Modding your own GW

I'm not sure if this already has been mentioned, but I found an easy way to preserve alpha channels when extracting and importing textures from and to TexMod.

Just select DDS when extracting textures. And use this program for converting the DDS to and from PSD: http://eliteforce2.filefront.com/fil...onverter;29412 (remember to select Save Alpha and DXT5 in options)

Then you can Photoshop to edit the texture and the alpha channel within. (I think alpha channel range 0-148 control transparancy and 149-255 control "shiny"-ness)

If you use the solution mentioned in the wiki (replace the shiny texture with a black one) you'll lose all shiny effects in the game (things may start to seem "flat"), and any textures you add will be completely opaque (capes, for instance, are supposed to be completely transparant at the outer edges).

rofl "WUT?" i like your huge pear tower shield

boy am i geting a hoot and a holler after lookin at these images!

Imo white wings look better than golden ones.

• Launch TexMod
• Click on the Package Mode button/tab
• Click on Target Application folder button and select gw.exe
• Click on the small folder icon above the red X icon and browse to the packages you want to use
• Make sure all the packages you want to use are in the Package Name list on the left
• Click the Run button to launch GW and use said packages.
• ???
• Profit!

http://img149.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gw179eo5.jpg

its not done, but its been going pretty good since last night. i especially like my dragon sword

Ok it looks like you've done everything correctly as outlined above by others and myself. Not sure why it is not working for you. Could it be some sort of application incomparability with your non English version of windows?

You people are all amazing.

Tomorrow, I'm giving my MM a "WORST MM EVER" shirt. Because of this, the possibilities with STAR are now literally limitless.

EDIT: Gotta love double posts due to forum lag /sigh

I can't imagine that being a problem actually.. Perhaps the tpf files are corrupt?

hang on i have some help for someone whos having problems to make it work even if you may have the steps right. first question is, have you logged more than once? and have you packaged more than once? the possibility (like with myself) i had a mix up where the textmod TEXT FILE had the wrong address to my changed textures because i had moved it,and i was literally mixing all my crap up.

so try moving EVERYTHING out of the OUT folder and put it somewhere else. RE-PACKAGE what you want to do, double checking the text file for the correct addresses, dont double up on lines of the same texture, and check you have the correctly edited files.

basically you should isolate the problem by moving everything that could be making a problem, and do it all over. just move in the files you already edited after you re-log (so it creates a new textfile list) the ones you want to change. then package it after you have your edits replacing the originals and try it then. ... just go trial and error. you'll figure it out, its hard to explain

Hmm i guess that is possible. Try downloading the image that was posted of the pink strips on the health bar, rename it from .jpg to .rar and unrar it and try loading that health bar. It worked for me so should not be corrupt.

I'll edit the post to put the person's name in and the page they are on..

EDIT: Health Bar post...

• Go to this post http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...&postcount=358
• Save the image of the health bar to your computer somewhere
• rename the .jpg to .rar
• unrar with winrar or some such and extract the .tpf file
• Load the .tpf and see if it works.

In regards to the poster above me. I've noticed that the tpf files seem to work when loaded from anywhere as they are already packaged/bundled up. That being said your post above about changing the path of where you saved things in TexMod seems quite valid as the paths it executes are very explicit. So if someone was repackaging a mod and had moved stuff then they'd need to re-edit the paths in the log file to show where stuff is now stored.

Indeed, some visual effects are going to give an advantage in pvp situations, this certainly is going to create some problems.

None of my mods were ever banned, Anet was always good in that aspect. G-Stats was discontinued simply because it took up a lot of time and effort, and I ran out of both.

