How do you manage assets?

Grim Dawn Modding - Tutorials and Help
1

I’m starting out with modding so please excuse the dumb question, but basically I’m unaware of how I should manage assets.

I was using the installation directory of Grim Dawn as my working directory and using assets from there for my mod, but recently I ran into an issue where for my mod, I need to set up my conversation to be linked to an npc, which means I’ll need to edit the dbr file for that npc, but if I go to share my mod with others, that modification won’t be there.

So should I copy the dbr file for that npc into my mod’s assets and then edit it? But then how will I use that asset for my mod? Will I need to copy a bunch of the assets from the original game into my mod folder if I want to use them?

Thanks in advance for all the help, and if this is a duplicate, please let me know!

2

hmmm I’m not an experienced modder but maybe you can just download some popular mod and see what the proper structure should be :thinking:

3

Priority:

Game assets are loaded into memory using relative paths. Data files typically begin with “records” and have a priority. If a mod is running, the priority might be:

  1. mods\modName\database\records
  2. gdx2\database\records
  3. gdx1\database\records
  4. database\records
    That is, if the same file exists in all four locations, file #1 will overwrite the others; only file #1 takes effect.

The same applies to the resources folder.

Another point worth noting:

There are two debug directories.

The Settings folder under the game directory and %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Grim Dawn\Settings can contain files unpacked from Arc, such as the Text_EN folder and its .txt files, the UI folder and its files. For example, moderngrimdawnui was installed in this way.

This should have the highest priority, but I haven’t tested it.

Your questions:

  1. If you modified the dialogue files in npc.dbr to link to other files, then you need to place the dialogue files in the mods\resources\Conversations.arc file.
    And npc.dbr must also be placed in the same location as the original relative path, so that it overwrites the original dbr file with the same name.
  2. If you did not modify npc.dbr, but modified the cnv file it links to, then you need to package the modified cnv file into Conversations.arc and place it in the mods\resources directory.

A simple way to remember this:

mods overwrites main.