Click on open and a file browser will come up. You want to browse into:
C:\My Documents\Dungeon Siege\Save\ and open up your character. I'm going to open my character GODZILLA.dsparty. The ONLY character files you want to open will all end in .dsparty!! Do not open, or tamper with, dsparty.bak folders!
· Next you want to make sure your character.dsparty folder is highlighted like in the above diagram. Then you click on Extract. A browser comes up for you to search a location to extract to. You want to select the New Folder (character temp) you made in my documents to extract to. Select it and click on Extract once again. Congratulations, you are done with Tank Viewer. I told you it wasnt that hard!
Now go into the folder you just extracted to and be sure that it contains the 3 (or 2) components of you character. These are: Info.gas, Party.gas, and Potrait.bmp.
· I will tell you one thing now: Party.gas is the only file you ever need edit!!! So, you guessed it! We want to open up party.gas. The easiest way to do this is to open up your word processor and go to File and select Open. (Note: I use Microsoft Word but Notepad and Skritpad are also good for this. ) . Browse to the folder with Party.gas in it and open it. It may give you some format warning, but ignore it; it wont affect your character in anyway. OK, we are at the fun part. We are ready to edit! I will use a very simple demonstration of what a character file looks like. Some may look far more complex:
When you first edit your character, you just change around a few modifiers. Make your sword be trusted of ice for example:
Note the addition of a modifier_prefix and modifier_suffix. This has enabled you to turn a fairly weak weapon into a real powerhouse!
-Modifiers do not use spaces (i.e.. ofthelion).
OK, at this point I am assuming you have done a few SIMPLE editing things and are ready to put your character back together and see if it works! So we can save and exit from the word processor (be sure to Save) and continue to the next step.
Now we want to open up Tank Creator. The buttons to the right of the 2 slots will allow you to browse for the source and output. Begin by selecting your source. Your SOURCE is the folder that you made that has party.gas, info.gas, and portrait.gas (The one you made in my documents). It doesn't want you to select any of the 3 files. ONLY the folder itself!!
The output is the character .dsparty file in C:\My Documents\Dungeon Siege\Save\ . NOTE: you will need to select view ALL FILES to be able to see your character, otherwise it will appear to not be there:
(NOTE: The path on your own computer may vary from the paths shown in the above diagram depending on your version of windows and whether your machine is set up for single or multiple users.)
Just hit space bar, and you are DONE!!! Close tank creator AND YOU ARE READY TO GO INTO DUNGEON SIEGE TO SEE YOUR COMPLETED WORK!!!!!!! All of these steps will become like second nature to you after practice. You will build confidence fast, some faster than others, but that hardly matters. I hope you enjoyed learning this as much as I, liked teaching it. HAVE FUN and tell your friends about these new skills you've got. I believe in freedom of knowledge. =)
EDITING CHARACTERS AND ITEMS
(NOTE: There is an advanced, as well as an expert tutorial about PVP and a few other nice things, but those are avaible to members only. ^_^ )
There are 4 separate components of this tutorial. At this point you should be comfortable with extracting, editing, and compiling your character.dsparty files. You have probably tried changing a few modifiers, hopefully successfully. If not, view the trouble shooting section of editing in Basic. But as Im sure you know, there is far more to editing than just changing a few modifiers around. You can add and change items, hide your health, create edited spells, change the templates of items and your char, and, my favorite, edit the Skin of you char to give it a new look. So we shall begin.
Components (4)
Hiding your health: a curse and a delight.
Changing your skins: finally not that boring character anymore!
Duplicating items: I want more!
Changing templates: so that is how they have a Meriks staff.
Hiding Your Health: a Curse and a Delight
So many people have asked me this question that I feel it is important to get over with, even though it is very simple. People ask: Why dont you have any life? Are you invincible? And of course, how do you do that?
So for one, we do have life; you just cant see it. We are not invincible, however hard to kill, and hiding out health has little to do with our strength and well, Im about to answer the last question.
Your screen name would look something like this (near the top of pary.gas):
Screen_name = "johndoe";
All you need to do it hit 3 enters after the last letter of your name and before the last quotation, like this:
Screen_name = "johndoe
";
That is it. It is that simple! The effects of this are: 1) people cant see how much health you have in a game 2) you can never lose anything; you will always start a new game with everything in your inventory back and 3) on the negative side, you can never gain anything while your health is hidden either. Because of this last point, I would suggest that you make sure you have everything you want done to you character before you hide you health. Unless, of course, if you are competent editor. Remember, you can always unhide you health if you want to buy something from a store and then edit it, then hide it again.
Changing your skins: Finally not that Boring Character Anymore
Changing you skins is actually quite easy. Nonetheless it will take some knew learning to accomplish this. One way of course is to use the Unlocked Character Skin mod to make your char have an interesting skin. I like to do it the old fashion way: looking and getting from the source.
There are 2 files that skins can be found in: Objects.dsres and Terrain.dsres. Both can be found in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Dungeon Siege\Resources\. This is also where the backbone file of DS is, Logic.dsres. We arent going to go into that though. If you dare, you can try yourself after this tutorial, but make sure you BACK IT UP before you do anything to it. No one is perfect.
