Stash House

All I want to do is add in a stash house for my character ... do I have to undat the whole arcanum (main game) module?(im assuming you do) if so, where is that module?

i have in c:\sierra\arcanum, 4 files, arcanum1,2,3 and 4.dat.
in c:\sierra\arcanum\modules, 2 files, arcanum.dat and vormantown.dat

when i load worlded 1074 , it does not see arcanum.dat or vormantown.dat
before, it used to (but it was compressed still) ... it didnt read arcanum1,2,3 or 4.dat either, they were in different directory.

I copied the arcanum1,2,3 and 4.dat files to the modules directory and worlded 1074 sees them.


I am not entirely sure which module.dat i should be editing to add in a stash house for my character.


so ... can someone take me by the hand and let me know which .dat I should edit, and if it is the arcanum.dat in the MODULES directory, how do I get WorldED 1074 to SEE it?

 

Welcome to the forum, Shiin!

Ok, it took a bit of searching to refresh my memory - I don't use the 1074 WorldEd - but I finally found the answer.
This is one of those things you have to sneak around. The 1074 version is programmed to ignore the Arcanum.dat, so....

1) Make a copy of the Arcanum.dat.
2) Give it another name (MyKewlMod.dat, for example).
3) Start WorldEd, make your changes, and save.
4) Rename the original Arcanum.dat to XArcanum.dat, or remove it completely to a safe location outside the game.
5) Rename the modified dat to Arcanum.dat.
6) Start a new game and enjoy the results.

Edit: Forgot about Vormantown - Use the same procedure.
Edit 2: Arcanum.dat is huge! It'll take between 40 minutes to an hour for WorldEd to unpack for use, then an equal amount of time to recompress, so plan ahead.

 

haha wow i can't believe it was that simple ... I've been wandering site after site reading tutorials on how to mod and that was the only issue i could not figure out.

Thanks for the welcome and I do appreciate the help.



got a small question though ... lets say i dont change anything drastic in the main game module ... just adding a house, would I still be able to load a savegame since character data is stored in the save file?


i'm guessing it might be possible but I do know that changes can void save games if the savegame reads absolute byte locations of main game info, just dont know if this would apply to the small changes I refer to or to Arcanum itself.

 

The answer is both yes and no.

Yes: If the new house is not in an area you've been to yet and you remember to clean out the Arcanum\modules\Arcanum\maps folder to force a fresh inventory, then you should have little to no problem. (fingers crossed)
This is how I'm modding the main game.

No: Save-game corruption is always a possibility. I start from the Crash Site and still occasionally encounter this on even when I'm working on the other side of the map. Of course, I'm remodeling large areas of the map, so that is definately a contributing factor.
Also - Modifying an area you've already been in really messes with the game engine. The symptoms range from a draggy frame-by-frame advance all the way to crash-to-desktop.

I think I might have answered your second concern with the explaination above.

 

thanks for the tip.
i'll play around with it and see, tho i'll expect to make a new character that way im not freshly disgusted with the results had i expected anything different