I have some questions on mastery building. I, by using the template in the modding tutorial, have a working UI and I have made several working skills (Yay for make my first modded skill ever!). Now I have some questions that I hope some more experienced modders can answer.
1: How do I add images, names, and skill descriptions to the UI? I have skills but no names and no pictures. b[/b]
2: How do I change the attack animation? My one skill is based on forcewave and the animation is a shield bash. I, however, want the skill to activate on a normal weapon attack. (Still working on)
3: How do I change the shape of the skill icons from a circle to a square and visa-versa? b[/b]
4: How do I make skills dependent? I have tried using the Skill Dependency tab in the DBReditor and putting in the location of the skill I want it linked to, but this does not appear when I enter the game. b[/b]
5: How do you make a TEX file (not TEXT)? I would like to create and add my own skill icons/art, but I can’t figure out how to get the images in a tex format.
6: How do I make my own custom Templates (.tpl files) form the existing .tpl files? I would like to create one master template that has all skill parameters. That way I would be able to build and change the template based on the skills I want but I would not have to worry about the pre-done templates not having the parameters I want (I assume some parameters are not compatible, but I will deal with those issues when I come to them.) b[/b]
7: Is it possible to view particle fx before entering the game? I have tried using the viewer, however that only seams to show how the meshes move and not effects like spell explosions, waves, etc.
Updated: 5/15/16
I will update with more questions as I find more things I need help with.
2:
First, you want to locate an animation you want to use on the model.
For the example, I’ll be using the Male Player Character and we are going to look at one of my skill with a modified animation.
You can see the path of the animations on the left side and on right windows you can see the “BreathFrost” animation in red.
This is the animation I’m going to use in this example.
You can check if the animation will work on your model in the Viewer tool.
Next we are going to add this animation to our ‘male pc’.
Import anm_malepc for male and anm_femalepc for female animation.
Here’s the path.
Inside this file, you’re gonna find an empty animation slot and edit it with the animation you want to add to your character.
Here’s an example with “BreathFrost” added from yeti animation.
You will need to copy the animation to every weapon types you want it to display on.
Once you have edited the animation set, save the file.
Then open the skill you want to use the animation with, in this case I’ll be using a skill I made and I’m trying to use the “BreathFrost” with.
Here’s where you need to edit.
Make sure the animation work with the model if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can valid that through the Viewer.
In this demonstration, I used “BreathFrost” but this animation won’t display correctly with the Male Player Character since the Yeti and Player meshes are different (it’s more complicated then that but let’s keep it simple).
You will see the effect of the animation but the character will stay inactive.
In your case, you probably won’t need to follow all those steps.
Check the skillSpecialAnimationName in your skill and change it to “ForceWave”.
To change the skill description and names and also the name and description of the mastery you need to create a “TEXT” file (not be confused with TEX) and add your custom name tags to them.
This is really simple to do, you want to create a text file inside the source folder of your mod, name it “tagnewskills” or something like that.
You could always copy over the original file but I was told better not too.
Then once you have made your change in that file, build it in the mod and link it to your skills or mastery.
It should be pretty simple to understand if you look at other masteries or skills.
Here’s where to look at. EDIT: First folder was supposed to highlight “resources”, sorry about that.
Some animations will have an effect attached to them.
These effects are only visual.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to edit the animation and remove the effect or change it to another one but it’s not easy.
I’ve actually figured it out but I don’t know how to add my custom animations to the game.
Another thing about animations, they will also sometimes affect the character attack or cast speed or even immobilize your character for a few seconds.
EDIT: Some animations will also make your character cast more than once.
You can change the animation speed ‘specialAnimSpeed’ in the animation set DBR.
Usually, you don’t want to go over ‘1.0’ because that’s how these animations were meant to be used but who said there was rules
Anyway, have fun!
And let me know when you get progress.
I’d love to know how it goes!
