how does makin mods even work?

[Echsrick]

because i conchept characters for fun but like...trying to make them real is good too...only problem now is that i looked into like example mods only to return with a headache and not realy becoming any smarter with it, the 8 characters i had made in conchepts are these 8, even with skill trees but that would be too many immages at once i feel like







i dit get notepat++ i heard that was importand....so uhm...this niche thing probably wont happen unless of course a miracle happens of being able to understand anything

[kyupita]

How I started getting into making mods was watching and following along this video: Link

I definitely recommend reading the documentation for Lua (Here), reading tutorials on the DST mod forums, and looking into other mods and analyzing how they work.

For your first mod, it's highly recommended to go for something simple (Don't do what I did and try to make a highly complex mod off the bat.... you'll save yourself many headaches 😭). Notepad++ is a really good editor and of course for art make sure it supports transparency.

Also, a lot of character mods use this template, and the video link above should tell you how to use it.

[Echsrick]

like so many weird thing immage i can maybe change but what is even that other stuff? how am i supposed to do anything with it?


i have an art place where i can make transparent immages like these

i
i just dont know if its goin to be correct or workin and all 

[Echsrick]

ok...tried replacing template mod character png files with my own png files.....it dit not work...but at least stat changes and starting items and favourit food of hammer bro are there................very small changes but a start i guess

[kyupita]

Delete all the .tex and.xml files, and everything in the "anim" folder and replace the pngs with your own. Then replace 'esctemplate' to your character's name everywhere. Also, the .tex files look like that because they need to be viewed with a certain program, but that's usually not required.

To make renaming in the scripts easier, press Ctrl + F, click "Find in Files", put "esctemplate" in the Find What section and your character's name in the Replace With section (and make sure Match case is on), then put the Directory to your character's file location. Then do the same thing but in capital letters (ESCTEMPLATE and CHARACTERNAME)

Oh and also make sure you have the Don't Starve Mod Tools installed, so that new tex, xml, and zip files will be generated.

[Echsrick]

for now i only tried replacing the portrait as i allready have the art for that



  



dit not seem to go well that, maybe it realy does need every instance of templade being replaced but for that i get to draw a bunch of differend faces first i think

[kyupita]

Yes, every instance of "esctemplate" (and "ESCTEMPLATE") need to be replaced with your character's name for everything to show up.

Also, you don't need to open up the xml files, the only time you would access them is for stuff like the select screen name since it's named wrong in there.

[Echsrick]

ok, so far looked at like the character art assets to get an idea and started with the headbase ones as it seems easyest to start with aswell them being way less too...

 
i copy paste that character art folder into a seperate folder just to be safe and sould then later be able to replace them once i am done with...all the other body parts...i probably can resize them later in spriter or something i think but i think it sould be good for now?

wait headbase hat? uhm...it seems i just copy paste the normal headbase for that? difficult to tell

[kyupita]

I'd recommend sizing up your character's sprites since (to my knowledge) there's no way to size them up another way, or it would at least be way harder.

Whenever I make a new sprite, I use the template as a base on a separate later that I then delete. That makes it easier to get the size and position right.

Then, with your sprites, give them the same name as the templates' (For example, copy the name "headbase-0" and give it to your sprite so that it replaces the template)

headbase_hat is basically the sprite that will show whenever your character wears a hat (Like how Wilson's hair will disappear so it doesn't clip through), but I usually just use the same headbase sprite because i'm lazy

[Echsrick]

ok some faces been made now



not sure about some of them if i cant just reuse some bit of them because head looks with mouth with the peak look difficult to make good



 this was a nice surprise how seemingly the forward eye worked for side headbase


 

20 minutes ago, kyupita said:

I'd recommend sizing up your character's sprites since (to my knowledge) there's no way to size them up another way, or it would at least be way harder.

this seems like something i would try figure out once i have done drawn all the immages...i guess mod tools then somehow makes the immages into sprite files or something


 

 

21 minutes ago, kyupita said:

headbase_hat is basically the sprite that will show whenever your character wears a hat (Like how Wilson's hair will disappear so it doesn't clip through), but I usually just use the same headbase sprite because i'm lazy

guess thats where hair layer comes in, normaly placed ontop of headbase layer and gets made invisible when wearing a hat...unless that hat can show hair like garland in wich case it might be more complicated unless these hats have some sort of tag that says something like "show hair = true" or something like that

[kyupita]

7 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

not sure about some of them if i cant just reuse some bit of them because head looks with mouth with the peak look difficult to make good

For faces that look identical to each other, I just use the same face. This is what the face folder looks like for one of my mods:

For example, I just used the same sprite for face-0 and face-8.

 

10 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

because head looks with mouth with the peak look difficult to make good

I assume you're talking about if you need to draw the beak/mouth separate from the headbase (Sorry if I'm misunderstanding)? In which case, I just make the mouth part of the headbase itself instead of part of the face (So instead of drawing the full face for faces 4 - 7 / the side profile faces, they're just one eye).

 

I also highly recommend to check your (charactername).scml file to see how they will look in-game and if anything looks off (Be sure not to change anything in the scml file and save it, or you might need a new file. Only use it as a preview).

 

21 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

this seems like something i would try figure out once i have done drawn all the immages...i guess mod tools then somehow makes the immages into sprite files or something

You may want to check to make sure the ones you have now look right, so you don't have to redraw everything if they look wrong. (Mod tools are just for compiling the character's animations. Again, you can check how your character looks by clicking on the scml file, it's very helpful!)

