Tutorial: Custom Level Schemes

I've noticed that no one has made a thorough tutorial in how to make custom level schemes (someone might have, but I have no knowledge of that).

You will need: any program which is designed to undat Arcanum's main files (IE DATBuilder) and of course the game itself.

Anyway here's how to edit the files, folders and stuff:

Undat the files "gamelevelname.mes" (Arcanum5.dat) and "gamelevel.mes" (Arcanum4.dat) from the main game data files. Put "gamelevelname.mes" into "C:\Games\Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura\data\mes" and "gamelevel.mes" into "C:\Games\Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura\data\rules" (Windows 7).
Note: The files do NOT go into your custom module folder. I tried it and it didn't work.

Now about these two files:

In "gamelevelname.mes" you add something like this into the bottom line: {SEQUENCE NUMBER}{LEVEL SCHEME NAME}. The first number shouldn't go below 107.
Note: I think 0-49 are reserved and shouldn't be edited.
Note2: Changing this file is necessary for it will be the name of your custom scheme.

In "gamelevel.mes" you also add something like this into the same place (down below): {SEQUENCE NUMBER}LEVEL SCHEME NAME {SKILLS TO MODIFY/ADD USING SKILL POINTS, SEPARATED WITH COMMAS ","}.
Note: The level scheme name is unimportant and is just for you to know which level scheme you are editing.

I tested different skills and this is how the game adds them:

"st 15" -- you might be thinking: "Doesn't it change the strength attribute to 15 with a single skill point?".
But no! Instead it uses the skill points -- which you gain with levels -- and puts them into the attribute when it can. Be your starting strength 8, 9 or even 1.

"melee 12" -- you might also think that it puts your points into melee, regardless of your dexterity. Wrong. The game puts your skill points first into dexterity, keeping the melee skill in mind as a priority. When possible the melee skill will be improved.

To round up the schemes here is an example:

[gamelevelname.mes]
{107}{Bounty Hunter}
Note: Mind you that the name has to fit in the character editor screen, else it won't show in-game. This here fits perfectly.

[gamelevel.mes]
{107}Bounty Hunter {melee 4, dodge 4, prowling 4, gun_smithy 1, pickpocket 4, picklock 4, haggle 4, anatomical 2, melee 8, dodge 8, mechanical 1, spottrap 4, firearms 4, haggle 8, persuasion 8, chemistry 1, firearms 8, gun_smithy 2, pickpocket 12, picklock 12, st 12, melee 12, dodge 12, prowling 12, haggle 12, persuasion 12, spottrap 8, firearms 12, smithy 3, pickpocket 16, prowling 20, pickpocket 20, melee 20, dodge 20, prowling 16, dx 20, st 15, spottrap 12, firearms 16, picklock 16, haggle 16, persuasion 16, firearms 20, picklock 20, st 20, haggle 20, persuasion 20, spottrap 20}

That's it. I hope someone will find this tutorial useful. It should be easy for beginner modders too, I think.

PS: Whatever you do, do NOT overwrite the .mes files in Arcanum.dat (1, 2, 3, etc). It will cause the game to crash and be unplayable. Just remember to make backups of the data files before doing anything with them. I will not be responsible for the problems you cause for your copy of the game.

 

You know that any feedback would be greatly appreciated? Without a positive reaction I will most likely just ignore posting any tutorial or help at all. I'm not angry, just slightly crossed. I understand that the community is small, but still -- more than a week and nothing. Is the tutorial any good at all? Does it work for anyone else?

There's nothing wrong in registering just to reply to a post. That's how I got here anyway.

 

It's much appreciated, thanks for your contribution. The Arcanun modding community is somewhat small, so to get genuine feedback from a fellow modder does take time here. I'm not a modder, and I tend not to use auto-level schemes - but I'd imagine they're vital in regards to making decent companions in any module.

To clarify - level schemes don't use character points as a player would, instead they tend towards the final values that you've specified in your scheme over time (or rather, levels)? Pretty interesting stuff. Don't get too discouraged if you don't get a response to a thread in the modding section, even for a dedicated forum there's not a large number of people looking to mod Arcanum any more so things move slowly.

 

Thanks for the reply. I guess I might have overreacted a bit. I'm just not used to posting on forums or contributing to something.

Anyway, I'm not sure if there is more to level schemes. There might be something that may make them act different than expected. My testing showed that it does work on NPCs as well as PCs correctly as I planned.

 

Any contribution is valuable because there is a huge void for Arcanum modding info.

I actually talk about custom level schemes in my modding guide, but it is brief because there are so many other files to mention.

The main things (which we both said) is keep the syntax the same, and the scheme will automatically meet requirements for skills.

Something that really should be mentioned is that by far the most common level scheme used by the game is Pure Melee-Dodge.

Well done, thanks for contributing to the knowledge of this wonderful game, and hopefully someone who always wanted to make Jormund useful will be eternally relieved after reading this guide.

edit: Also about the lack of feedback, you do really have to expect it. I released a rebalance of the entire game and only people on Good Old Games have said anything. The 170 portraits I delivered here also have 300 views and not a word of feedback about it.

