Potential mosaic-removal idea

[Kalvinis]

Greetings, discussion board members.

I'm mulling something over in my head and with others about a potential modification to remove the mosaics from "Seed of the Dead".

Thanks to DarkSpartan on Discord, I understand what file the mosaic is called, but I'm sorta stuck on how to change it. The idea I have is to make a blank material in UE4.21 and create a .pak for that one .uasset file, but I'm willing to take ideas if anyone here has any better ones.

[Plastic Tangerine]

Based on what I understand, the entire game rests in one .pak file (pakchunk0-WindowsNoEditor.pak).

If you were to modify the material for the mosaic, wouldn't you just have to repack it into the one giant .pak file? To distribute the uncensor would then be just to distribute the (almost) entire game again. It would just be easier for people to go find the uncensored version.

The only idea I can think of to uncensor the game without having to redistribute the entire game again is to have some external plugin search for and remove the mosaics. A similar program that comes to mind is CM3D2's "Soft-Demosaic" and "YASDPlus" plugins. If you Google these you can find the source code of YASDPlus to get an idea.

The problem is, CM3D2 runs on the Unity engine while Seed of the Dead runs on Unreal. Plus, the plugins for CM3D2 rely on injectors so their code can run along side the game. I am not aware of any injectors for Unreal engine, and I'm not sure if the injector used for the soft-demosaic are specific to CM3D2.

Based on the above, I'd have to say the chances of getting a working uncensor for this game that doesn't rely on distributing the entire game again are pretty slim, yet I could be (and hope I am) wrong.

[Kalvinis]

Originally posted by Plastic Tangerine:

Based on what I understand, the entire game rests in one .pak file (pakchunk0-WindowsNoEditor.pak).

If you were to modify the material for the mosaic, wouldn't you just have to repack it into the one giant .pak file? To distribute the uncensor would then be just to distribute the (almost) entire game again. It would just be easier for people to go find the uncensored version.

The only idea I can think of to uncensor the game without having to redistribute the entire game again is to have some external plugin search for and remove the mosaics. A similar program that comes to mind is CM3D2's "Soft-Demosaic" and "YASDPlus" plugins. If you Google these you can find the source code of YASDPlus to get an idea.

The problem is, CM3D2 runs on the Unity engine while Seed of the Dead runs on Unreal. Plus, the plugins for CM3D2 rely on injectors so their code can run along side the game. I am not aware of any injectors for Unreal engine, and I'm not sure if the injector used for the soft-demosaic are specific to CM3D2.

Based on the above, I'd have to say the chances of getting a working uncensor for this game that doesn't rely on distributing the entire game again are pretty slim, yet I could be (and hope I am) wrong.

The thought isn't entirely wrong. Yes, the game resides in the .pak file, but we don't need to distribute the .pak file in its entirety.

By deleting -WindowsNoEditor, the game is somehow open for modification. This can be seen with the modification efforts for GG2.

[Plastic Tangerine]

Originally posted by Kirara Kurashiki:

The thought isn't entirely wrong. Yes, the game resides in the .pak file, but we don't need to distribute the .pak file in its entirety.

By deleting -WindowsNoEditor, the game is somehow open for modification. This can be seen with the modification efforts for GG2.

That's good to hear. Do you mind telling what part you are stuck on with your blank material idea?

[Kalvinis]

Originally posted by Plastic Tangerine:

That's good to hear. Do you mind telling what part you are stuck on with your blank material idea?

It's finding the material itself. Plus, Cyberbeing made note that there are *two* mosaics that cover the girl's underside, so that'd be two materials to locate and do something with.

[Plastic Tangerine]

Does any of this help?
https://i.imgur.com/lDDMNS7.png

Edit:
Here is what the uncensored version of the game looks like (above is Steam): https://i.imgur.com/MHIpnCp.png

[Plastic Tangerine]

After poking around a bit with the mosaic files I think I found the objects which act as the mosaic.