And if you guys want the ultra cool history on Texture Modding in GW, check out this Wiki entry:

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/GW_Texture_Editor

Back in '05 I made a really simple texture editor just for GW. You could save/load textures, and even put executable breakpoints on ones to look into modding the game's code for further graphical effects. Derek Ravenclaw used the tool to create a new sword out of the Fiery Dragon Sword called the Icy Dragon Sword. He made a post on here as a hoax, fooled a lot of people. It was then Izzy Cartwright secretly added the IDS to the game during the Christmas update (it wasn't in the notes), and when real topics starting poping up about it dropping, Derek and I were skeptical. At first we thought it was the hoax still going, untill we saw a real one ingame. To date neither myself nor Derek ever had an IDS drop for us, or even owned one, and we created the damn thing. The next major hoax was the Terror Shield, also had a lot of people fooled. ToA id1 was filled with TS farming groups, too bad it didn't exist haha.

Anyways, if you're new to texture modding there's some technical stuff you should know:

-When dumping textures, dump them as DDS files. DDS stands for Direct Draw Surface, which means the info in the file is in the same structure and format as how it appears in Video memory. This means saving/loading is faster, on top of that, DDS uses compression which means less disk space is used, and less space in video memory.

-When loading textures, make sure they're all in DDS format (DXT1 for no alpha, DXT5 for alpha). DDS/DXT's are faster, take up less bandwidth for the Video card, and less Video memory as well.

-Use Microsoft's simple tool called DxTex.exe, it's availble from many locations. It should be about 107kb. You can split DDS files into 2 24-bit BMP files for image editing (one's the image, the other's the alpha), then convert them back into a DDS.

-Alpha layers aren't really alpha layers anymore these days, rather a 2D array inwhich any data can be stored. Data such as pre-computed angles, reflective values, oldschool blending, or plane jane transparency. Keep this in mind when looking at the alpha channels of textures. Most textures will use their alpha layer as a way of sending additional info to the pixel shaders, and not for blending/transparency. Trail & Error can be used to see what the Alpha channel for a specific texture does. But if the texture your editing has shiny parts, you can generally assume the alpha will be used for that, and if the texture you're editing is for something like the UI, you can assume the alpha will be used for blending.

-You can resize textures and use larger ones to replace smaller ones in almost all cases. This means if, for instance, your cape texture is 128x64, you can replace it with a far higher resolution texture that is 2048x1024, or 1024x512. Then your cape will look a lot cleaner ingame. You can do this will all textures, due to the fact texture coordinates are from 0.0 to 1.0, so the width/height of a texture doesn't effect the coordinate system. You can make high res items, armour, character skins, faces, UI, ect.

And the way I export textures:

I load up my DDS texture into DxTex.exe. Then I hit Printscreen and paste the image into MSPaint, and save it as TEXTURE.BMP. Then I go into the View menu and select View Alpha Channel Only. I once again hit Printscreen and paste this into MSPaint and save it as TEXTURE_A.BMP. By adding _A to the filename, I'm telling DxTex.exe that later on this will be the alpha channel for TEXTURE.BMP.

Now in MSPaint I edit the two images, saving them as 24-bit BMP's.

Load up DxTex.exe again, go to open, and open TEXTURE.BMP. Because we added _A to the alpha channel filename, the alpha channel will automatically be loaded as well. We can view it just to be sure; View -> Alpha Channel Only.

Now go into Format -> Change Surface Format and in the new window, choose either:

FOUR-CC DXT1: If you're not using alpha, or 1-bit alpha (on/off)
FOUR-CC DXT5: If you're using alpha

You can research on Wikipedia what the difference between the DXT's are if you want to know, but generally 1 & 5 are what is used.

Save your texture as a new .DDS and load it into the game!

Okay i did everything what u said, but still no succes. But in the text documented there is this line what says '0xD1714A21|C:\Documents and Settings\Pedro\Desktop\Out\GW.EXE_0xD1714A21.png', do i need to change that line to my own directory?

wow that program kicks some ass.

I don't know what happened here, I think either I died or fell into a box of halloween crap

You'd need to change that if you were going to use TexMod to compile it into your own tpf, which you may as well try.

• Create a directory somewhere
• Place the .png and the .log file in it
• edit the log file path to point to this directory
• run TexMod and pack that dir into a tpf
• load the .tpf and run GW, see if it works

If that fails I'd re-download TexMod. Perhaps the program itself became corrupt. I'd get it from the tombraider site listed in the wiki if they have not uploaded their own copy to the wiki.

