DUNGEON SIEGE 2 MODDING RESOURCE

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

Q: Will there be any modding tools released for Dungeon Siege II?
A: Yes, the DS2 Toolkit (DS2TK) was released on November 7th, 2005.. Click here to download it.

Q: What versions of DS2 are supported?
A: The tools are designed to work with DS2 games that have been updated to at least v2.2. If you try installing on a non-patched version, or v2.1, when you run the installer you'll get errors about undefined functions in fc_actor_skrit.

Q: I'm trying to install the toolkit but it says DS2 is not installed and quits.
A: You must have Dungeon Siege 2 installed first, in order to install the DS2 Toolkit. If you already do, then that means the installer can't find the folder. Possibly you moved the folder (the game will run ok if it's moved); the game writes the name of the directory it was installed to into the Windows registry. If the game isn't at that location, patches and the toolkit can't find the files they need. The location of the DS2 path inside the registry is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Games\DungeonSiege2


Q: What versions of 3DSMax does DS2TK support?
A: You must have 3DSMax 6,7 or 8.

Q: Where should I put my mods - in the Resources folder?
A: That is one location, but really bad form.
Siege Editor 2 automatically places the tank files it is asked to generate into the correct location for new tanked content (ie. My Documents\My Games\Dungeon Siege 2 Mod\Mods) and it gives these new tanks a ".ds2mod" extension. Please make sure that all the files that you tinker with are in "My Games\Dungeon Siege 2 Mod". By not adding to the files in the DS2 install directory and the My Games\Dungeon Siege 2", you'll always be able to play the 'pure' version of DS2, regardless of what you do with the DS2TK.

Q: Why is Siege Editor 2 very slow, and I get the message 'Driver internal error' ?
A: That message is generated when DirectX reports an error with the video driver.

Q: How do I create tanks using Siege Editor 2?
A: There is an option on the SE2 file menu to save a folder as a ".ds2mod" file. The convention is that ".ds2mod" indicates a mod tank and ".ds2res" is for the game's tanks.

The only advantage to using the built in tank builder (over one of the 3rd party tools) is that it will compress the gas files, with text data, into binary "liquid" files before it packages them up (in DS2 they have a .lqd22 extension). Tanks with files in liquid format will load faster in the game, (although for small tanks the performance hit is pretty marginal)

If you are just testing simple changes, there is no need to convert to tanks, DungeonSiege2Mod.exe will load the untanked gas files in your "bits" folder (defaults to \My Documents\My Games\Dungeon Siege 2 Mod\Bits).

Q: Is there support for modders' DLLs?
A: There is support for ds2dlls in the retail mod executable included in the DS2 Toolkit.

ds2dlls need to be located in your 'mods' folder (i.e. ...\My Documents\My Games\Dungeon Siege 2 Mod\Mods ).

Instead of automatically loading any and all ds2dlls found in the Mods folder, you have to provide a comma-separated list of the ds2dll names you want to load when you launch the executable.

For example, if I had three DS2DLLs named Sprocket, Widget and Hack, my command line parameter additions would look like this:

DungeonSiegeMod.exe ds2dlls="sprocket,widget,hack"

In addition, 'ds2dl0s' (that's "ell zero ess", not "ell oh ess") DLLs are also supported and they should appear in a separate list entry:

DungeonSiegeMod.exe ds2dl0s="hi_priority_sprocket,hp_widget,hp_hack"

Q: Can I make new icons, to match my custom items and nodes?
A: Yes, you can. Located in the DS2TK install directory is a sub-directory with the various icons in it. Feel free to add your own.

Q: What's the Favorites tab for?
A: You can right-click on items, in either of the unsorted tabs, and use the pop-up menu to copy them to your Favorites tab. Once copied to the Favorites, you can use the right-click menu to rename entries, change their icon, and drag and drop them into sub-folders.

Q: How do I make quests?
A: Quests are created using questbook_info.gas and assigned and updated via flick. Read the Siege U docs on flick for more info.

Q: How do I make moods in DS2? There's no Mood Editor.
A: The mood editor was buggy and was never used internally, so we removed it. It's super easy to add and edit moods in the gas file and test them in game by using the reload moods console command. The moods.gas file contains all the moods for the DS2 map.

Here are some other mood console commands:

mood -- displays current mood
mood list[moodname] -- lists moods
mood set [moodname] -- change mood

The moodname parameter can have wildcards, btw.

To actually go about setting moods:
1. Go to the area the mood will be used in.
2. Open the console and type bool atmosphere to disable the current mood.
3. type weather fog on to enable fog.
4. Type weather fog color R G B where each color value (R, G or B) is between 0 and 1. (ex: "weather fog color .5 .5 .5" sets the fog to a medium grey color.)
5. Type weather fog info to get the hexadecimal color value you'll need for moods.gas.
6. Type weather fog neardist x to set the near distance to x meters.
7. Type weather fog fardist y to set the far distance to y meters.

Of course, commands that take on can also take off.
Note that there is no density control for fog.
By playing around with those and the other weather settings, it's easy to determine what looks good in the game environment. Once you have values you like, just stick them into a new mood in moods.gas and place a mood trigger in the world and there you go.

Q: How do keep track of my conversations?
A: Go to the Siege University II' Conversations document and download the DS2_Toolkit_Conversations.zip file The spreadsheet in there has ImportToGas and ImportFromGas macros in it.
ImportFromGas imports gas files into Excel; ExportToGas macro creates gas files from Excel.

When exporting, you choose the folder to export to - you should visibly see Excel scroll down all the rows. If you're not seeing that, you probably have an error right in the beginning of the Excel file. Make sure you have the correct row spacing (your script should start on row 1 with no blank row above it).


For more info on conversations, check out the Siege U 2 article.

Q: I get an error in SiegeEditor2.exe, saying NISManager has undefined function, as does UIDalogueHandler. What causes that?
A: This would happen if you don't have v2.2 of Dungeon Siege II installed. You can't install DS2TK unless you have this installed, so it's likely that you re-installed the game and didn't patch up to v2.2.

Q: I get an error in SiegeEditor2.exe, "unable to find core resources - did you set your HOME directory properly?" What causes that?
A: This would happen if you try to run DS2 Toolkit with a map untanked, but no longer have DS2 installed (or moved it to another location). The toolkit uses a registry entry to tell it where DS2 is - if you move it, it can't find those "core resources" any more.