Arcanum:WIP 6.0 now available

That's odd. The only thing I ever did with the Bates' guards was boost their combat skills.
Can you upload a copy of your save? I'd like to see this.
.

 

Got it and found your problem.
Laura's clothes are not being recognized as servant's clothing.
Loose Laura or find replacement threads and you can go right in.

In the meantime, I'll see what's the hold-up with Laura's dress and why the tailor's shop isn't carrying female servant's clothes.

 

Found the problem with Laura's dress. The one from the tailor's shop doesn't have the internal setting of 2805 Servants Clothes for Gilbert Bates.

I can fix Laura easy enough and add an additional dress to her location.

 

Is it a bug?

thanks for your work, rroyo.

I have a question.
I found the house of Mrs.Owen at Shroudded Hill and in that house the door is blocked by the wall. I can open that door, but the wall blocks my character.
If I try talking with Mrs.Owen, my character go out and get into the house through window again.
Is it a bug? or intened?

and one more question,
did you make lonesome traveller background by yourself?
I'm interested in making own background, so I want to learn throught it.
I looked for the script, but I couldn't. It might be merged in .dat file. can you show me the script?

I'm not good at english and modding arcanum.
Sorry for annoying you. Thanks for reading.

 

Welcome to the forum, conrad!

Found the problem you mentioned. Somewhere between the first release and now that extra section of wall snuck in there.
Thanks for letting me know. I'll get it fixed right away.

And I didn't make any of the new backgrounds you've seen. A few came from a background hack I added early on and the rest was created by The_Deathsangel.

There's a couple different ways to get to the files.
1) Create a folder somewhere and unpack the Arcanum5.dat with DATBuilder into it.
Then you can look in the mes folder for gameback.mes and the Rules folder for backgrnd.mes and effect.mes.
DATBuilder is available in the download section.

2) If you'd like to take a look at the ones created by The_Deathsangel without going through the business of unpacking, you can download a copy of his latest work here:

http://www.4shared.com/file/58600605/884ba956/Custom_Backgrounds.html

Finally -

There is no annoyance when someone wants to learn.

 

Thank you! You are so generous

 

Thanks for the mod rroyo! I've been using it for about a week now, and it really is fantastic.

I have just one question though, continuing from the background discussion above: how can I create my own backgrounds to go with your ones? I used to just download the modding tutorial and I was away, but I obviously can't do that anymore with your mod. I did what you said above, and I can view the contents of the .dat file (but not edit them), or extract them (which then allows me to edit them). Is there any way to look through the contents of the .dat like with DATBuilder, but then edit them?

Using DATBuilder, there's only one option I see. That is to extract them, make the necessary changes, then put it all back into a .dat file and replace the original. The thing is, how would I create a .dat file? Is some fancy program needed?

Thanks for any help!

 

Glad to hear you're trying my work and welcome to the wonderful world of modding.

Sorry - You need to extract the files to modify them. You can extract just one file at a time, but I've always liked the one-shot-do-it-all approach of unpacking the entire DAT to someplace out of the way.

FYI: Both Arcanum5.dat and the Arcanum.patch1 files will work unpacked.
This'll make debugging much easier for you if you wish to make several changes.

If you still want to use packed DATs, DATBuilder will create new ones.
Here's what I do:

Pick a location you want the new DAT to form in. The program defaults to the folder the DATBuilder program is in but that's easy enough to change.

On the DATBuilder menu bar, select New DAT, then save it as [your filename].dat. You can name it Arcanum6.dat and it'll work just fine or if you wish to replace the existing Arcanum5.dat, rename the old one with a X in front of the name or even delete it, then name the new one Arcanum5.dat.

Once you do the save, you'll see an add button appear with a small arrow just to the right. Click the arrow and choose By Wildcards. This brings up a new window where you can select what files you want in the DAT.

Choose the path to the files you want to add - for example, the entire modified Arcanum5.dat. Make sure that the path takes you inside the Arcanum5.dat - i.e. C:\Arcanum5Unpacked.

Now in the wildcards window type in *.* then click Add.

You are now set up to add all the files into the new DAT.
Click OK and the program begins adding the files. You'll see a running tally at the bottom of the program window.

When it is close to being finished adding the files the pop-up window will disappear.

Now look at the menu bar again. You'll see a button named Write Dir Tree. This finalizes the DAT and makes it usable by the game engine. Click it and then Yes. You'll get a new pop-up saying DAT Header written as well as the size of the new DAT and how many files are within.

Close the program, and the new DAT is ready for use.

Although I used the entire Arcanum5.dat as an example, you can make an Arcanum6.dat containing just the mes and rules folders with the files you modified (in the proper places of course) by following the same directions.

Enjoy the results.

 

rroyo: have you thought of "borrowing" Russian mods and their art? I browsed through 1.5 for example, and thought that there was a decent cache of art inside it (but also alot of naked women for some reason.)

 

I found the art a while back but really haven't added much of it.

The rings, armor, and shields are still waiting for me to find a suitable use.
The red suit looks good, but the doll doesn't show the new color when it's equipped.

Some things like the flowers and posters have already been put to work but many of the scenery items that are of interest to me needs a little work to make them usable in my hack. For example, there's a red trunk thats currently taller than a half-ogre and the gold statues will need resized and darkened to make them blend into my hack better.

The erotic pictures are simply being left out.

And before anyone goes screaming about theft - I don't try to pass any of them off as my own creations; other than being part of a collection and this disclaimer in the the !!ReadMe!! backs that up:

 

Does the updated map packs and music work with this mod cause i am really digging it, though i would hate to loose the map packs being that they greatly improve the games graphics. An what about my own custom portrait that i would wish to add would i still be able to add it?

oh an there is nothing wrong with trying to give people the best content found for the game, and what erotic art are you speaking about i dont seem to remember any from the base game i take it that this is new?

 

Ok:
The hi-rez townmaps - No. Many of the towns and such have been modified in my hack and the hi-rez townmaps wouldn't show the changes.
Save this pack for the stock game.

The music - It should should work. I haven't checked it out yet due to the holidays and other concerns but there should be no problems.

The custom portraits - not a problem. Just follow the guidelines for portrait creation and remember to list them in the gameport.mes and you should be good to go.

The erotic art - Inside the art/scenery folder of the 1.5 is a number of modern pictures of nude or scantily clad women. These photos were grafted rather nicely into an Arcanum frame, but they're still inappropriate for use in the game.

I'm sticking with the occasional vintage nude poster or painting that was common during the Victorian/Edwardian eras. I've scattered a few of these throughout the new areas.

 

sounds good to me, looks like you put a great effort into adding to this game. one last quick question had you added any new followers to the game?

 

Yep. Four of them so far.

 

do any of these new followers have a "romance" setting like raven? its an aspect of the game i had always enjoyed (same with baldurs gate)

 

Nope. At least not yet.