9 réponses à ce sujet

[Lightbleeder]

I am trying to create a mod for Dragon Age: Origins that adds new items of armour to the game. It's a very basic mod, and I've seen many like it. My goal is to make a reskin of the mage armour and instead of replacing the ingame armour, I want to have it as a new item that can be used.

I have seen a video tutorial about making items, but do not know how to make those items usable ingame. I also don't know how to make items use custom textures.

I'm sorry if this is a very generic question, it seems to me that it must be quite a simple one, but I have utterly failed to find a coherent tutorial. I'm looking for something along the lines of a step by step guide to make a new piece of armour that uses existing models, and then having it useable ingame. If such a thing exists I'd be very greatful for a link or just some helpful information.

Thanks in advance!

[alschemid]

Let me see if I understand: you want take an armour's model of the game and give it a new set of textures without overriding the ones in game?

1a. Find the model you want, I use the DA Tool http://social.bioware.com/project/41/ once installed go to File->Browse Model-> whatever you want use the Ctrl+arrows to browse the models and File->Save All to extract the model and texture.

1b. You can use also the toolset to extract the textures and the .mao file (this file tells the game which textures are used by your item), but you need to know the name of what you are looking for, in the tooset go File->Open file-> /packages/core/data/materialobjects.erf there you have some strings to help you find the textures:
armours: arm_ +armour type; gloves: glv_; boots: boo_; clothes: cth_; robes: rob_; helmets:hlh_; weapons: w_+ weapon type; shield:w_shd; hair: har_; props:prp_;placeabes:plc_;
creature: c_; npc creatures: cn_; children: kn_;
for races and genders you have human/elf/dwarf/qunari followed by the gender female/male, so human male: hm_; dwarf female: df_; etc.
in the files .../core/data/textures.erf (props, placeables) and/or .../core/textures/high/textures.erf (characters and armours) you need to extract the .dds files, in those files the letter for the races in the file's name are changed to p, so human male, dwarf male, elf male, qunari male are all: pm_, because they all use the same texture and the letter n from both genders.

2. Change all the dds files you need, I have a link here that explains a little how the textures works and rename them. Usually the name should be something like this: pn_xxx_yyyz_0w.dds where pn for both genders and all races; xxx means the type of model arm for armour, glv for gloves, etc; yyy could be something to identify your item; z means the texture variation could be any letter, and w is the kind of texture it is: d for diffuse, n for normal, s for specular and t for tint maps.

3. Rename the.mao file, in a text editor open it and write the name of the textures used.

4. You will need to create a new clothing/armour/whatever variation 2da file, that tells the game which model and the texture variation it is using, to do that you will need to extract the 2da file using the toolset  File->Open file-> /packages/core/data/2da and use the GDApp to open the 2da file.

5. Create a new variation 2da file .For example for a massive armour you would need to extract the armour_massive_variation.2da file, delete all the rows except one, change the Label for something you will see in the
toolset, the modeltype (the arm, glv, boo, etc, of the model you are using), modelsubtype (mas, hvy, etc, of the model you are using) the and modelva (one letter that indicates the texture variation, for the massive should be f or more, since e is the last texture variation for the massive armour). Save this as armour_massive_variation_OOO.2da
(the OOO can be anything you want).

6. Copy all those files into the override folder, create the item in the toolset using this new variation and write/find a script to load the item in the game, or use the console to give you the item in game.

I suppose that is the most of it.

Modifié par alschemid, 01 novembre 2010 - 08:38 .

[DarthParametric]

alschemid wrote...

Save this as armour_massive_variation_OOO.2da
(the OOO can be anything you want).

Not exactly true. There's a character limit, which means that variation GDAs with longer filenames can only support a 2 character custom identifier. Also, your identifier needs to be unique (which is difficult given the character limit).

[alschemid]

hmmm... the helmet_mage_variation accepted 4 characters. But it is good to know there is a limit to it. Thanks

[DarthParametric]

The Excel processor will give you an error when you exceed the character limit.

[TimelordDC]

I believe the character limit is 27 characters...seems arbitrary

[DarthParametric]

Possibly it's related to the limit of Excel, as the processor derives the filename from the sheet name. Excel sheets have a 31 character limit. Not sure why you'd need a 4 character buffer - possibly for the .xls extension (I know GDApp likes to add this to the sheet names).

[Lightbleeder]

Heya, thanks a lot for replies! I think some of that went over my head a bit, but I've been trying my hardest to follow it.



I'm not sure what you mean by 2da files. I have the GDApp, and was able to find gda files, but I'm guessing these aren't the same things.



Anyway, if it helps any I'm trying to put new skins of the mage cloak and mage robes in game, particularly a reskin of 'Mage Helmet 2A' (according to the toolset) and the 'Robe, Mage' variation of clothing. If I could get just one of these ingame I'm sure working out how to do the other would be simplicity itself.



At the moment I think its stage 4 I'm failing at miserably, so if there's anyway you could simplify that a bit more for a complete novice such as myself I'd be very thankful!

[alschemid]

For the mage robes you need extract the clothing_variation.2da and for the mage helmet the mage_helmet_variation.2da.

Open the clothing_variation.2da in the GDApp the Label is the name you will see in the toolset, the modeltype and subtype depends of which model you are using and the modelvariation depends of the texture.

If it is just a retexture select one of the lines from the original model and change only the ID, label and the modelvariation. Suppose you are doing a retexture of the model hm_cth_appa_0.mmh, the ID should be greater than the last ID used, the label should be anything you want, the model type cth, submodeltype app, modelvariation a letter greater then the last used for the same subtypemodel, in this case c since there is a and b already. And the mmh should be named hm_cth_appc_0.mmh and the textures pn_cth_appc_0d.dds, etc.

Delete all the other rows and save the file with something at the end. You should do the same with the mage_helmet_variation.2da for the mage helmet.

It is kind of difficult to tell you what to write without knowing how you named your files. Hope it helps.

[DarthParametric]

Lightbleeder wrote...

I'm not sure what you mean by 2da files.

All Bioware games use 2DA files. In DA though, there is no longer an actual 2DA file extension as was the case in previous games. The files are split into two types - the Excel-format source files which are .XLS and the GFF-format game files which are .GDA. Functionally, they are pretty much the same as 2DA files have always been, they are just encapsulated a bit differently.