The way our characters look are defined in 2 areas. One is at the very top where the shape of your head is, and the second is at the bottom under skins.
Your head will look like this:
custom_head = m_c_gah_fg_hlmt_head-03;
And your skins will look like this:
[skins]
{
0 = b_c_gah_fg_skin_001,b_c_gah_fg_hair_001;
1 = b_c_pos_a1_pant_004,b_c_pos_a1_shrt_004;
}
0 = is your face, head, hair, arms, and feet
1 = is your body and legs
I am showing you the head of you char because there are some Skin Helms you can add to your character. However, Im not talking about those till the next tutorial. For now we are concerned with only skins. So say the above is my current skin. It is nice and boring. And we want to make it interesting, so of course, we need to change it. You can find templates for skins in Objects.dsres and Terrain.dsres, as already discussed. Im going to show you how to find them, and how to edit your party.gas properly (it really isnt that hard, so dont worry).
Open tankviewer and click on Open. Browse into C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Dungeon Siege\Resources\ and open up either Terrain.dsres or Objects.dsres. I will use Objects for the example, but both are basically the same. So we open up Objects.dsres and we have the following:
We want to go into Art and then Bitmaps. Here lay a vault of opportunities to make you character unique. You can browse through them all with tankviewer; there is no need to extract anything (phew, huh.) Pictures of the skin are the dark boxes, and the templates are in the white boxes. So way we decide on the above. We need the template, so we open up the white box right above it is after n: I hit control-c to copy it and I go back into party.gas to paste my new skin. I decided that I only want my head and arms to have this one so now my code looks like this:
[skins]
{
0 = b_i_glb_artifact-01;
1 = b_c_pos_a1_pant_004,b_c_pos_a1_shrt_004;
}
Notice that I have replaced both skins. This is because there are VERY few skins that will overlap. There are a few, but we dont need to worry about that. You will have tons of fun just with this. Anyway, so I got 0 = changed but I dont want that boring body so I go to find another skin and I find one (I wont bother showing you, cuz I already did!). Now your party.gas looks like this:
[skins]
{
0 = b_i_glb_artifact-01;
1 = b_i_glb_bell-chapel;
}
We are done! Now we can go use tankcreator, and go see what our character looks like. Alas, Im not sure if you want this one I have used as an example. It might be very ugly. But hey! You never know, and that is part of the fun of it. A skin may look much different that you expected to because of the curves of a character, so experiment and find out.
One last point. I know anyone who is not experienced in editing has seen those skins that move and consider them fascinating. And they are! Think of something in the game the moves, for example water, and go hunt it out. Almost ALL moving skins have a template that ends in STATIC. That should help you out, and I dont want to take ALL the fun away from you now, do I?
Duplicating Items: I want more! !
Sometimes we want to have more that one of something. Well, as they say, there is more than one way to skin a cat. There is more than one way, too, duplicating an item. And Im going to discuss as many as I can remember (memory isnt too hot). First though, lets cover inventory numbering.
Items in your inventory, as you know by now, have a [#]. The start at [0] and go up from there to the max number in your inventory. The numbers can skip around erratically. It can go from [6] to [80] and then go back down to [7] later on. But whatever the order, they are all there. And the numbering does matter. If you have 3 [6]s, it will only recognize one of them. And even worse, it will mess up your character completely. So BEWARE the numbering scheme. I know that we all know how to count, so there shouldnt be much problem.
As well, items in your inventory have and x and y axis. These do MATTER!! However, there is no way to know the x and y axis. You kind of have to let DS do that for you. Dont worry; it will all make sense soon enough.
Duplicating an item that is in your inventory (not equipped) is the easiest thing to do. For one, it already has the right x and y axis. So all you need to do is copy it and paste it; then, of course, give it the next highest number from the current highest. Maybe the highest number is [36], so we need to make the pasted item have a number of [37]. Simple, right? Well, be careful.
There are 2 restrictions on your inventory. One is the space in your inventory. Im sure a lot of you have backpack modules and that isnt much of a problem (Y.A.I.M. is my personal favorite). The other is you are only allowed to have 255 items in your inventory. This includes spells in spell books. If you go over this number, things will, much to your dismay, start disappearing from your inventory. So be sensible please and dont go anywhere near 255 items.
Other methods for duplicating:
-If an item is equipped, make sure your health is unhidden and take off the item. Put it in your inventory and then you can extract you character after leaving the game and duplicate it.
-You can back up your character, go into a game, drop items, revert back to the saved character, go back in the game, and pick up the stuff you dropped. Wuala, you just duplicated all those items.
-Sometimes it is easiest just to go buy something from the store. Say you want a whole bunch of potions. Well, dont sit there duplicating them in your inventory. Simply go in a game and buy them (making sure your health is unhidden before hand).
Duplicating items can be fun, but dont be a pack rat if you dont need to. That is just my opinion.
Changing Templates: So that is how they have that Meriks Staff ! !