 

23 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

guess thats where hair layer comes in, normaly placed ontop of headbase layer and gets made invisible when wearing a hat...unless that hat can show hair like garland in wich case it might be more complicated unless these hats have some sort of tag that says something like "show hair = true" or something like that

Most character mods (I think), including mine don't actually use the hair files, or the hairfront ones either - To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how they're handled, but I just draw hair on the headbase (and use hairpigtails for long hair). How hats work is by simply swapping the headbase for headbase_hat, and hats like the garland don't do any of that and keep the normal headbase sprite.

[Echsrick]

seems like i do have to rezise everything in the art program i asume? or how i understand it the spriter just there to preview it not to actualy fix these things

the preview png files sure made it look like it was too small at first so i increased it in the art program

that kind of confusing, despite it kind of in the same position as the sample headbase in spriter it appears somewhere completly else

 

[kyupita]

Yes, if you want to change anything about the sprite, it all has to be done in your art program. If you move or resize anything in spriter, it won't save your changes in-game.

Instead of making entirely new files for your sprites, a much easier way to do it and make sure everything lines up is to open the template sprite into your art program and set it to a lower opacity, make a new layer and then draw on top of it.

For example, this is how I drew the head for another mod:

[Echsrick]

now it seems good i know what my problem was i just put the template as a new layer instead as an immage so the size radio thing was not a small box like there now

[kyupita]

Sweet! Yeah, the size of your image file is very important, otherwise things get placed weirdly.

If you need anymore help with art or coding, let me know and I'll try to help to the best of my ability.

[Echsrick]

39 minutes ago, kyupita said:

Sweet! Yeah, the size of your image file is very important, otherwise things get placed weirdly.

If you need anymore help with art or coding, let me know and I'll try to help to the best of my ability.

thank you so much for everything so far! i will let you know when i think i got all the arts done and how the spriter will show it

[Echsrick]

allright then.....done most of the art...just wish i could circle trought several animations to be sure it looks good enought, then again i mostly just changed colours for arms legs hands....i dit replace layers i dont need with a blank transparent immage so they dont show up...then however there some immages where i was not sure what they even are for so not sure what to draw as a replacement so i left them as of now as i need info

th

face 14 (i just took the immage and put on black background to show better) no idea what this is used for therefor cant draw it


theres SWAP_ICON i guess its like i could just draw an outline on the texture template but just wanted to know to be safer

torso 9                                                                                   torso_pelvis 9
i am sorry i dont know what i am lookin at or when it would be used therefor i dont know how i would draw them for the time being
                                                    


i alsol removed every instance of "esctemplate" and "ESCTEMPLATE" with "hammerbro" and "HAMMERBRO" respectavly

 

23 hours ago, kyupita said:

If you need anymore help with art or coding, let me know and I'll try to help to the best of my ability.

i was realy hoping there would be no problems appearing with the art part at least but...as code part would been my biggest enemy of not knowing

[kyupita]

No worries! There's some parts of the sprite that I have no idea where it's used, like with face14 (so i just keep it the way it is), but torso9 and torso_pelvis9 I'm fairly certain is used when your character is mining. For the SWAP_ICON, I just take the line art for my character's head and cut out the texture template around it (I use krita, so I use the lasso tool to make jagged cuts around the line art, invert the selection and then delete so I have the icon cut out).

[Echsrick]

ok...now i truely changed them all...i even changed the arts of template character like "map_icons" into my own one or the big portrait look...now all i think would need to do is just run the game and let the auto compiler do its thing and....hopefully it works? unless i missed something importand i am not aware of...besides the code of programming perks, some custom items.....uhm maybe then thats it? fully made?

[kyupita]

As long as everything is named correctly, it should work. The template already has everything your character needs to show up in game and function properly.

[Echsrick]

ok...ok not tooo bad i would say...i dit resize him a bunch of times to make it look better



 only real problem as of now is the helmet as that uhm....yea...i think the template character alsol had floating helmet in some way so something might be needed not sure what
 


but overall currently as simple character as it is it works in the game...never immagined that would happen and thank you alot @kyupita for everything up to this point...now my real challange beggins....actualy perks of some sort, custom items unique hammer weapon and helmet...its art asets and stats and...uhm...i dont actualy know if skill trees are a thing but i feel like that would go now alot over it as of right now

[kyupita]

Of course! ^^

If you need anymore help, feel free to ask. I can try to teach how to code in Lua and make some stuff, though I can't guarantee I can help with everything since I'm still learning myself. I also haven't looked into skill trees much, so that's a bit out of my league. Other people on this forum may be able to help you though.

9 hours ago, Echsrick said:

 only real problem as of now is the helmet as that uhm....yea...i think the template character alsol had floating helmet in some way so something might be needed not sure what

You may just need to draw the head a bit bigger so that the helmet fits, since I don't think there's a way to change the size or position of the hat.

[Echsrick]

ok the helmet looks good enought now, just had to redo the faces again, next step probably finding custom item tutorial or rather equipables and its stats and arts that it needs

[Echsrick]

this seems like a fine equipment template maybe




now to try figuring all of that stuff what to remove and what to rename, seems simmilar to character one in that delete everything from the anim folder and the ++ program renaming the custom item with my own item name and then replacing all these immages....phew....this sure more to modding then i immagined
 

[Echsrick]

actualy i am not sure of this mid workin, tutorial of before says this for character wich i do try use but does it work the the item template i wonder? or do i have to leave it be as "custom_(itemname)"? because i deleted some other names where i just called them "brohammer" and "brohat" without the "custom_" part