 

I'm not a modder either, though at one time I had plans to make my own module. So at that time I guess a way to make my own level schemes would've been highly useful. As for your example scheme, I Imagine that it might be slightly better to alternate Melee and Dodge, so that the character can use the ever increasing Dexterity for Dodging before hitting DX 18. And why not DX 20 for the extra +5 speed? Other fun stuff might be to set ST 24, in case a half-ogre is using the scheme. I realise that it was just an example scheme, but then you claimed that it was good against anything killable, so why not make it better?

I've also noticed that temporary boosts will allow a character to skip raising the primary attribute and go directly for the skill. I guess this can be both good and bad. Good when it increases a skill quicker, but bad if it results in the character never getting back to increasing the attribute, thereby making them forever dependent on the temporary boost. Still, keep the attribute at 16 or lower, and they'll always need to raise it with points to get the maximum skill level, even on levels where they get two points. If you want to give second chances to people doing stuff like this, you could always throw in a few DX 20 later in the scheme, just in case Dexterity has been lowered from a lack of Agility of Fire or stuff like that.

 

Why would we care indeed. I wrote a small program years ago that lets you 'unlock' the follower stats and edit them in-game to your heart's content. There's absolutely no fuckin' need to unpack the game files and tinker with the awkward auto-level schemes.

 

Huh, so you spent a day of your worthless life on downloading 170 random pictures with clashing styles off the Internet and MSPaint'ing them into the game? Please remind me why should we give a fuck. If you were an artist that drew just one (!) portrait but actually made an effort to imitate the style of the game, I would stand up and applaud. But you're just a random moron trying to stuff as much random trash from the Internet into the game as possible. Fuck you.

 

Drog, I'm sure you actually mean good, despite the way you express it. Have a good day.

Edit: I got too pissed before.

 

@Bloodspikes

Don't worry about drog, he does that to everyone. Best just to ignore him.

Also, thanks for making the tutorial! I haven't actually been looking at Arcanum stuff in like a month 'cause of wanting to do different stuff for a while so I missed your post. I'll definitely use your tute as I've been thinking of making custom level schemes but wasn't entirely sure how. I'll go through of it sometime in the next few days and let you know what I think. The more tutorials out there the better!

 

When making the example I absolutely forgot about the 20 dexterity. I probably thought that 18 was good enough, but nevertheless it was just a quick example. So to compensate for the hollow scheme I'll try to make a complex one based on what skills I use. I'll call it "Bounty Hunter", with a background of "Bandit". It'll be for humans, half-orcs and perhaps dwarves/half-elves only.

{108}Bounty Hunter {melee 4, dodge 4, prowling 4, gun_smithy 1, pickpocket 4, picklock 4, haggle 4, anatomical 2, melee 8, dodge 8, mechanical 1, spottrap 4, firearms 4, haggle 8, persuasion 8, chemistry 1, firearms 8, gun_smithy 2, pickpocket 12, picklock 12, st 12, melee 12, dodge 12, prowling 12, haggle 12, persuasion 12, spottrap 8, firearms 12, smithy 3, pickpocket 16, prowling 20, pickpocket 20, melee 20, dodge 20, prowling 16, dx 20, st 15, spottrap 12, firearms 16, picklock 16, haggle 16, persuasion 16, firearms 20, picklock 20, st 20, haggle 20, persuasion 20, spottrap 20}

The scheme specialises in thievery, gunfighting, offensive technology as well as brutal melee combat. Not to forget persuasion and haggling, those skills are always important. The level needed to reach full potential should be 90 (designed for the bigger lvl cap mod), which is difficult to reach to. Anyone may try it out, IMO it's better than any default scheme.

I think I'm going to change the tutorial's example scheme to this. It wouldn't be so easy to understand, but more interesting.

 

I don't see the point of putting a bunch of skills only usable by PCs in a levelling scheme. I never use schemes for my own characters, only for the NPC followers. I also don't agree with the way you've staggered some of the skills.

Gunsmithy 1: Why not go straight to 2, where you can at least build a weapon that is worth using?
Thief skills 4? Why not go straight to a useful level? Or do you save and reload when failing? Or play on Easy mode?
Spot trap 12 and 20 seems to come so late in the scheme that BMC and the Dredge would already be behind you. (Assuming that this scheme is meant to be used for a character playing through the Arcanum module, which seems to be a fair expectation.)

I thought the melee fighter scheme you had before was a decent one, apart from the delayed Dodge 20, since that's just a single skill that would probably be useful while using the Melee skill that was being raised. My point there was that spending one point to bring Dodge up to the level of Melee before spending another three points on Dexterity seemed to be a better idea than not dodging at all until Melee is maxed. Spending points in a whole bunch of skills with different attributes before raising the 'bread and butter' combat skill seems like a bad idea. Unless perhaps you're planning on letting Velorien's Blessing finish the job. But that would mean that the scheme is kind of crappy for NPCs. And what's up with not ending the scheme with an unreachable goal which the rest of the points are spent on? That's what you did before. If the scheme really is only for PCs, then the player always has a choice to turn the scheme off at level 90. I imagine that an NPC would just let the points accumulate and never use them.