Sometimes you would be hard pressed to find and item or buy it from a store. Actually, some things are near impossible. However, we know they exist in the game because we have seen people with them, so, of course, there is a way. It is by changing item templates. Every item, including spells in spell books, has a template. Here is and example:
Template_name = sd_g_c_bl_1h_avg; (a full blade)
As well, items have variation names:
Variation_name = o_fin;
A variation name is the degree of quality of an item. So o_fin is a pretty decent full blade. In this case the best. But there are some items with higher quality variations, the highest being o_mag. I wont bother getting into all the variations. They will become readily apparent with what Im about to teach you. So here is a sword:
[
[27]
{
equip_slot = es_feet;
gold_value = 72742;
inv_location = il_main;
modifier_prefix_name = defiant;
modifier_suffix_name = ofagony;
template_name = bo_gr_fp_f_g_c_avg;
variation_name = o_mag;
}
Some items are one-of-a-kind and have no variation name. The above is one of them. Here is a pair of gloves that has a variation name:
[27]
{
equip_slot = es_feet;
gold_value = 72742;
inv_location = il_main;
modifier_prefix_name = defiant;
modifier_suffix_name = ofagony;
template_name = bo_gr_fp_f_g_c_avg;
variation_name = o_mag;
}
We will use our sword for an example though. Lets say we always wanted that powerful Leg Cleaver, and we are tired of begging people for it. We want to be nice little self-sufficient editors. So we need to change the template AND add a variation name (I already know we need the variation name). Where do we find it though? Well, in the backbone file of course: Logic.dsres. We have no intentions of actually editing Logic.dsres. We just want to look. So what do we need? Trust tankviewer of course. We open up TV, and click on open. We browse to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Dungeon Siege\Resources\ , and we open up Logic.dsres. This file is a labyrinth of things so I will save you some time and show you were to look for any item template you will ever need. It is in World, Contentdb, Templates, Regular, and Interactive. Here lies all items templates. We want to look wpn_sword.gas for our example. After that Im sure you will want to explore more. And we just want to view it, NOT extract it. So we click on the it and click on view. Then we have to find the leg cleaver. The easiest way to spot it is to notice that each template has a line like this:
doc = "Cracked Full Blade";
The one we want will say:
doc = "Leg Cleaver";
We find it and it looks like this:
[t:template,n:sd_ra_g_o_st_2h_avg]
{
doc = "Leg Cleaver";
specializes = base_sword;
[aspect]
{
model = m_w_swd_017;
}
[attack]
{
f damage_max = 233.000000;
f damage_min = 78.000000;
is_two_handed = true;
}
[common]
{
pcontent_special_type = rare, unique;
screen_name = "Leg Cleaver";
}
[gui]
{
active_icon = b_gui_ig_i_ic_swd_007;
equip_requirements = strength:26;
inventory_height = 4;
inventory_icon = b_gui_ig_i_w_swd_129;
inventory_width = 1;
}
[pcontent]
{
[base]
{
f modifier_max = 6.000000;
f modifier_min = 0.000000;
}
[c_fin]
{
active_icon = b_gui_ig_i_ic_swd_008;
f damage_max = 318.000000;
f damage_min = 106.000000;
equip_requirements = strength:33;
inventory_height = 4;
inventory_icon = b_gui_ig_i_w_swd_128;
inventory_width = 1;
model = m_w_swd_017;
f modifier_max = 40.000000;
f modifier_min = 25.000000;
}
[c_mag]
{
f damage_max = 738.000000;
f damage_min = 246.000000;
equip_requirements = strength:64;
inventory_height = 4;
inventory_icon = b_gui_ig_i_w_swd_131;
inventory_width = 1;
model = m_w_swd_020;
f modifier_max = 112.000000;
f modifier_min = 98.000000;
}
[o_str]
{
active_icon = b_gui_ig_i_ic_swd_008;
f damage_max = 609.000000;
f damage_min = 203.000000;
equip_requirements = strength:54;
inventory_height = 4;
inventory_icon = b_gui_ig_i_w_swd_130;
inventory_width = 1;
model = m_w_swd_017;
f modifier_max = 95.000000;
f modifier_min = 81.000000;
}
}
}
The template is sd_ra_g_o_st_2h_avg and we can see by the damages that c_mag is the best variation of it. So we did it! We have the information we need to change our sword into that leg cleaver we always wanted. We can now change our sword to:
[18]
{
gold_value = 1;
grid_x = 319;
grid_y = 350;
inv_location = il_main;
modifier_prefix_name = unparalleled;
modifier_suffix_name = ofvirtue;
template_name = sd_ra_g_o_st_2h_avg;
variation_name = c_mag;
}
We are done! If we use tankcreator now, when we go into our next game we should be have our new leg cleaver in our inventory. Note: items that are equipped can have their templates changed to anything you want! The x and y axis is not and issue for equipped items.
Well this is the end beginner and intermediate. Hopefully you will master this, join our clan, and move onto advanced and expert secrets! Good luck as always! And be kind to your fellow DSer.
