THIRD PARTY TUTORIALS

Siege University II Tutorials
Modding FAQ
095: Upgrading DSII
100: The Basics of Siege Editor
201: Compass Map Radar
202: Conversations
203: Journal
204: Quest Indicator Icons
205: Start Positions
206: Teleporters
207: Town Portal Restrictions
208: Weapon Effects
209: Flick
210: Tuning Grids
211: Setting Up Good Map Lighting
212: Setting Up Simple Node Fading
215: Building Data Tables

Siege University I Tutorials
200: Concepts and Terminology
201: Templates
203: Triggers
204: Moods
205: Fades
206: Elevators
211: Naming Key
213: Dungeon Siege Resource System
301: Introduction to Dungeon Siege Architecture

Third Party Tutorials
A Simple Mod Part One - Armor Textures
A Simple Mod Part Two - A New Armor
Beginners Guide to Stitching Regions
How to Open and Create Tanks
Making Chants Work in a New Map
Ornaments
Understanding the NKK

Useful Links
Siegetheday.org
Dungeon Siege Outpost
Dungeon Raider
Kdawg.org - List of useful Links
MCarp DS Nodes
Dungeon Siege 2 at Gamefront
Broken World at Gamefront

First, let's discuss some basics. Dungeon Siege stores game data in
archives called "tanks" - a play-on-words from the company name, "Gas
Powered Games". A similar play-on-words is done with template files,
which are called "gas". Get it? Gas? Tank? Ha-ha, we're rolling with
laughter, yes.

In any event, these archives are much like "zip" files, except that they
have a somewhat different format. Opening them requires one of two
tools - either Siege Editor, or TankViewer. As TankViewer is by far the
simpler of the two tools to use, we'll be working with that. You can
download it here.

Once you have downloaded and installed TankViewer, open it. You'll see a
screen that looks something like this:
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Next, we'll want to open a tank and examine it. Let's click the "file" button
and navigate to our DS directory, into the /rescources folder, and open
logic.dsres.
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And here is what we see.
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If you have a lot of room on your HD and intend to be doing a lot of
modding, you probably will want to extract the entire contents of
logic.dsres for later examination. All the .gas and .skrit files are simple
ASCII text, and can be opened (and altered) in Notepad. However, for the
purposes of this tutorial, we'll only be working with one file, so you can
see how it all works. In this case, we'll be wanting to alter a sword to
reduce it's stat requirements. So, we'll want to find the sword we will be
working with. Create a new folder somewhere you will be working with,
then Select wpn_sword.gas (the template file for all swords in the game),
and extract it to the new folder you created.
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Having extracted the .gas file we want, we can now navigate to it and
open it in Windows Notepad. You can even associate .gas and .skrit files
with notepad to make this task easier. With most windows installations,
you simply click the file. If you haven't already associated it with
something, Windows will ask you what program you want to use to open
files of this type. Select "notepad", and check the "always use this
program to open files of this type" checkbox.

In any event, now that wpn_sword.gas is open in Notepad, we can look at
it, find the sword we want, and edit it. When you type in edits, you might
want to retain the original values to the side, for reference, or in case you
want to return it to it's original values and change something else,
instead. To do this, you use 'comment' symbols - which, in Skrit, are two
forward slashes, like so: // Each line in the gas file must end in a
semicolon ( ; ), though the semicolon can be followed by comments you add
for your own reference.
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[quote=bare_elf]Hi Irwin,
Hope all is well with you and your family, I know you said you where very busy with something. So I just wanted to make sure that none of you where injured or sick. That the job is okay and no disasters had you in their grip. Just worried about you and your family.

Lili[/quote]
Hi Lili,

Thank you very much for your thoughts. Don't worry everything's perfectly fine with my life apart from not having enough time to devote to my favourite hobby! Work's fine but we've never been busier, which is great in the current economic climate in OZ which has just been hit by the announcement of withdrawal from manufacturing of several large companies, two of them from the US (Holden and Ford, though Ford announced the middle of last year it was pulling out in 2016).

Family life is also great but 4 year olds demands a lot of time and attention! Especially as my wife works late shifts (in the restaurant business) so after work I have to look after him.

So I have to prioritise what time I do have for modding (and I have a large backlog of games I don't have time to play). Still I am slowly getting some things done. I should have a prototype of the modding documents for you to look at very soon, maybe even today! I did try to make them as a windows help file (chm), like the Siege University compilation from DS1 but I wasn't happy with the results so I'm leaving them as linked html docs with frames for navigation. So users could have the tutorial guides open in a window while they work in Siege Editor 2 or modding with other tools.

I hope things are fine with you too and that your family is doing well.
Irwin
Having made the changes we want, the next step is to get it into the
game. To do this, we use TankCreator (also called Rapid Tank Creator,
after it's maker, or TankBuilder, etc). You can download it
here.

Install everything to the same folder. There will be two files - one is the
tank creator itself (a command line utility), and the other is the GUI. Run
the GUI. When you do, you'll see a screen that looks something like this:
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rtc1.jpg
At this point, we can either type in the folder our altered file is in, or click
the navigate button ( ... ) next to the blank line. We'll choose the latter,
like so:
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rtc2.jpg
Repeat the same procedure for the destination, this time specifying an
output file name (see image, below). Once you have specified an output
file, just click "create". A DOS window will open. Wait until the program is
finished, then hit any key to close the DOS window. That's it - you're
done. ^_^ Place the new tank you just made into your /rescources folder,
and the changes will appear in the game (assuming you did everything
else right, that is).

Warning: Do NOT EVER alter your original tanks. Make new tanks that
contain your altered files, instead. If you alter your original tanks, you will
instantly make your game incompatible with everyone else's game, and
may break the game completely, forcing you to reinstall it. Do NOT EVER
alter your original tanks. Make new tanks that contain your altered files,
instead.
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Credit: Xaa on February 27th 2004