Hawke Screengrabs

[hawkeward]

I've spent more than twelve hours this weekend futzing with my mod, all to discover that half of what I want to do is impossible. I'd cry, but I'm too worn out--all I've got in me is hollow disappointment and the knowledge that I have to completely redo my plan and rebalance the entire tree and it will never be as elegant as I'd like and argh. Just

Comments

[ladykleo]

Greetings from one Martin Hawke to another! :)



What kind of mod are you working on?

It's interesting that you can't play on the PC. I fail at playing on a console, but the PC is ok. I even managed to survive on "Hard" with only few casting of "killallhostiles". :)

[hawkeward]

I have had an eye on your Martin Hawke for a while. :) I'm curious, how did you chose the name?

On PC vs console, I'm sure it's a which-one-are-you-more-used-to thing. I had to make a dramatic switch to consoles when I got a mac about five years ago, and it's hard to switch back to keyboard/mouse after spending so much time with a controller. Also I don't know whose brilliant idea it was to use right click for navigation and left click for everything else, but I wind up having to click everything twice. When you're a squishy mage being chewed up by critters, that's not a good thing.

I am working on a new specialization tree for mages! I did not stop to consider the fact that there might be a very good reason no one has done that already! D:

[ladykleo]

I named him after Marty McFly and Martin Rolinski (Swedish singer). He doesn't look like either of them, but still, I like the name. :)

In the PC version the "R" key is a saviour. It brings you to any visible valuables in explore mode, opens chests, and makes you attack the closest enemy. The game is so much easier when all you need is just pressing this button constantly.

I see. I want to learn how to make new outfits, but can't find a relevant tutorial. :(

[hawkeward]

Do you mean like new textures? I've got some tutorial links somewhere I can dig up for you, if you like.

[ladykleo]

Exactly. Would be fantastic if you could find it.

[hawkeward]

Let's see...

Basic modding tools - For retexturing, you'll need at least pyGFF (make sure you also get the fnvdump extension to decode the names, it's on the pyGFF project page) and ERFpack
Extracting the Textures - I wish this was clearer, but it was the best set of instructions for this I could find. It worked for me, so I guess you can ask me any questions if it gives you trouble?
Detailed instructions for working with the textures - You will need a graphics program that can read .dds files. If you've got Photoshop, that page has a link to a plugin you can install to make Photoshop read them.
Tutorial for swapping which model is being used by which armor - Essential if you want to use a non-standard model, like npc noble clothing or npc mage robes that are never used for pc armor
Reference for what the armor models are called in the .gda and the texture files - This should help at least a little in matching up which texture goes with which model, which is tricky at best.

It sounds really complicated at first, but it's not too hard once you get the hang of pyGFF. The only thing I don't have instructions for right now is creating the armor as a separate asset, so that the new texture doesn't override all instances of that model. Something like this would probably work, or you could look at some existing new armor set mods and try to figure out how they did it based on what files are included.

[ladykleo]

Thanks a lot! I created mods for other games, and even converted DA models for them, so the extracting part and recolouring are not new for me. What I was looking for was how to put them back into the game, swap models and so on. These links are very helpful. For some reason I couldn't find them myself even though I searched both at the Nexus and BSN.