GUIDE: Replace default campaign units with custom colours

[Schweineschnute]

As I wrote in another thread, years ago there were tutorials for this on the web but they all vanished. But luckily I managed to recreate the steps necessary to do this :)

First things first: Replacing unit colours in the singleplayer campaign of Dark Crusade (and it should work with Soulstorm as well) is not as easy as it sounds. Campaign units are hardcoded into the gamefiles and you need to dig in those to replace the default colour schemes. Luckily, all the difficult work is performed by easy to use modding tools. You don't need actual knowledge of editing textures and/or meshes for this :)

What you need:

IBBoard's SGA-Explorer[skins.hiveworldterra.co.uk] and Texture Tool[skins.hiveworldterra.co.uk]
Some kind of bulk file renaming tool, like Bulk Rename Utility (Freeware)[www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk]

Optional: Adonis' Tau with custom badges[skins.hiveworldterra.co.uk] skins if you want to see your logo on the units. Vanilla DC unfortunately doesn't allow for Tau units to wear a custom badge.

How it works:

Step 1: Create the colour scheme you wish to use in the Dawn of War army painter and save it.

Step 2: Download and extract the SGA-Explorer and the Texture Tool and place them where you like, ideally in a separate location so you don't mix up things. They are portable tools and do not require installation.

Step 3: Start the SGA-Explorer. This tool is able to extract data contained within relic's SGA-archives the game uses to access it's hardcoded information. For Dark Crusade, select File->Open and open the file "DXP2Data-SharedTextures-Full.sga", located in your [Dark Crusade]/DXP2/ folder. For original DoW units that did not receive an update with the expansion sets (or if you want to edit the original campaigns) you want to open the "Data-SharedTextures-Full.sga" in the [Dark Crusade]/wh40k/ folder. The latter is also important to edit most buildings, since those did not receive new models - so for any race except Tau and Necrons you will want to perform both these steps.

Again:
DXP2/data/art/ebps/races/[race]/texture_share/ - folder for only DC units
W40k/data/art/ebps/races/[race]/texture_share/ - folder for all units from original Dawn of War
(Thanks to Einheit 731 to point this out)

Once you did that you'll see a explorer-like interface on the left hand side of the window saying "data". These are the folders inside that archive you just opened like a common .zip file. Expand the folder tree by double clicking the parent and subfolders until you reach "data/art/ebps/races/[race]/texture_share", [race] of course being the name of the army you like to customize.

We are interested in all .wtp files in this directory, for example "tau_fire_warrior_default.wtp". All of them are named after their unit, ending on "_default.wtp". You can either select them by holding down CTRL and clicking on them or you simply select all of them and clean up later. Once you selected your files right-click and extract them, ideally to the same location they have in the SGA file. So you want to extract them in "[Dark Crusade]/DXP2/data/art/ebps/races/[race]/texture_share/" - it doesn't matter where you edit your files, but this is the location your finished, edited files have to be in order for the game to find them.

Now go to that location and delete all files that are not .wtp files. All of your files should now look like this "tau_fire_warrior_default.wtp". Now create a working directory of your choice and copy your .wtp files in there, keeping the others as a backup in case something goes wrong. Don't worry, you cannot damage anything, the original files are all within the SGA archive. In case anything doesn't work anymore just delete everything in the DXP2/data/ folder and start over. Important for Tau: In order to see your custom badges you have to put the .wtp files from the optional "Tau custom badges" download to this location, overwrite the ones extracted from the SGA.

Step 4: Start the Texture Tool. Click Edit->Advanced mode (we need that) and then once again Edit->options. In the options menu enter the required paths for your game directory, texture directory and teamcolours directory. Your game directory is, well your game directory, where the darkcrusade.exe is. Texture directory is your texture work directory, for example "[Dark Crusade]\DXP2\Data\art\ebps\races\tau\texture_share\wtp\" whereas "wtp" is the folder you created to edit the wtps. Teamcolours path has to link to "[Dark Crusade]\Profiles\Profile1\dxp2\Schemes\" - this is where your army painter schemes are saved, the number after "profile" changes accordingly to how many active profiles you have, usually it's just the default one. Then click on "Team Colour Settings" and then "Import Team colour". You should be directed to the "schemes" folder and select the colour you want to paint your units in. You will notice that the colours do not have the names you saved them as, they are just numbered scheme_x.teamcolour. Usually the higher numbers are the most recent colours. You can select any one you want and see if it's the correct one. Once you found it click "save preference" and "ok".