ST_MosaicBoard is what I assume to be the female mosaic.
https://i.imgur.com/VWbayoP.png

ST_MosaicChinko is what I assume to be the male mosaic.
https://i.imgur.com/lI6KR8P.png

Maybe replace these two objects with blank/invisible objects? I'm not great with Unreal engine so maybe you can think of a solution from here.

Also of note, the Steam version runs on UE 4.19, and the Patreon version runs on UE 4.15.

[Cyberbeing]

The material in question resides here:

\Content\00_RoD\02_Character\00_Common\
MT_Mosaic.uasset
MT_Mosaic.uexp

That second mosaic is easily removed.

[Plastic Tangerine]

Is it possible to just rename the M_MosaicNone and use it in place of the MT_Mosaic?

[Cyberbeing]

Originally posted by Plastic Tangerine:

Is it possible to just rename the M_MosaicNone and use it in place of the MT_Mosaic?

No. Then its simple just to delete the file. If you do that you get this result here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1597403512

Its quite apparent its 2 meshes... one strapping the girl, the other is boxed shaped.

The strap can be removed by deleting the culprit mesh as you can see here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1597403584

[Nox]

Originally posted by Cyberbeing:

Originally posted by Plastic Tangerine:

Is it possible to just rename the M_MosaicNone and use it in place of the MT_Mosaic?

No. Then its simple just to delete the file. If you do that you get this result here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1597403512

Its quite apparent its 2 meshes... one strapping the girl, the other is boxed shaped.

The strap can be removed by deleting the culprit mesh as you can see here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1597403584

Links don't work.

[Plastic Tangerine]

Originally posted by Cyberbeing:

The strap can be removed by deleting the culprit mesh as you can see here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1597403584

Do you mind explaining how you are deleting meshes? I am unable to edit the original .pak.

Also if possible could you explain/point me to a resource for .pak mod creation? Everything I have searched has returned no proper results. Whenever I attempt to add a .pak alongside the game, it crashes on boot.

Sorry if this seems basic, UE modding is new to me.

[Cyberbeing]

You will have to unpack the file using UnrealPak (the unpacking tool that comes with UE4 which you can find in the binaries directory... something like UE_4.19\Engine\Binaries\Win64

Move your unpacked folder to the game directory and work from there...

If you want some info on UE4 modding this guy explains pretty well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouf1zBEVeVo

[Plastic Tangerine]

Ok so I got rid of the cube....
https://i.imgur.com/ZoMRXLL.jpg

Also the male is uncensored a bit
https://i.imgur.com/IxEtDpS.jpg

As you can see the other part is still there, the part which you removed. There is also the grayish texture left behind, yet that didn't seem to be the case for you. So maybe if these are combined...

To remove the cube (and the male censor) delete the entire "BasicShapes" folder in "...\Engine\Content".

[Nox]

Originally posted by Plastic Tangerine:

Originally posted by Cyberbeing:

The strap can be removed by deleting the culprit mesh as you can see here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1597403584

Do you mind explaining how you are deleting meshes? I am unable to edit the original .pak.

Also if possible could you explain/point me to a resource for .pak mod creation? Everything I have searched has returned no proper results. Whenever I attempt to add a .pak alongside the game, it crashes on boot.

Sorry if this seems basic, UE modding is new to me.

It looks very good and the model was clearly made to not have censorship, I do not understand why the same developer does not upload the patch, more than 90% of users who bought the game are asking for it, it is stupid.

[Cyberbeing]

Originally posted by Plastic Tangerine:

Ok so I got rid of the cube....
https://i.imgur.com/ZoMRXLL.jpg

Also the male is uncensored a bit
https://i.imgur.com/IxEtDpS.jpg

As you can see the other part is still there, the part which you removed. There is also the grayish texture left behind, yet that didn't seem to be the case for you. So maybe if these are combined...

To remove the cube (and the male censor) delete the entire "BasicShapes" folder in "...\Engine\Content".

That's a sloppy way to do it. This will remove all basic shapes that share the same built.
And yes, this will fully uncensored the girls privates at least during the sex scenes.