Modding?

[人妻キラー]

I was poking around in the game's folder structure and it looks like a lot of things are in an easy to edit format. Config files are just text files, and textures DDS files, and sounds all OGG. Has anyone had any success trying to replace or edit any of these files? I'm espescially interested in whether you can put higher resolution textures in the game, or maybe swap the music in certain areas out for the vastly superiour (imo) music from the first game.

[Questionable player]

I was just gonna make this thread.

Yeah, people are already trying to improve the UI: http://postimg.org/image/lduu6hy2d/ (that isn't an improvement but it's just showing it's quite easy to do).

Also, Item modifications (for stats/descriptions) can be done in data/afs/xls_data/ITEM.BIN. You'll need a hex editor (hxD for example) to look at it and learn its format.

The other files found on the same directory can also be modified to change magic, shop prices, etc etc.

Enemy/Boss stats can be changed in data/afs/boss_hardmode and data/afs/enemy_hardmode. Same deal, the BIN files are what govern stats and behaviour. Modifying these files is not trivial, but it is doable.

People are also changing the music: https://www.copy.com/s/t%3AWO7E4iRwlEVngR3Q%3Bp%3A%252FGrandia2%2520music%2520replace.mp4%3Boid%3A107

[Phazon]

Originally posted by 爆乳ダイナマイト:

I was poking around in the game's folder structure and it looks like a lot of things are in an easy to edit format. Config files are just text files, and textures DDS files, and sounds all OGG. Has anyone had any success trying to replace or edit any of these files? I'm espescially interested in whether you can put higher resolution textures in the game, or maybe swap the music in certain areas out for the vastly superiour (imo) music from the first game.

Someone on NeoGAF replaced the compass with random stuff http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=176419769&postcount=577

[PM]

Yeah, I changed the music a bit (mostly the battle theme and some town music). But while looking at the OGG files, it looks like some of the official tracks are not looped properly.

I could make an application to make the life of others easier to change the music with a nice user interface. Maybe I will do it.

[人妻キラー]

Originally posted by PM:

Yeah, I changed the music a bit (mostly the battle theme and some town music). But while looking at the OGG files, it looks like some of the official tracks are not looped properly.

I could make an application to make the life of others easier to change the music with a nice user interface. Maybe I will do it.

Yeah, I was thinking of doing something similar, but I'd wait on doing any work on the music stuff until the sound issues are patched. Based on how responsive they've been, it probably won't be long.

[Ninja Vanish]

i already got rid of the ear piercing menus scoll noise since the sound files are just in ogg format, easily replaced like FF7.

[ventuz]

I'm baffled why there so many copy'n'paste of same images in every single folder?... I keep seeing same camp fire animation images, character portrait, battle sky box.. just to name a few. Could GungHo explain? Are several of them fake and one real? or are they're all used in game so that we have to replace all of them?

[Ninja Vanish]

Originally posted by ventuz:

I'm baffled why there so many copy'n'paste of same images in every single folder?... I keep seeing same camp fire animation images, character portrait, battle sky box.. just to name a few. Could GungHo explain? Are several of them fake and one real? or are they're all used in game so that we have to replace all of them?

There two sets of sound effects too had to replace the menu scroll sound effect twice just to make sure it would mute it.

[人妻キラー]

Originally posted by ventuz:

I'm baffled why there so many copy'n'paste of same images in every single folder?... I keep seeing same camp fire animation images, character portrait, battle sky box.. just to name a few. Could GungHo explain? Are several of them fake and one real? or are they're all used in game so that we have to replace all of them?

I actually have a good theory about this. A lot of games on disk based systems would duplicate art assets on the disk so that they'd be physically closer together. This reduced loading times, and you could actually stream things off the disk if you timed and placed things correctly. Obviously it isn't really needed when you have a fast hard drive, but it helped a lot on optical drives with slow seek times.

[Ninja Vanish]

Originally posted by 爆乳ダイナマイト:

I actually have a good theory about this. A lot of games on disk based systems would duplicate art assets on the disk so that they'd be physically closer together. This reduced loading times, and you could actually stream things off the disk if you timed and placed things correctly. Obviously it isn't really needed when you have a fast hard drive, but it helped a lot on optical drives with slow seek times.

it looks like they just have double the files one for running the Japanese version and one for English.
(at least for the audio)

[Detestable Geohound]

Originally posted by ventuz:

I'm baffled why there so many copy'n'paste of same images in every single folder?... I keep seeing same camp fire animation images, character portrait, battle sky box.. just to name a few. Could GungHo explain? Are several of them fake and one real? or are they're all used in game so that we have to replace all of them?

Sometimes this is just a development issue; I've done very limited game development myself.

Basically while you're working on a game you and your team are throwing files around all over the place. Just before release you have to clean up the files and remove anything that isn't being used to reduce the size of your game data as much as you can; sometimes people miss things. Other times people use the same files twice; coding usually has something to do with that.

There are people who clean up files while they're developing, but you'd be surprised at how much data that isn't being used is often left over in games and shipped (and how many people find them).

[Wakka66]

How do you even change the music?

[Detestable Geohound]

Originally posted by Wakka66:

How do you even change the music?

Theoretically just replace the music files entirely. If you keep the filenames it should just call on whatever song you placed in it as if it was a regular resource.

[Wakka66]

Originally posted by Detestable Geohound:

Originally posted by Wakka66:

How do you even change the music?

Theoretically just replace the music files entirely. If you keep the filenames it should just call on whatever song you placed in it as if it was a regular resource.

Where would I find the files for the music though?

[Detestable Geohound]

Originally posted by Wakka66:

Originally posted by Detestable Geohound:

Theoretically just replace the music files entirely. If you keep the filenames it should just call on whatever song you placed in it as if it was a regular resource.

Where would I find the files for the music though?

If you mean replace the current version of the music tracks with better versions, you'd have to have the better versions. I personally own the OST so I could always pull them up for myself (after converting it to the right format; but I wouldn't know how to do that for .ogg). If you don't own the tracks and want the original music you'd have to find a way to get them. Otherwise you could just replace it with anything you wanted to.

[人妻キラー]

Keep in mind that future steam updates might clobber your replacement files, so keep a backup of any modifications you make.