Packing Aircraft Skins
In general, there’s only one thing that PSM adds that skin makers should be aware of but it’s a big one: automatically adding skin slots to aircraft!
If you offer a PSM-compatible version of your skin, PSM users will not have to replace a vanilla skin slot or worry about compatibility as PSM will dynamically add a new skin slot to the relevant aircraft to use your skin when it builds a merged mod.
Now, to do this does require a small change on your end, but it’s pretty easy so offering a PSM-compatible skin mod doesn’t require a lot of work.
Packing
The important thing is that PSM bases its skin slots on the path you use when packing your skin. Rather than the usual quagmire of inconsistent names and paths PSM uses a simple format to detect skins it needs to add a slot for:
ProjectWingman/Content/Assets/Skins/<AIRCRAFT-NAME-HERE>/<YOUR-SKIN-NAME-HERE>.uasset
That’s it. You don’t need to change anything about your skin itself, just give it a unique name (so that it doesn’t conflict with other skins), cook it in the Content/Assets/Skins/<AIRCRAFT-NAME-HERE> path and pack it in the path as above.
Okay, there is one gotcha: the <AIRCRAFT-NAME-HERE>. Since PSM can’t know the player-facing name of every aircraft in the game, it actually uses the aircraft names from the DB_Aircraft datatable. As of v1.0.4, check the table below for the correct name to use.
An advantage of this approach is that this same pattern also works for custom aircraft. Want to add a skin for the Overpowered Sk.37 mod? Just use
OP-37. Check with the author for the right name to use.
Example
So for example, you could pack a mod that includes a Content/Assets/Skins/SU-37/Splinter_Red.uasset and PSM will add a new skin slot to the Sk.37 for your skin. More importantly, if the user installs another skin mod that includes Content/Assets/Skins/SU-37/FederationFerris.uasset then PSM will add two slots to the Sk.37, one for the Splinter camo, one for the Ferris scheme.
Same for if your PAK file includes multiple versions of a skin with different markings you could pack it like this:
Content/Assets/Skins/MiG-29/Serdyukov-Federation.uasset
Content/Assets/Skins/MiG-29/Serdyukov-Monarch.uasset
Content/Assets/Skins/MiG-29/Serdyukov-Clean.uasset
When PSM runs on the user’s install, it will add three slots to the MG-29 with each variant of those skins.
That being said, please don’t go mad with variants. The game will almost certainly have a maximum number of slots, we just haven’t found it yet.
Aircraft Names
| In-Game | Internal Name | In-Game | Internal Name | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| T-21 | T-21 | T/F-4 | TF-4E | |
| MG-21 | MiG-21 | SV-37 | AJS-37 | |
| F/E-4 | F-4E | F/C-16 | F-16C | |
| CR.105 | CF-105 | Sk.25U | Su-25 | |
| MG-31 | MIG-31 | F/D-14 | F-14D | |
| MG-29 | MiG-29 | Accipiter | AV-8 | |
| F/E-18 | F-18E | F/C-15 | F-15C | |
| Sk.27 | SU-27 | Sk.37 | SU-37 | |
| F/S-15 | F-15SMTD | VX-23 | F-22 | |
| CHIMERA | ACG-01 | SP-34R | SPEAR | |
| PW-Mk.1 | PW-001 |
You can even use custom skin slots in the same PAK as an embedded preset to include both a new skin slot and datatable changes