I have an idea for a textures mod...

[Mononaut]

I debated on where to put this. I apologize if I landed on the wrong decision... :)

 

Greetings, my friends. I am thinking of making a texture-replacer mod that utilizes much smaller, cartoon-style textures. Dragon Age runs pretty slowly on my long-outdated computer, and I believe having much smaller textures would improve the performance.

 

I am pretty handy with gimp, and am pretty excited about the idea of doing this. It doesn't even really matter to me if nobody else uses the textures. I'm happy to make them and be the sole user of the mod. (Though naturally I would make it available and hope for the best.)

 

But before I start really digging in with the dragon age toolset, which I have no idea how to use :), I thought I would ask... Maybe there are experts among you who could give me advice?

 

1. Is it difficult to re-size the textures -- will I have to do any changing of settings in DA? (My hope is that the game is programmed to display whatever textures are in the override folders easy-as-cake.)

2. I am assuming that, if people can make textures much larger than the default, I will be able to make textures much smaller than the default, and DA will display them properly. True? False?

3. Are there any good tutorials about extracting and replacing DA textures?

4. Are there any texture-replacers out there that replace *every* in game texture? (I think if there were, that might potentially simplify the process for me, as I could download that and then replace *those* textures, making it unnecessary for me to extract them all with this toolset that i have no concept of how to use.

 

Thanks a million for any thoughts. I'm new to DA modding, clearly, but not to texture-making.

[Thandal]

This: "Tutorial on textures and stuff" might be of some help.

[Mononaut]

This: "Tutorial on textures and stuff" might be of some help.

 

I appreciate the quick and courteous response. Thanks a bunch. I can't find anything there that addresses my questions, though -- and maybe I'm missing something, but the videos seem geared toward modeling rather than texturing.

[DarkeWolf]

Heyas Mononaut! Welcome to the dragon age forums!

I can tell you where the games textures are stored. U:\Game Files\Dragon Age\packages\core\data\textures.erf

Notice thats a costom install for me. On a regular install it would be something like C:/program files/~~~~~~

 

You can just drag and drop the .erf file into the toolset. Then wait for it to open. Once its open you can right click on the file, and chose extract all then tell the TS where to extract the files To.

 

Unfortunately, I know almost nothing about 3d modeling, so I DONT know if there are additional files that you will need to extract or not... aside from just the tex files.

The textures tho you can do in any program that has a plugin for handling .dds format. Such as Adobe Photoshop, with the dds plugin.

 

Most likely all you're going to want to do is drop the image resolution. So if it's like at 96 dpi, set it down to 72 dpi, or something like that. How to do that will vary by the program that you're using.

 

Hope this at least gets you pointed in the right direction :)

Good luck!!! :thumbsup:

 

Edit- oh yeah....

and once you're done you can just move your modified textures to your override folder. And that will work.

AS LONG as you dont have any mods that also have those particular textures in them. If so you could end up having a conflict and those mods and/or your textures not rendering correctly in the game.

[Mononaut]

Heyas Mononaut! Welcome to the dragon age forums!

I can tell you where the games textures are stored. U:\Game Files\Dragon Age\packages\core\data\textures.erf

Notice thats a costom install for me. On a regular install it would be something like C:/program files/~~~~~~

 

You can just drag and drop the .erf file into the toolset. Then wait for it to open. Once its open you can right click on the file, and chose extract all then tell the TS where to extract the files To.

 

Hey, thank you very much. That works, and has given me a great starting point for experimenting with the textures. I appreciate the info.

Edited March 5, 2011 by Mononaut

[DarkeWolf]

Mononaut- Not a problem at all :)

And you're very welcome :)

 

Now... I did also forget to mention that there are two version of each texture file. One version that goes into a Medium folder, and one that goes into a High folder.

these two versions are different resolutions. High folder textures are a higher resolution than those in Medium.

 

The reason for these two different files, is that the game uses the different files at different distances and angles from the "camera" view. IE- it will use the lower rez tex files when the person or item is further away on the screen. And use the higher rez tex files when it's close up, like when you zoom in, or in cutscenes.

 

It may not effect your project. But in cases where modders texture armor for example. If they don't include both the high and medium textures, the tex's screw up really bad at different angles and distances from the camera view. Just adding that for general reference ;)

 

Good luck with your work, and have a great weekend! :)

-DW