Some mod questions....

I know you can edit races...but can you make new ones?

Is it possible to make a new weapon prototype...and is there a tutorial on it?

Is it possible to mod in a new area of arcanum in the main story....or would that screw up the single player plot....

were can I get something to edit the graphics? I heard something about a art2bmp something or other but couldn't find it.

were are the female dwarves? info for them are in the dat files...so where are they?

is it possible to link to worlds (to world maps) like a earth and under earth etc....

Sorry for being a nuicence but I like modding but there is SO much to arcanum....

 

Right now, there is no way that I know of to add a new race to Arcanum.

Also, there are no sprites for female dwarves, halflings, gnomes, ogres or half-ogres, so they don't exist in the game as characters. You CAN use a savegame editor available in the downloads area and change your gender to female on all but the ogres, but you can't select ogre as a race. This does work and all the dialogue is there, but you need to edit the description.mes to add an elegant dress in large and small sizes before doing it or you may have problems when you need to "look your best".

You can edit the graphics, in a very crude manner, but getting them in and out is somewhat hit or miss at the moment. There are actually three programs that will let you access the ART files once you get them out of the dat files.

Redview will let you view them in all of their facets and rotations and let you export them to TGA files - probably the best for sprite editing. It is available at http://www.duckandcover.net/fallout2/modtools.php

ART2BMP will convert ART files to however many simple BMP files there are facets in the ART file, so you may end up with as many as 256 BMP files from a single ART file and all of the BMP files will be simple 256 color images. The only working link I could find for it is at a Russian site http://www.arcanum.alkar.net/game/edit/edit.shtml but if you watch the lower left area as you run your mouse over the screen you will find the link and it does work.

Finally, you have to get the graphics back into an ART file to put them back into Arcanum. This is where the real limitations occur. The only program that I know of that currently exists is BMP2ART and it will only convert single frame 256 color BMP files to single fram ART files and it doesn't always do it reliably. As you will find if you look at a tutorial by Da Real Asrudin at http://users.raketnet.nl/renevandepol/ you need to convert back to BMP to check to be sure the conversion actually worked. The program is available at http://arcanum.dp.ua/game/edit/files/bmp2art.zip which is a link I got off Chris Beddoes' Hard Arcanum page at http://www.terra-arcanum.com/~chris/ so try it there if it doesn't work directly from in here.

It is possible to make a new weapon prototype and there is a tutorial of sorts available on it right here in the modding/hacking section on Terra-Arcanum at http://www.terra-arcanum.com/council/articles/hackmod/, but good luck with making it work. If you figure out how to really do it well, give me some tips. :/ So far I haven't found anyone who has really done much on developing a good understanding of editing armor, especially magical armor, prototypes that has been willing to share the information with the rest of us.

As for modding in a new area of Arcanum in the main story, that is essentially what Chris Beddoes has already done in his Hard Arcanum mod, so it is definitely possible, but it is also a lot of work. In doing it, you will probably make any other mods unable to work with yours, so bear that in mind and design it to work around that limitation if you have any that you want to coexist with it.

I'm not sure you can create world maps, per se, so I'm not sure about the linking of world maps and will have to refer that question to a more experienced modder.

Hope this helps answer at least some of your questions.

 

Thanks, i'll look into the poroto editing....

Da Real Asrudin's grafic tutorial that you download comes with art2bmp and bmp2art

I found this out after I posted.

Hopefully I'll have a working mod in a few months....

 

Here's how I created a dwarven female (for my custom brothel, yarrrg!):

-selected the female sprite with "no clothing on" (the 1 piece bathing suit).
-placed and then scaled the sprite anywhere from 85-95% of normal size (otherwise she looks like a pixie).

-PoEHeavyBlade

 

re

im glad someone understands proto editing, because i think its just a pain in the rear. :-x

 

there you go gravediggin again...

 

tree isn't gravedigging, it's the other guy, and since he's new it's okay, atleast I thik so.

 

oh, yah, that's right. i apologize tree.

 

re

yeah, look who posted first! grrr, just makin' up ways to make fun of me :cry: .