[Guide] The Big Book of DST Character Creation

[Goregonzola]

@Lovely RosesThat's unusual.

First thing first, I would take a look at the client and server log to see if they have anything to say about the issue. Check out the troubleshoot section on how you can access these.

Other than that, experiment a bit by launching the game with your mod only or without any mods to see how it behaves that way.

Worst case scenario: Extract a second copy of the template and add your changes one by one to see if it breaks the game or not.

[Lovely Roses]

@GoregonzolaI checked the client log and it seems that it didn't like that my prefab had a capital letter in it, as renaming everything fixed the problem. Thank you!    

[That One Guy Al]

I noticed that on your Spinel character, she loses sanity when not around other players; how would one achieve this? I can't seem to find the mod file to check myself because I'd like to add this feature to a character of my own. Thank you!

[Ifnerr]

Hi there, I've finally created one character with your guide, it works well, but whenever I tried to run the mod with the item I put with the tutorial you left for making custom items my server won't start, and looking at my client log it says that my mod need a modservercreationmain.lua and a modworldgenmain.lua, I tried looking out for these 2 exact errors and everywhere I look it says that those are files for mods that changes the world settings when you spawn, I tried putting a modservercreationmain.lua with just assets and it functions, but still not opening the server because of the other file that I can't understand what to do with it, there's no info (or I couldn't find it), and noones seems to be having trouble with that.

I also tried copying a mod that uses this template, and only changing his assets but still not working, and giving the same error about missing files.

PrefabFiles = {
	"worfid",
	"worfid_none",
	"blessedpickaxe",
}

Assets = {
    Asset( "IMAGE", "images/saveslot_portraits/worfid.tex" ),
    Asset( "ATLAS", "images/saveslot_portraits/worfid.xml" ),

    Asset( "IMAGE", "images/selectscreen_portraits/worfid.tex" ),
    Asset( "ATLAS", "images/selectscreen_portraits/worfid.xml" ),
	
    Asset( "IMAGE", "images/selectscreen_portraits/worfid_silho.tex" ),
    Asset( "ATLAS", "images/selectscreen_portraits/worfid_silho.xml" ),

    Asset( "IMAGE", "bigportraits/worfid.tex" ),
    Asset( "ATLAS", "bigportraits/worfid.xml" ),
	
	Asset( "IMAGE", "images/map_icons/worfid.tex" ),
	Asset( "ATLAS", "images/map_icons/worfid.xml" ),
	
	Asset( "IMAGE", "images/avatars/avatar_worfid.tex" ),
    Asset( "ATLAS", "images/avatars/avatar_worfid.xml" ),
	
	Asset( "IMAGE", "images/avatars/avatar_ghost_worfid.tex" ),
    Asset( "ATLAS", "images/avatars/avatar_ghost_worfid.xml" ),
	
	Asset( "IMAGE", "images/avatars/self_inspect_worfid.tex" ),
    Asset( "ATLAS", "images/avatars/self_inspect_worfid.xml" ),
	
	Asset( "IMAGE", "images/names_worfid.tex" ),
    Asset( "ATLAS", "images/names_worfid.xml" ),
	
	Asset( "IMAGE", "images/names_gold_worfid.tex" ),
    Asset( "ATLAS", "images/names_gold_worfid.xml" ),
	
}

local require = GLOBAL.require
local STRINGS = GLOBAL.STRINGS
local Ingredient = GLOBAL.Ingredient
local RECIPETABS = GLOBAL.RECIPETABS

AddRecipe("blessed pickaxe",{ Ingredient("goldnugget", 3), Ingredient("nightmarefuel", 2)}, GLOBAL.RECIPETABS.TOOLS, GLOBAL.TECH.NONE,nil,nil,nil,1,"miner", "images/inventoryimages/blessedpickaxe.xml", "blessedpickaxe.tex") 

AddMinimapAtlas("images/map_icons/worfid.xml")

-- The character select screen lines
STRINGS.CHARACTER_TITLES.worfid = "The Blessed Miner"
STRINGS.CHARACTER_NAMES.worfid = "Worfid"
STRINGS.CHARACTER_DESCRIPTIONS.worfid = "*Perk 1\n*Perk 2\n*Perk 3"
STRINGS.CHARACTER_QUOTES.worfid = "\"Quote\""
STRINGS.CHARACTER_SURVIVABILITY.worfid = "Slim"

-- Custom speech strings
STRINGS.CHARACTERS.WORFID = require "speech_worfid"

