Amineri Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 BTW, what exactly is preventing us from loading the UPKs in the UDK? I've never quite understood it. Basically there are native code extensions to the base UDK (added by Firaxis) that prevent us from loading existing packages in UDK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wraithdrof Posted July 8, 2015 Author Share Posted July 8, 2015 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wghost81 Posted July 9, 2015 Share Posted July 9, 2015 I believe UPKs are similar to an .exe for UDK. It's meant to be one-way.Not exactly. There were several serialization related changes in XCOM version of UDK/engine. Basically, this means that additional data fields were added to some of the objects, which are handled in native code. And since free UDK knows nothing about those fields, it fails to read XCOM packages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krazyguy75 Posted July 11, 2015 Share Posted July 11, 2015 I had an idea I remembered from way back in the ol' days to SSBB editing: rather than deal with trying to swap models in or out, why don't we just move the vertices around inside the model? Not the most easy to deal with task, but at least we have something to work with, whereas if we swap models, you have to deal with a file size change. Given that the vertices are bound to bones, so long as the body proportions are the same, it shouldn't cause to many problems either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wraithdrof Posted July 11, 2015 Author Share Posted July 11, 2015 That sounds like a great start! How would we go about doing it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krazyguy75 Posted July 11, 2015 Share Posted July 11, 2015 (edited) NO IDEA!Presumably, we have to look into the decompressed model's format and determine how it stores vertex locations! After that, we move them around. Edited July 11, 2015 by Krazyguy75 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amineri Posted July 11, 2015 Share Posted July 11, 2015 You can decompress weapon (and other) packages and open them in UE Explorer. Doing so isn't quite as useful as when there is unrealscript to look at, but finding particular sections can still be handy to find particular hex (I've replaced in-package 2D textures this way). As an example, I decompressed and opened Weapon_MEC_Railgun_SF.upk. Mesh data appears to be in : MECRailgun / Meshes , although where the actual vertex data is, I don't know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wraithdrof Posted July 11, 2015 Author Share Posted July 11, 2015 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dubiousintent Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 (edited) Assuming you can locate and make the vertex changes you want to the uncompressed package, it sounds like you want to then use EXEDiff to create and distribute the "difference files", and use EXEPatcher to merge them with the user's existing uncompressed UPK files. That way you avoid the whole issue of "distributing copyright assets". This is what was done with the EU "downgrade patch" mod, so it should be "do-able". As for where to find what the vertex data looks like, have you tried wghost81's UPK Format Document.pdf file at the bottom of the UPK Utils "Files" page? Otherwise, I would suggest starting your search on the Unreal Developer Network (UDN). -Dubious- Edited July 12, 2015 by dubiousintent Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wraithdrof Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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