Step 5: Click "compile TGA" and select all the .wtp files. This will generate .TGA files with the applied teamcolour in the same directory.

Now we need the bulk rename utility. Dawn of War comes out-of-the-box with seven default colour schemes. We must replace the colour scheme used in the single player campaign with our new one. To do that we load up our renaming tool and add the suffix "_default_x" to our TGA files, the x being the colour used in the campaign.

CHAOS: x = 0. Alpha Legion (SS standard) or 1. Word Bearers (DC standard)

SPACE MARINES: x = 0. Blood Ravens (DC + SS standard)

ELDAR: x = 5. Ulthwe (DC + SS)

IMPERIAL GUARD: x = 4. Kronus Liberators (DC), 4. Karauvan Conservators (SS)

ORCS: x = 4. Evil Sunz (DC + SS)

Tau: x = 0. T'au (DC), 4. Fal'Shia (SS)

Necrons: x = 0. Default (DC + SS)

Step 6: Click .tga -> .dds in the Texture Tool. Select all your .tga files, this will generate .dds files with the same name. Select "DXT 1" compression and click "no" if you are asked to include more mappers.

Step 7: Click "Make RTX" and select your .dds files. This will generate .rtx files of the same name.

Step 8: Copy all of your newly created .rtx files to "[Dark Crusade]/DXP2/data/art/ebps/races/[race]/texture_share/"

DONE!

Now your colour scheme should replace the default campaign colours :) Please note that these changes only apply to the tactical map, the strategical (world) map still shows default skins as well as the character and gear selection. This can also be changed, those skins just are located in a different location, maybe I'll add that bit to the guide as well at a later point.

Have fun playing the campaigns with your favourite colour scheme :)

[Balenci]

Neato, but this should really go under Guides, regardless; good stuff.

[change profile name]

Amazing guide, did everything exactly as you said and it worked. Took me around 15 minutes to do it for 1 race (I did Necrons). Thanks a lot!
EDIT: Didn't work for me with Orks though. There are only 5 WTP files for Orks for some reason, did everything exactly like with Necrons (renaming to _default_8 instead of _default_0 ofc) and no effect. Also Tau became 412th Cadian as an ingame name for some reason lol

[Schweineschnute]

Originally posted by W H Y P P O P:

Amazing guide, did everything exactly as you said and it worked. Took me around 15 minutes to do it for 1 race (I did Necrons). Thanks a lot!
EDIT: Didn't work for me with Orks though. There are only 5 WTP files for Orks for some reason, did everything exactly like with Necrons (renaming to _default_8 instead of _default_0 ofc) and no effect. Also Tau became 412th Cadian as an ingame name for some reason lol

At first, glad it worked for you - at least partly - and I'm happy my guide still sees some use :)

Now, the Ork thing sounds weird, though. There are definitely eight defaults (0-7) for Orks in my files, also names of colour schemes should not change, these edits affect nothing that could cause this. Are you sure you didn't accidentally misplace some files?

EDIT: I should point out that for Orks you need make these changes in the "wh40k" shared_textures as well! The DXP2 folder only holds new units coming with DC, the base units are still in the wh40k folder.

[Schweineschnute]

Originally posted by Einheit 731:

First things first: pretty cool guide, great work. Thank you!

But I think, you should finish your job - there are some things need to be done:
1) >"the strategical (world) map still shows default skins as well as the character and gear selection. This can also be changed, those skins just are located in a different location, maybe I'll add that bit to the guide as well at a later point"

PLEASE

2) Not everyone's kind of unit have .wtp files(at least in "data/art/ebps/races/[race]/texture_share" folder), and consequently ingame this units still have default colour scheme.

3) All buildings have default colour scheme.

Thank you, I am glad people profit from the little write-up :)

Point 1) will take time and some in depth digging to recall the steps I performed years ago. I can't promise anything but we'll see.

