  
• Did you place your props in the right layer?
  
• Did you check player0?
  
• Are you sure your directories are correct?
  
• Are you sure you correctly linked “TestTestFINALMechHullv2” and not “TestTestFINALMechHullv1”?
  
• Have you toggled devmode on/off?
  
• Have you closed the debug panel?
  
• Don’t overwrite someone else’s global.json, please?
  
• Do not exceed the packfile overhead (or "space for mods") - given Brigador's current content, this overhead is under 100MB, and the community compilation takes up about 45 MB when unzipped

• .json = game data files and Brigador engine readable version of level/map
  
• .tmx = Tiled editable version of Brigador level/map
  
• .tsx = Tiled editor tile and tileset files; every placeable object in the Brigador editor has a .tsx for itself as well as a .tsx for its collected tilesheet
  
• gang = The term the game uses to label factions e.g. loyalists, corvids, and spacers
  
• seed = The values that determines what state a level loads as. In Brigador’s case, this generally applies to FREELANCE mode, where the spawns vary depending on current strength and chosen “gang” or faction, as well as available ammo depots.

The following community members have contributed heavily to the creation of this guide:

• MagneticJerk
  
• Wrench In The Plan
  
• Hara
  
• Buff Skeleton
  
• wedge
  
• Briggs
  
• DoTheWholeVillage
  
• pap smear
  
• Karl
  
• Eschaton
  
• Commander
  
• Loki
  
• Eugenius
  
• SCOREGOBLIN
  
• aniviron
  
• charles-the-cat
  
• …and everyone in the maps-and-modding channel on our Discord