-- The character's name as appears in-game 
STRINGS.NAMES.WORFID = "Worfid"
STRINGS.SKIN_NAMES.worfid_none = "Worfid"

-- The skins shown in the cycle view window on the character select screen.
-- A good place to see what you can put in here is in skinutils.lua, in the function GetSkinModes
local skin_modes = {
    { 
        type = "ghost_skin",
        anim_bank = "ghost",
        idle_anim = "idle", 
        scale = 0.75, 
        offset = { 0, -25 } 
    },
}
-- Add mod character to mod character list. Also specify a gender. Possible genders are MALE, FEMALE, ROBOT, NEUTRAL, and PLURAL.
AddModCharacter("worfid", "MALE", skin_modes)

This is the hole modmain.lua code, maybe someone could take a look at it, and tell me the error that I can't see.

I also made a topic for my problem, and uploaded every data I could about this error

Thanks in advantage!

[DirtCat]

Hey so even though I play on Xbox it would be cool if somehow or someway someone can look and see how to suggest character ideas to klea because it gets so boring waiting and waiting for a new character that's not a mod and even for console it gets boring because we don't have much to do but klea can change that. So if anyone knows how please let me know because I have a lot of character ideas for dst (don't starve together) thank you.

[BizzBolt5]

Hi! so I watched your video on how to make a mod and I am running into a strange error. I don't know why, but the autocompiler won't make a [character].zip file in the anim folder, although it loads fine in the spriter, and the mod functions fine before I change the images. I tried over several times with a fresh copy of the esctemplate, but the error keeps happening.

[Haruhi Kawaii]

7 hours ago, BizzBolt5 said:

Hi! so I watched your video on how to make a mod and I am running into a strange error. I don't know why, but the autocompiler won't make a [character].zip file in the anim folder, although it loads fine in the spriter, and the mod functions fine before I change the images. I tried over several times with a fresh copy of the esctemplate, but the error keeps happening.

Could be the same problem as this post, please attach your mod including your exported here if the problem still not resolved

 

[Spicy Disaster]

I want to make a character that revolves around the sleeping mechanic. I want to know how I change stuff regarding that (i.e. tweaking the hunger drain, health gain, and sanity gain)
On top of that I want them to be immune to the grogginess effect. Any help would be nice.

[ghostincarnate]

hey! i've been doing this for a programming class as my final project, but now that i'm testing it, this error keeps popping up. i can't really find any .tex files anywhere at all? help would be appreciated :(

[Goregonzola]

@ghostincarnate I suspect that the autocompiler failed to run and didn't create the necessary tex file.

Make sure that the compiler pops up when you run the game. If it doesn't, check if you have an autocompiler.exe in the first place. Some anti-virus softwares tend to erase it from existence for some reason.

If the compiler seems to work alright, see if you refer to "jackie" inside your lua files. You might have missed a renaming somewhere.

[ghostincarnate]

2 hours ago, Goregonzola said:

@ghostincarnate I suspect that the autocompiler failed to run and didn't create the necessary tex file.

Make sure that the compiler pops up when you run the game. If it doesn't, check if you have an autocompiler.exe in the first place. Some anti-virus softwares tend to erase it from existence for some reason.

If the compiler seems to work alright, see if you refer to "jackie" inside your lua files. You might have missed a renaming somewhere.

The autocompiler seems to pop up (if it's the console looking thing) and it runs through the files, but no tex files are appearing in the folder or at all. I couldn't find an autocompiler.exe, but a console does pop up when I run the game.

[ellenaced]

Thanks for the information! 

[ottermeal]

On 3/6/2023 at 1:16 PM, That One Guy Al said:

I noticed that on your Spinel character, she loses sanity when not around other players; how would one achieve this? I can't seem to find the mod file to check myself because I'd like to add this feature to a character of my own. Thank you!

bumping this as I would also love to know how one might go about doing something similar! 

[BeeChoc]

On 1/25/2022 at 11:11 AM, Goregonzola said:

 

It's not working, i did everything just like i was suppose to, i even try to do it several times, i did put several hours on the drawing and now im just really tired of this.

The character wont appear in the game, i have one picture that work and that's all, i did re-check the name of my files and nothing make sens it's suppose to work.

[BeeChoc]

1 hour ago, BeeChoc said:

It's not working, i did everything just like i was suppose to, i even try to do it several times, i did put several hours on the drawing and now im just really tired of this.

The character wont appear in the game, i have one picture that work and that's all, i did re-check the name of my files and nothing make sens it's suppose to work.

