Hey, first post, greetings all you fabulous people. Just some background about myself I’m a huge Grim Dawn fan and a modder from the Dota 2 community.
I have a question regarding issues I’ve faced creating new masteries for Grim Dawn. I’ve spent a few days reading posts on the forum regarding modding, both new and old, so apologies if this has already been posted.
My journey so far…
The first thing I did was read the official guide and used Asset Manager to extract the core files… then followed the Elfe guide which said to setup the directories differently so I extracted them twice so my Working and Build directories wouldn’t be the same (so maybe now I have two copies of everything? Not a great start, but hey. Break a few eggs, right?) I assumed, after extraction, the Asset Manager would list all the files in the big window but, alas, even though it DID extract the files to the correct locations on my system, the manager window showed only an empty folder.
Is this normal behavior or have I borked it somehow or is the tool being clunky? (the guide offers no clarify on this point).
Second thing I did was explore the Crate tools and get an idea of how they worked, and then I found the 3rd party tools linked on this forum such as GDSearch, GDToolWindow, and the most exciting discovery was the WanezTools Mastery Creator which I was really excited about. Obviously all these tools are nearly a decade old but I was hopeful. Also, since Mastery Creator is a 3rd party tool I’m not looking for any official support, but maybe another modder out there has some insights.
The current issue:
I setup the directories in Mastery Creator to match the directories in Asset Manager, but I can’t select the “Active Mod” which is, like, the first step. Of course, since no active mod is selected, clicking “Create” does nothing. Same question as before:
Is this normal? Have I borked it? Is the software currently in working condition?
(ignore how i have something in my source file, that was from testing other things. by default it IS blank)
Sources contain the actual source files, which when you would make new assets go in. when extracting the base files (including dlcs), this part will still be empty as we don’t have the source files for the assets in the game. we can still use them in our mod tho.
Assets contain files used to “link” a source file with it’s respective needs and wants (for example when creating an asset using an image, you can choose between it being a texture or a bitmap, etc) and then that will be read by asset manager and tell it to create the file with the properties specified when building (“build” means making the changes of your mod into the game). this part, when clicked, will appear empty because most of the in-game assets are already neatly packed as .tex files or other formats for different things (like .msh for mesh and .anm for animations) and the assets folder also only contains links for sources which we don’t have anyway.
Database contains the in-game items and skills and ui files and whatever. they behave on a template system and if you want to edit them manually with notepad++ for example then you can do so freely too. they govern the stats of an item, health of mobs, how many levels do the player have, and many, many others. when extracting the game files properly you will find this spot filled with a lot of random files that you can expand from the folders.
What i would personally recommend is to overwrite the “base” databases (the vanilla files) with dlc ones in order of release (so basegame < gdx1 < gdx2 as of right now) to help with mass copying vanilla files to your mod. sure the import button works immediately for dlc files as long as you have the correct directories set up but it is one by one kind of deal. If you tried copying files from the base game ones (like a very common example malepc01.dbr) to your mod and build it you will get the base game version of the file (so in this example you get no dlc masteries).
About WanezTools, well i do have it set up right now but i personally haven’t tried creating a mastery from scratch using it, only did some button repositioning for testing. also for that app specifically there are a lot of traps and can have things that doesnt work or will break your mod (no idea how major) if you use it without caution so i recommend hopping into grimarillion&dom discord server if you can for help with the tool. Asylum101, current maintainer of grimarillion, is very knowledgable in regards to the quirks of WanezTools’s mastery creator and is pretty active if you ask in the discord server’s #mod-it-yourself channel, so hop on aboard if you want to ask and learn together. i also kinda have a guide on setting up a mastery on the bare minimum on that channel if you want to check but you will have to scroll up a bit.
also when making a new mod, all your folders for that mod will obviously be empty, just copy over the vanilla files you want to edit to implement the stuff you want. some stuff like custom skills you can check vanilla files for reference or create a new file for them, just make sure to implement them so they are usable in the game (either as item skills, mastery skills, or idk maybe devotions??)