Point 2) and 3) should be answered by the posting right above yours - you have to perform the guide steps for every expansion separately. If you play Dark Crusade for instance, all Dark Crusade units will be in the "DXP2" folder (DXP2/data/art/ (...) ) while units from the original game that has not been modified by Dark Crusade in any way are still located in the "wh40k" folder (wh40k/data/art/(...)). You should be able to put all modified files into the DXP2 folder though but to be safe you can replace them in both folders. I may go back and modify the guide to make this clearer.

[Kripter]

Can someone tell me the number for _default_x at sister of battle?

[Error137]

Umm this might sound stupid but....idk how to use the rename tool, and I don't know how to add the suffix, can someone please tell me how to do it? ;-;

[R.I.P]

Campaign commander, wargear, menu:

force_commander_tgd_unit.rsh
force_commander_tgd_war_gear.rsh

Haven't yet found the file for the little guy on the campaign map.

[K84]

For the campaign map:

mm_force_commander_tgd_unit.rsh
mm_force_commander_tgd_war_gear.rsh

[R.I.P]

Thank You, Kasrkin84.

It went something like this for mm_force_commander_tgd_war_gear.rsh ...

1. Put "mm_force_commander_tgd_war_gear.rsh" file in the "texture_share" directory. Used texture tool to Extract RSH, yielding "mm_force_commander_tgd_war_gear.dds" and "background_illum.dds"

2. Loaded copy of imported team colored composite "force_commander_tgd_war_gear.tga",that was leftover from making .rtx files, into image editing program. Reduced image size from 512x512 to 256x256. Inverted image vertically.

3. Exported (saved) the image to texture_share folder as "mm_force_commander_tgd_war_gear.dds" under DXT1 compression, generating mipmaps and overwriting original file.

4. Used texture tool to Make .RSH, selected "yes" for additional maps when prompted, chose "background_illum.dds"

Same process for the other file, but used "force_commander_tgd_unit.tga"

The Texture Tool will convert from .tga to .dds, and flip the image for you, but I don't know if the file will work if the .dds is not down-sized.

.............

For these two files:
force_commander_tgd_unit.rsh
force_commander_tgd_war_gear.rsh

The process was this:

1. Put "force_commander_tgd_unit.rsh" in the texture_share folder, then added a copy of the teamcolor composite "force_commander_tgd_unit_default_0.dds" and "force_commander_tgd_unit_default.wtp" leftover from the .rtx creating process.

2. Renamed those two files as:
"force_commander_tgd_unit.dds"
"force_commander_tgd_unit.wtp"

Then used the Texture Tool to run Make .RSH, Selected "no" for additional maps when prompted.

............

@Schweineschnute,

If you decide to add your post as an official Steam Guide, you are most welcome to include any or all of the information in my posts as well, Thank You!

[Schweineschnute]

Originally posted by R.I.P:

@Schweineschnute,

If you decide to add your post as an official Steam Guide, you are most welcome to include any or all of the information in my posts as well, Thank You!

Thank you very much, this is fantastic. I ca certainly try, a lot of people might be happy

[Schweineschnute]

Originally posted by Error137:

Umm this might sound stupid but....idk how to use the rename tool, and I don't know how to add the suffix, can someone please tell me how to do it? ;-;

If you use the same tool I linked there's a option to add a suffix after a filename. There is a preview that shows you in real time how your edits look.

[Cursed Hawkins]

Um there's an error here in the guide!

Originally posted by Schweineschnute:

ORCS: x = 8. Bad Moonz (DC + SS)

The Orks in both Dark Crusade and SoulStorm weren't the Bad Moons last i recall Bad Moons bare a yellow color and the Orks in both of those games bare a red color which when looking at the army painter will show as the Evil Sunz!

[Assorted_Asserey]

hey quick question what do you do if there, are no "numbers" in the profile folder?

[Schweineschnute]

Originally posted by AceiluxDamnedLegionnaire:

hey quick question what do you do if there, are no "numbers" in the profile folder?

Just use the profile present, if you only have one it should only show one folder. If there is no folder at all then you have to launch DoW once and create a profile :)

[Schweineschnute]

Originally posted by Cursed Hawkins:

Um there's an error here in the guide!

The Orks in both Dark Crusade and SoulStorm weren't the Bad Moons last i recall Bad Moons bare a yellow color and the Orks in both of those games bare a red color which when looking at the army painter will show as the Evil Sunz!

Right, I'll change it :)