Getting Started On Modding DS2

[Guest Virulian]

I, as I am sure many people on the Nexus, would like to mess around with texture mods. Not just using them, but creating them as well. Are there any tutorials out there for getting started on it? Hoping to get some links posted for everyone.

[OpenSaucer]

It's fairly simple, although there is no way to directly alter the game's files without a VAC ban. You can only use file injection, which replaces the textures on-the-go when they are sent to your GPU. So be wary that the game might become very slow if you have a lot HD textures.

 

Here is a short guide on how to get the game's textures out, and how to replace them. It will require you to have GeDoSaTo installed, which I would think you already have since you are talking about using texture replacers. If not, please familiarize yourself with it first. http://blog.metaclassofnil.com/?tag=gedosato

 

Anyway, here you go:

 

1. Install GeDoSaTo and open the GeDoSaTo.ini file using any text editor.
2. find the line that says "enableTextureOverride = false" and change "false" to "true"
3. find the line that says "enableTextureDumping = false" and change "false" to "true"
4. Go in game and find an area that shows the texture, wear the armor that has the texture, whatever; make the texture load into the game. GeDoSaTo will take all the loaded textures and dump them into a folder.
5. Close the game and go into textures/DarkSoulsII/dump (the textures folder should be located together with the GeDoSaTo files) and look through all the textures until you find the right one.
6. Edit it, yadda yadda.
7. Now go into textures/DarkSoulsII/override and place your edited texture there.
8. Done. Remember to change enableTextureDumping to "false" again, loading times will be very long and you will fill your hard disk with clutter if you don't.

 

Any questions, feel free to ask. If you want help on texturing in general... There are loads of tutorials around the interwebz, the game uses both .dds (with alpha alpha support) and .png files.

[WASasquatch]

I am running as administrator, windows 8. Yet no "DarkSoulsII" folder, or textures. Any ideas?

########################################################################################
# Texture settings
 
# Dump game textures loaded using d3dx to textures\[gamename]\dump\[hash].tga
# if you enable override at the same time, the overridden texture will be dumped
enableTextureDumping true
 
# Override game textures loaded using d3dx with those from
# textures\[gamename]\override\[hash].(dds|png), if available
enableTextureOverride true
 
# Mark textures with their hash (for texture modders)
# WARNING: extremely slow if a game loads many textures
# (if you think a game crashed, it's probably still just loading textures)
enableTextureMarking true

Edited May 9, 2014 by WASasquatch

[OpenSaucer]

 

I am running as administrator, windows 8. Yet no "DarkSoulsII" folder, or textures. Any ideas?

 

 

Are you looking in the folder that GeDoSaTo operates from, and not the DaS2 game folder?

 

Also, the "DarkSoulsII" folder is inside the "textures" folder.

 

Edit:

enableTextureMarking true

You might want to set this to false unless you know what it does.

Edited May 9, 2014 by OpenSaucer

[WASasquatch]

Got it working. Apparently I could run as Administrator all I wanted too, but Windows 8 locks down anything inside the Program Files folder despite administrator, so you gotta right click and edit permissions allowing your user account... even if it is administrator, as they're locked to the "SYSTEM"

[OpenSaucer]

Glad you got it working, and yeah... Windows 8 has some weird ways of working :laugh:

[Guest PsychoSTINO]

can you delete the textures in the dump folder after you placed the right one in the override folder? Or do you still need to keep all the textures that were loaded in the dump folder?

[Derok]

What is the area with fewest textures in your opinion? Because dumped textures are always alot, and it takes alot to dig through files to find what you are looking for.

[Guest PsychoSTINO]

What is the area with fewest textures in your opinion? Because dumped textures are always a lot, and it takes a lot to dig through files to find what you are looking for.

I am also wondering that, my dump folder is filled with 1.500 text. i just logged into character in majula. But i also found textures of armor i wasnt wearing and a texture of the poison spitting statues. I don't really understand how the dump text works. It seems not very efficient but maybe i am doing something wrong.

[Derok]

I think it's better to avoid Majula, as there are lot of textures: buildings, npcs (clothing and weapons), terrain etc...