In the immortal words of the philosopher Peter Griffin - "Freakin' SWEET!"

love all the clear stuff but the black energy pips is just to hard to see and is a bit inconvenient but it is your mod

Mkay, really weird. Still not working, guess its not compatible with my computer?

Are you selecting gw.exe as target application and running it from within texmod? If not, that might be why it's not working for you.

Ya did that, posted a screenie of it somewhere here. Redownloaded Texmod, redownloaded the mods, packaged the mods myself, placed everything in the same directory, guildwars reinstall. And still nothing works.

Its important to note that using Texmod to run your Guild Wars exe will ignore all commandline edits you made. So if you are using -dx8 or -noshaders to force compatibility it will crash your Guild Wars if you can't run it without them.

For all the people who say this would give an advantage..

Without them, I can just use an erasable marker, and mark the health markers on my Health Bars...

Trust me it wont get simpler than this:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guide...-game_graphics
Nah language can't be the problem, i wrote the one on wiki using Dutch version windows(which you can clearly see when looking at the pictures)

Heh well then I'm at a total loss as to why it won't run correctly on Abbel Calima's machine :/

Just out of curiosity guys, which of you crossposted my custom interface to Guild Wars Czech? My site is getting absolutely hammered at the moment! Almost out of bandwidth.

work in progress:

totally agree - they rock

now we can change the annoying white in paragons too

Beta 2 of my interface mod is out, find it at the usual spot here.

Fixed some alpha issues.
Added HP markers at 50% and 80%.

I'm working on the Hero Control Panel as my next change.

Guild wars used to have blood stains in the ground way back in E3 4 everyone, maybe the texture is still there, just transparent. Ill have to check it out

Question: what CRC32 does your TexMod.exe have?

from what i could google all had 51085CD5 and when those get tested by http://virusscan.jotti.org/ http://www.virustotal.com/ they are quite infested by malvare (Trojan-PWS.Win32.Agent.BU it says)

(yeah, you got me, i am going to log in to try some moding myself, i have very neat idea)

Do you guys use photoshop to edit the textures?

Have you got any tips on editing them! And and good brushed!

Nice shield, could you post the texture?


I use photoshop but if you don't want to pay for it, try GIMP which is free.

Really cool looking

Where do I download it? It's in Guild Wars folder atm, but do I need to extract it somehow?

Thanks

make sure you are using DirectX 9.

does anyone notice a sligh decrease on FPS when running mods or is it just me?

yeah you know after i posted it, i hated it too lol so they're white atm, i was going to try a purple but thats hard to read if your hexed so its staying white.

i'm going to edit every little piece of interface today, one thing i've already touched on is the status symbols on HP bars (like hexed, conditioned, enchanted) stuff is going good. wanna laugh at something though? I was up last night half asleep and i was trying to log the pieces i needed to edit today, turns out after a half hour or so going through it all and making sure i had everything, i FORGOT to set the hotkey to f8 for ease and didnt get any extracted!!!!!! DOH!

once i'm done ill let other people have it like other people who have modded stuff. UNLESS NO ONE TRUSTS ME MUAHAHAHA... not really lol

I haven't yet but if you use tons of uncompressed textures I'm sure it's possible.

One thing that's a bit disappointing: with no way to reassign the reflection map for items you can end up with several things on your character using the same one. This can make it a headache to use more than one texture mod per character and get everything looking right... and sometimes impossible to get what you want.

Made mod that helps with cartography titles.

Examples of stuff found on my 100% maps:

http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/448/gw174iy7.jpg - noticeable spot near Salt flats - Prophets path portal

http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/9403/gw176gl2.jpg - spot at one of two bridges

http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/429/gw175sg2.jpg - spot in north krytap rovince proving that i never did full ettin run with this character

http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/5724/gw173dy6.jpg - couple of spots in cantha

link soon to appear in comunity works section or something.

darn... and here I was hoping to avoid the urge to use all the goodness. Along comes this to make finding that last .2% so much less of a hassle. (does this suddenly devalue GMCs?)