For adding tags I followed your instructions here. However, when I go to the asset manager to build the mod, the manager says the resource folder (in my mod file)–with the new TEXT document–is empty and needs to be deleted. Any idea on how to get the new TEXT document to be recognized? I am wondering if there is some place else I have to modify so the program knows which folder to pull the text from.
EDIT
also, for this:
I found the problem. The skills are connected. However, the bar that normally appears behind the skills, telling which are connected, is not showing up. Do you know how to insert this bar?
Let me explain you how it works, you need to edit/open the base skill you want to add connections too.
Under UI Information, you will see both skillConnectionOn and Off.
You need to copy “ui/skills/skillallocation/skills_connectoroffcenter.tex” and “ui/skills/skillallocation/skills_connectoroncenter.tex” for each Skill Upgrade you have.
In this example, my base skill “Teleport” only have 1 upgrade so that’s why you only see 1 entry.
I actually forgot to reply to you last time for your question #4.
Sorry about that.
But if you still haven’t figured it out, to have the skill actually connect (not visually but actively) you need to place them in order inside the classtree.
So let’s say you want to modify skill X and you have a skill modifier (or secondary) Y, then Skill X need to be right before Skill Y.
The next base skill that follow skill Y will not be modified by Skill Y.
If you had another modifier Skill Z, then the order would be X, Y, Z.
Outside the classtree the order is not important as far as I know.
Skill Dependencies is used to make a skill (or skills) require the previous skill (or skills).
I got the tags working. Turns out you just need to “autocreate” an asset of your uniquely named tags file using the asset manager. So far, as long as I just update the same text file, all of my tags appear where I tell them to. I have not needed to deal with putting anything in a “modstrings.txt”.
My next question is: How do you make a TEX file (not TEXT)? I would like to create and add my own skill icons/art, but I can’t figure out how to get the images in a tex format.
How do I make my own custom Templates (.tpl files) form the existing .tpl files? I am getting really tired of all the different skill templates. I would like to create one master template that has all skill parameters. That way I would be able to build and change the template based on the skills i want but i would not have to worry about the pre-done templates not having the parameters I want (I assume some parameters are not compatible, but I will deal with those issues when I come to them.)
I have updated the initial post with the new questions.
That’s not gonna work since every skill has a different skillclass (the pretty much most important entry for 99% of all dbr files) which can not be included in a general template.
Also you can not randomly mix entries of different skillclasses as they simply won’t be recognized by the game and you’d have no idea which entries belong to which type of skill and therefore mix them all up.
By skill class do you me “playerclass” as in soldier, demolitionist, etc.? or do you mean each skill has a class like “active,” “passive,” “toggle-able”?
In that case, how would I combine basic templates (located in database/templates/templatebase) to make my own “skill_uniqueskill”?
Part of the problem I have is that don’t understand the logic behind how the templates are set up. For example the Skillbuff_passive.tpl and Skillbuff_debuff.tpl have exactly the same groups, but the modifiable parameters in those groups are different. I want to design one Skillbuff_master that has all skillbuff parameters in one template. That way I don’t need to keep searching for the right templates trying to find which has the parameters I need.
Templates basically have no meaning to the game but are only sort of a layout for the dbr editor to display the values and entries of the .dbr files.
Entries are bound to a certain class that is shown in the header of every .dbr file in the dbr editor. This class has preset entries and the game will read it first, then the entries in the file and then go through all of them.
If there is an entry that is not preset in the class of the file it will be ignored by the game.
You can not make custom templates (well you can but the game will not know what to do with your custom constellations of entries without a new file class which is hardcoded in the game engine and can not be changed / accessed by the default toolset).
I suspect that first and last paragraphs contradict each other here, and tpl files should be treated as sacred magic that you don’t edit. Alternatively, you could start writing template mixins in C++ in the game engine to match every edit made.
Now I understand why what I wanted to do with the .tpl files will not work. thanks you guys for clearing that up. I did manage to find the list of blank skill templates in: database/records/skills/base_template skills, which is helping to streamline the process of skill making.
I am still looking for answers to questions 5 and 7 listed in the original post.
