Greetings, Mod Questions and a possible bug from a newb.

Greetings.

Just recently decided to give ToEE another chance. Bought it when it first came out, but wouldn't run properly on my computer. There was also another computer, but I didn't have much access to it, not to mention it became an unstable brick whenever it had to run any commercial game made after circa 2001. So it was shelved for a few years. (Same story happened with Vampire:Bloodlines. Why I didn't foresee that happening, I don't know. Ahnyhow...) Actually, I managed to fix that PC now. Joy! Time to catch up on games I missed the last couple of years. ... And then I realize I still don't have much access to that PC, but my girlfriend bought a Laptop recently, and ToEE seems to be doing quite alright on it.

w00!

I thought about running it plain, just the official patches, since I'm rather picky about accepting aditional content in a game. A quick look through the fixed bug list of the c08 Mod Pack made me decide against it rather quickly, though.

So now I'm all set to start creating a party and play - but then again, modding some stuff before I start may be fun, too. So here are some questions.

- Should I stick to the 5.0.0 release, or should I upgrade to 5.0.x as soon as possible ? (Considering I won't be modding anything public for a while, I suppose)

-Looking through some art files ... There only seem to be textures for Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Half Orcs. ... Am I correct in surmising that the other races simply re-use these ? Or am I looking in a very wrong place indeed ?

-Looking through some more art files ... the Human Male Villager's Blue Garb is the Female version! Ha! Crossdressing! Checked in-game, but there the male version is displayed anyhow. Boo! Hiss! I guess I'd need to dig a bit deeper to find out why it doesn't use that file. I haven't been fidling with the protos.tab yet. Maybe I should.


-How difficult would it be to make a Human PC, but use the pudgier Half-Orc model, while keeping it's own art textures? (So you don't get the grey-ish tan.)

-How about the reverse ? Same model, but a different texture? (Say I want to be pale, and use the Elf texture? Or more tanned, and use the dwarf texture.)

-How about using a custom texture for the head ? (Moustache! Beard?)

-How about using a hair model from the other gender set?

-How about all four ? And perhaps it needs to be mentioned, doing this without altering everyone else in the game world. I know some of these are rather simple if you don't mind about that. (Hair especially.)

Oh, and some more about hair. I guess this qualifies as a bug. Some of the more lushier hair models start acting really freaky when scaling down the height of the character, most noticably so on the small races, and stangely enough, Half-Orcs. For example, the high-tied ponytail stretches straight backwards before falling down, and some sort of horns start growing at the character's temples. It's rather off-putting. It seems like a rather obvious bug, but I couldn't find another mention of it on this forum. Don't people use tiny characters? Then again, perhaps it's my (lack of) graphics card at fault, or maybe I just need to re-install.

If it's just me, I'm leaning towards the graphics card (one of those Mobile Intel(R) integrated chipsets) - the ponytail looks weird on all characters. The back of it is dark, like it's casting shadows on itself. Yucky.

But before I try to mess with that ... can anyone verify?

Thanks in advance, and keep up the good work!

-Gerko, whose former mod experience consists of (1)imported portrait(ToEE), (1)imported portrait for Arcanum and (1)custom background for Arcanum. (Oh, and not counting some truly minor hex-editing on save games)

 

the blue villager has been fixed, wel lit should've been.

that is correct

how you would do this is make a halforc PC and then use the console to change his race (codes found here) you'll also need to get a character editor from here because as a half orc you PC will be missing a feat and 4 skill points (don't worry about stats, as soom as you change him to a human the halforcs bonuses and penalties to strength, charisma etc dissapear. also because halforc's heads are bigger than human you'll have to pick the right hair style, or his new hair (which goes with the human skin) will be to small (long hair works). if nothing appears to change after all this, add or remove a piece of clothing and the skin will change.

if you want to be a pale or taned human change your race to elf or gnome so that armour still fits (otherwise the model floats off the body) - remember that doing this will change som of your stats and ablities

the best that you can do atm is turn you halforc into a dwarf - atm I have a 6'6" dwarf cleric in my party - dwarf and halforc heads are the same size, to get the armour to fit I edited the addmesh.mes changing the armour that my cleric was going to wear the whole game. what I did was copy the halforc's line over the dwarfs line. ( I backed up first for a quick switch back on a different run through)

possable but time comsuming, do a search for "I hate the females long hair"

unfortunatly alot of what to do will effect the whole game world, on the upside there arn't many (if any) dwarf NPCs

 

D'oh! That's what I get for looking through the .dat extracted files without double-checking things that were already fixed.

Ooh. And here I was about to start looking through ToEEPC or savegame files. Works nicely, thanks. Haven't tried it yet, but didn't adding feats crash the editor ? I remember something of the sort. Now cloaks act iffy, but I guess I can live with that.

Hmmm... This would also be a problem for that Half-Orc turned Human, I suppose ? Might another workaround be possible with customised/copied items ? And what about that Giant-as-PC available at the start ? From what I've read in one of the tutorials, it sounds like quite a bit of work, and might not work properly for PC races (if you want to have equipment show up and all ... ) I'll probably have a looksee later...

M-hmmm ... I see. Actually, it's not nearly as time consuming if you just want to change it for one specific hair color. (Just change 2-3 files, instead of 48-72) Which would also help to minimize global game effects.

Thanks! I'll go dig a bit more.

Will do! (On both counts.)

Hrmmmmm ... I'm trying to mod the rest/can't rest button. (I'm colorblind. To me, that green tent looks way too much like that red tent. While I do see a difference, it requires more than a quick glance to notice a change. Ergo, annoying and mod-worthy for me.) Found the file, but then I realised my Photoshop skills are .. um. How do I say this ? Non-existant?

Eh-heh. I consider myself a thoroughbred MS Paint Copy/Cut/Paste/Resize master, but gradients, anti-aliasing or color substitutions are not included in those skills. Argh. Oh well, something else to learn.

Oh, and can anyone verify the hair issue I mentioned ? I attached a sample picture.

-Gerko, way erratic and off-topic. Maybe he should go play in general discussion.

 

really to chage a hair coulour on the fly it only requires one file change but to do it properly is a lot of work.

if you turn a halforc into a human, all of the addmeshes that the charcter uses will be slightly to small but its hardly noticeable.