[Any updates on whether in-game models are replaceable?]

Oh jeez. Ok, I'll look at it sometime in the next week or two (on the plane or something), see if I can make heads or tails of it. Never done anything remotely like this though, so I'd very much appreciate any advice before going into it.

[Any updates on whether in-game models are replaceable?]

Perhaps we could get into contact with the developer of umodel/ue explorer? I'm guessing they'd be able to help us a lot.

[Any updates on whether in-game models are replaceable?]

And I'm guessing UPKs have their own code style for models too, as well as just their scripts.

 

Is there any method to the madness that Unreal uses to package a UPK? If we get the same version of UE that XCOM was made in, would we be able to figure out the HEX codes by:

• Extracting a model from an XCOM UPK
• Putting the model in a functional project within UE
• Compiling the project into a UPK
• Getting the much-easier-to-find HEX values that holds all the vertices in the new UPK
• and using them in a ctrl+f search on the original UPK to locate the equivalent model's HEX values

The issue is that there WILL be a limit to the amount of things that we can change within the UPK, because all it is really is an optimized and compressed version of all the source files. And the compression in this case is likely only going to be one-way, as the engine and computer can fill in the gaps. Changing a value for a variable could be a very different beast to changing an actual mesh.

[Any updates on whether in-game models are replaceable?]

Sorry, I don't mean how to use it - how does it actually look into the UPK files and edit the data?

[Any updates on whether in-game models are replaceable?]

 

Which program would that be you are speaking about, specifically? Lots of possibilities.

 

Any, really. I know the HxD HEX Editor is used for XCOM, but I haven't tried it myself.

 

I guess the simplest?

[Any updates on whether in-game models are replaceable?]

Thanks for those fantastic suggestions - I don't have access to XCOM files for a week and a bit, let me know if anyone else takes a crack at it in that time!

 

It sounds like the only tricky part remaining is making the vertex changes. I'll see if I can do some research in this time, I'm not really remotely sure how things like this usually happen.

 

Does anyone know how the HEX code manipulation program works?

[Any updates on whether in-game models are replaceable?]

I'd assume it'd be in the mesh files, more specifically the .skeletonmesh files.

 

How would we change the data in the .skeletonmesh files? What'd it look like to us?

 

We could, for example, take the original file, manipulate it in a modelling program, save it, note the differences within the files and manipulate the upk from there.

 

It might also be a good idea to manipulate one vertex at a time. I think the solution will still be just to copy the differences from a modified file, but it'd be nice to find some method in this madness.

[Any updates on whether in-game models are replaceable?]

That sounds like a great start! How would we go about doing it?

[Any updates on whether in-game models are replaceable?]

XCom Weapon packages have a bunch of extra stuff included, such as audio and animation data, as well as links to XComProjectile classes used to spawn projectiles from firing.

 

Is this just for the weapon packages? Would something like Hair be any easier to create new models for?

 

 

BTW, what exactly is preventing us from loading the UPKs in the UDK? I've never quite understood it.

 

I believe UPKs are similar to an .exe for UDK. It's meant to be one-way. Not super well read up on it myself, though.

[Any updates on whether in-game models are replaceable?]

He's definitely still active: https://forums.unrealengine.com/member.php?1870-Gildor

 

It's possible we could just ask his opinion and go from there. It's possible he knows quite a simple way to do it, or perhaps he knows someone who is more interested in getting involved than I.

 

He would at least be able to clarify if repackaging upk's is out of our league or not.

[Any updates on whether in-game models are replaceable?]

Yeah, that'd be pretty crazy. If you can figure out the format that XCOM uses, and the differences it has to the format whatever mesh extension you're using has, then I'd imagine it could be worse, I suppose. But I'm not sure how to go about starting either of those other tasks. It sounds interesting, though.

[Any updates on whether in-game models are replaceable?]

As I've been told by a few other modders, and as far as I can tell from the posts in here and out, nobody has found a way to change any of the models in the game. I wanted to put a call out to make sure that was still the case?

 

Pretty new to modding, but I was hoping to add some new hairstyles for the soldiers. I've got to get back to work for the day, but I was gonna check out how Mass Effect handles modding, since I hear it has some similarities to XCOM.