 

Remember, it's still an example. It was quickly made, just to be a better example than the horribly boring pure melee-dodge scheme. I know it has a bunch of skills which make specialisation very slow. It can always be improved, if you think you could make a better one -- go right ahead. I'm not very skillful when it comes to organising every little detail.

Gunsmith -- yes, I know lvl 1 is pointless, but then again, I happen to miss things like this.
Spot trap -- that was just quickly added in. I thought it a waste though.
Thief skills -- since I prefer multiplayer myself, I tend to start off with smaller levels on thieving. Maxing combat skills is much more important to me.
And then there are chemistry and mechanical. Just to clear things up, chemistry is for the (unfortunately very slow) strong poison, which might be useful on overpowered opponents. The mechanical skill is for the first trap which is easy to make and is very efficient towards enemies.
Also, personally I'd take the technology branch which has the eye goggles for they can be sold for tremendous amounts of coins.

 

I'd like to say a thing or two about using blessings for leveling up.

You've probably read my previous post which says that I prefer multiplayer. So, I don't happen to get a single blessing.

I'm not very fond of blessings though. That is because in single player I used to take them randomly and then It turned out that it was important to take them in an exact sequence. What later happened is that in Vooriden the shrine never got repaired, even after completing the quest several times after loading a previous save. I think it was impossible to even click on the damn thing (that was the way to get the blessing, right?). It has happened to other people too, mind you. Since the shrine was bugged I never took another blessing in that game, hoping that the shrine would debug by itself. Hah. The only blessing I got, I think, was in Stillwater. It was a quest anyway.

I think the blessings are a damn nuisance to the leveling scheme. Well, you can always play WITHOUT the schemes. Not good for a speedy playthrough, I would think.

Another thing that might cause problems for spending skill points is of course the fire, water, earth and air tier 1 spells. I play as a technologist most of the time, so I don't use spells (only exceptions are the spot trap and exit scrolls). They are annoying as hell too, not only because of the fact that you continuously lose mana with them, they make the worst sounds too. Gets annoying in a quick time, don't you think? Don't get me started on Strength of Earth.

 

Drog made a mod that stops irritating spell sound effects, you could try that if you ever felt like using the level 1 elemental spells again (and stuff like Tempus Fugit too). If you have a high enough passive healing rate (determined by CN) they don't drain fatigue very rapidly either.

On topic, I had a question. How does training (apprentice/expert/master) figure into these schemes? I know some followers and NPCs have training so there must be a way of achieving it.

 

Great, I'll try that when I happen to play as a mage.

Truth be told I haven't even thought about that. Maybe it's programmed into the game to train followers when they reach a certain level of skill or they are already trained at start. Correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't played the main campaign for quite some time now (several months).

 

I think both Dog and Waromon obtain melee mastery eventually when they don't have it initially (well, maybe Waromon does - I can't quite remember), it may be worthwhile interrogating their level schemes? At the very least that would rule out whether or not it can be used in level schemes.

 

Oh, when I mentioned making the scheme "better" I didn't mean a better example of what can be done, but rather a better scheme for 'destroying anything that lives', or whatever your post originally said.

Not going to make my own scheme though, since I prefer to adapt to the module being played. Plenty of Ginka Root and Kadura Stem around, plus a good bow and lots of arrows? Well, then Herbology and Bow seem like good skills to get. No junk dealers or inventor shops in the module? Suddenly it becomes quite difficult to get gold by selling Eye Gear.

And while the first degree in Chemistry is good for Strong Poison, it's also good for getting the necessary expertise to make Fortifiers, which can be very helpful for survival. You can even combine them with Liquid of Skin Thickening, for a total of +50% damage resistance beyond armour and Shield of Protection. Stupendous!
:akimbo: 3 :minigun:

None of my playthroughs are speedy. And I'm only getting slower and slower. Mostly because I want to explore and experiment rather than proceed.

Yeah, those sounds are so annoying. It almost feels like cheating to use Drog's DAT-file to shush them, because the spells themselves are so good it feels as if the annoyance is the price that should be paid for using them. As for the constant loss of mana, at least one's healing factor is put to some use.

 

Did the tute, nice and easy and worked

Only thing I'd add is that you gain control in what they pick when they level up by specify the skill level in order. So melee 4, dodge 4, melee 8, dodge, 8 means melee then dodge then melee but puts points into dex first as needed.

 

Glad I could be of help.

Do you prefer I change it back into something simple?

I don't use Fortifiers or temporary buff items at all. All I put to use are health- and fatique restorers +antidotes. I do seem to have one use for them though. Selling them money caches.