Interface modding

[reelo2228]

Hey, i've recently got interest in modifying some of the interfaces in Skyrim, and poked around, saw that they are all in .swf format, i tried to open them with Flash, but nothing appears. :psyduck: :psyduck:

 

Could anyone teach me how to make these .swf or just how to modify interfaces? :dance:

[reelo2228]

Ok, so i poked around google for the entire afternoon and read up on a lot of things. From wht i knw now:

 

1. Skyrim UI uses something very similar to Actionscript 2.0 of flash

2. It is possible to extract the interfaces from .bsa and convert the .swf into .fla for editing

 

so then i proceeded something simple and replaced the vanilla cursor sprite with an rotating one, exported as .swf and placed it into the Data\interface folder. Open up skyrim and voila, the cursor is animated as expected... :thumbsup:

 

Well that was simple, now the hard part, i dont knw anything about As2.0 wht i really wanted to do was to revamp the Main menu of skyrim, i've done a custom one just now but it's not interactive - nothing is clickable :psyduck: more importantly is the background and that big bloody dragon logo not part of the interface? coz i cant find it :(

[scrivener07]

I havent looked at the main menu very much myself. The dragon logo is actually a full 3d mesh with its own texture. Im sure the swf is loading that mesh similar to the way the inventory menus load item meshes.

 

Heres this thread for the heck of it. Ive taken a break from the interface modding myself. Its confusing as hell :)

[reelo2228]

Thx a bunch! more stuff to read on! I've read ur guide too - seems u'r still working on it :tongue: But why do i need the UDK??

EDIT: ok i got it, UDK supports scaleform, but seeing as how .gfx files can be altered so little, i'm not sure if i need it :confused:

 

I managed to find the logo mesh with CKit, changed it's color, and also replaced it with an empty file to take it away. :thumbsup:

 

But i think non of the .swf (tried to replace vanilla startmenu.swf with a blank frame with no actionscript) is loading this Main menu background (smoke and black backdrop) :confused:

Edited June 30, 2012 by reelo2228

[scrivener07]

right. I dont think the smoke is a part of the swf. The main menu actually is the player loaded into a blank empty cell with the mainmenu.swf loaded as an overlay and I think this smoke is attached to the cells data. Take a look at the interior cell "MainMenuCell". I didnt spot anything unique about it besides the 'cant travel from here' flag.

 

This is just more stuff to look at. I cant figure out how these menus use resources from the bsa files myself. Ill be working more on this myself as soon as I hit a road block in this other project I work on.

[reelo2228]

right. I dont think the smoke is a part of the swf. The main menu actually is the player loaded into a blank empty cell with the mainmenu.swf loaded as an overlay

 

Oh! that makes total sense, that's how they did that "Bethesda, Presents" when starting a new game, those were .swf movieclip overlays too!

 

So then it's possible to say, make an epic quest mod, and use .swf to display the story titles and maybe also author name like "Derp Presents... Land of Herpinton" at the start of the quest :O :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

 

Back to main menu, i'll try adding other props in that cell and see if it loads up, or attempt to make a duplicate of that cell and change it's settings!

[reelo2228]

Hmm, adding prop, changing lighting, add sky, deleting COC marker from the "mainmenu" cell doesnt seem to affect the Main Menu at all, the logo and smoke still load as normal... Something else must be loading that, i've tried to look through every single cell in the CKit, no other cell seems to be special...

 

though poking around i did find this weird checkbox --->

 

http://i646.photobucket.com/albums/uu189/reelo2228/jvjhg.png?t=1341148512

 

Though checking it seems to do nothing, i don't see it at all on the Main Menu :psyduck:

[scrivener07]

So then it's possible to say, make an epic quest mod, and use .swf to display the story titles and maybe also author name like "Derp Presents... Land of Herpinton" at the start of the quest :O :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

 

Ill just go ahead and confirm this one.

(Sites acting weird about embedding video)

 

I need to investigate this main menu more. Will report back :)

[reelo2228]

This is abit of a cheat, but i added in a big layer of blank color to startmenu.swf to cover up the background, then i try to place images into it... didnt work :psyduck:

 

http://i646.photobucket.com/albums/uu189/reelo2228/TESV2012-07-0201-38-01-34.jpg

 

First half of pic - I tried to placed a cool looking picture into the layer, it went transparent in game, only the logo showed up

 

Second half of pic - I added in a blank layer of color, and the background is covered up (still just a cheat method, coz the interface always loads after the background...)

 

 

Then i noticed something, i think maybe only vectors can be read when the game loads the interface, the text loads coz the vectors of that typeface are in font_en.swf, and that is why my images didnt show.

 

Another problem was the recompile :verymad: it gave errors, i tired a clean recompile with no changing done, it still gave error, they were all missing properties of functions i think.. as a result, the menu got messed up.

 

http://i646.photobucket.com/albums/uu189/reelo2228/error.png

[scrivener07]

Your missing those CLIK libraries UDK I was startin to talk about in my tutorial. These are needed to compile your .swf. Your better off downloading ready to edit assets from here https://github.com/Mardoxx/skyrimui courtesy of Mardoxx and the SkyUI team.