[Baguettes]

41 minutes ago, BeeChoc said:

You cannot put serverside components into common postinit. That function utilizes things for both server and client, and there is no health component for clients, only its replica.

[BeeChoc]

16 minutes ago, Baguettes said:

You cannot put serverside components into common postinit. That function utilizes things for both server and client, and there is no health component for clients, only its replica.

I hear you, so what do i do ? What's the fix ?

[BeeChoc]

1 hour ago, BeeChoc said:

I hear you, so what do i do ? What's the fix ?

I rectified everything but now my character just dont appear in the game, im invisible ....

I dont know what to do

[BeeChoc]

3 hours ago, BeeChoc said:

I rectified everything but now my character just dont appear in the game, im invisible ....

I dont know what to do

Update : I finally made it work x), buuuuuut my character dont have legs somehow x)

[Chesed]

9 hours ago, BeeChoc said:

Update : I finally made it work x), buuuuuut my character dont have legs somehow x)

If you want someone to help you, we would have a much easier time understanding the problem if you could send your mod here as a zipped folder. Otherwise we're just going to flood the thread back and forth guessing what the problem is.

My guess is that you've deleted folders you didn't need (like "skirt" or "tail") from the character template and somehow gotten it to compile anyway, which can cause body parts to display improperly, but I have no way of knowing without seeing the files.

[BeeChoc]

4 hours ago, Chesed said:

If you want someone to help you, we would have a much easier time understanding the problem if you could send your mod here as a zipped folder. Otherwise we're just going to flood the thread back and forth guessing what the problem is.

My guess is that you've deleted folders you didn't need (like "skirt" or "tail") from the character template and somehow gotten it to compile anyway, which can cause body parts to display improperly, but I have no way of knowing without seeing the files.

I first did, but the mod wont work without it so i replaced all the parts that i didnt want with empty png.

Somehow now  his upper body is perfectly fine but the legs and feet are gone.

I had a lot of problems doing this mod, i did several mistakes, i corrected them but im already happy to see my character's face in the game x)

Oh and my autocompiler is not working so i have to do it with tools

beechoc.rar

Edited November 5, 2024 by BeeChoc

[Chesed]

1 hour ago, BeeChoc said:

I first did, but the mod wont work without it so i replaced all the parts that i didnt want with empty png.

Somehow now  his upper body is perfectly fine but the legs and feet are gone.

I had a lot of problems doing this mod, i did several mistakes, i corrected them but im already happy to see my character's face in the game x)

Oh and my autocompiler is not working so i have to do it with tools

beechoc.rar 7.19 MB · 1 download

It looks like the problem has happened when you tried to put back in the sprites you deleted. Some of them are the wrong size.

The one causing the problem with the legs disappearing specifically is the tail sprites. Replace the contents of the "tail" folder with the sprites in "beechoc_cleared/tail" and the legs and feet will come back.

If you copy and paste the sprites and your autocompiler doesn't notice a file has changed, either delete "beechoc.zip" in your "anim" folder and compile again, or make an edit to an existing sprite and save it. Either will work.

EDIT: I just saw your autocompiler doesn't work properly, so here's my compiled version.

beechoc_fixed.zip

Edited November 5, 2024 by Chesed

[BeeChoc]

45 minutes ago, Chesed said:

It looks like the problem has happened when you tried to put back in the sprites you deleted. Some of them are the wrong size.

The one causing the problem with the legs disappearing specifically is the tail sprites. Replace the contents of the "tail" folder with the sprites in "beechoc_cleared/tail" and the legs and feet will come back.

If you copy and paste the sprites and your autocompiler doesn't notice a file has changed, either delete "beechoc.zip" in your "anim" folder and compile again, or make an edit to an existing sprite and save it. Either will work.

EDIT: I just saw your autocompiler doesn't work properly, so here's my compiled version.

beechoc_fixed.zip 6.49 MB · 0 downloads

Thank you so much ! It worked perfectly fine !

[Thrimbus]

Hey there, I've followed the tutorial all the way up to testing the mod and the server errors every time I try to start it with the mod, this is my first time doing stuff like this so I don't really know what's going wrong. I've attached the error log (at least I think this is the error log), any help figuring this out would be awesome, thanks!

client_log.txt

[bazyboo]

I'm having trouble with my character's hair. he is a bunny with long ears however I can't figure out how to add them because, due to how I designed him, the top of his ears are seen slightly above his head and the bottom of his ears are seen below his head. I tried using the hair layer but the hair ended up in front of his body. I tried using the pigtail layer but the animations caused them to move strange.

 

here's one of his ears