[Tutorial] So You Want to Make a Custom Don't Starve (Together) Character (Mac Support Included)

[theoldaeroplane]

 

Hello! I spent this afternoon writing what I hope is a fairly exhaustive guide for using the ESC Template. It includes pictures, step-by-steps, explanations, application suggestions, as well as workarounds/stop-gaps for Mac users!

You can find it at this url: http://dont-starve.surge.sh/

I wrote it pretty much all in one go and there are likely typos and errors due to my inexperience. If you see something you KNOW to be in error please let me know and I will try to update it as soon as I can. Additionally, I cannot offer support for errors or crashes. I mostly made this for my friends, who aren't quite as computer-experienced as I am and were intimidated by the existing guides, and just I thought it would be nice to share, especially since Mac modding support is severely lacking.

I hope you find it useful!

Edited October 24, 2016 by theoldaeroplane

[myxal]

@theoldaeroplane: Thanks a bunch for the link to that old forum post by @brainfree and your github repo.

I never ran DS(T) on Windows so I didn't even know the game was supposed to have the textures and animations built automatically. Hoping that Klei get it together and have the mod tools actually work on all platforms.

And the premake script issue... what a farce.

[AzaleaGarden]

Don't know if you'll be able to answer this, but this is the best tutorial I've seen for creating characters. Only problem is, both Notepad++ and Atom won't work on the laptop I'm hoping to use, which runs Chrome OS (yea, I know, I hate it too). I was wondering if you had any suggestions for what I could use instead, anything good on the Chrome Store? Or will Caret-T work?

Along with that, if you know what I could use instead of NameChanger, that would be great. Thank you.

[theoldaeroplane]

@AzaleaGarden Hey, sorry for the very late reply. I did the thing where I make a huge resource for a game and then stop playing it, oops.

I'm sorry but I have no experience with Chrome OS whatsoever! Hopefully by now you've managed to find something on your own. Good luck!

[joonieboy]

I realize this tutorial was posted some time ago, and I just started playing Don't Starve Together a few weeks ago. I searched online for a specific character mod, didn't find it, and resorted to making it myself.

I've gotten almost everything in there, and the game doesn't crash on startup or when I load the mod into a game. However, my character won't show up. I can run around and do things, but all I can see is a shadow on the ground where I walk, my character is invisible. Is there a way to fix this issue?

Another bug,

My art, map art, portrait art, etc etc, absolutely won't load either. I tried png files and tex files and nothing will work. If anybody could help me, that would be fantastic.

Sorry for such a new issue for such an old tutorial.

Edited July 9, 2018 by joonieboy
Adding photos.

[toasterbathbomb]

@joonieboy You need to recompile your animations, because it looks like your game isnt doing that for you. Take your exported folder and drag and drop it into this compiler, and it should work. If it says that you're missing an image, but you arent really, check and make sure your filename is correct.

compiler.cmd

[MetaGiga]

I thought hope was lost because I'm cursed with a Mac household. Thank you so much.

[Kobayashiro]

Can someone tell me, how i can make .xml file from tex file ?

[Fluxistence]

I made a small utility script for renaming characters easily.

It conserves case, so it should take care of both "esctemplate" and "ESCTEMPLATE" replacements at once.
It also changes filenames accordingly.

You can find it here, and a post I wrote with more details on how to use it here.

The script itself is written in Python, so it should work on Mac systems too (untested), but there's a batch file I added to facilitate using it more easily, and that won't work on Macs (at least, not without conversion or some program to run batch files on Mac, if such a thing exists).
Still, the batch file is very simple, and the explanations I wrote should make it clear how to use the script without relying on the batch file, so it should still be of use.

If someone wants to write a Mac equivalent of the batch file I'll gladly add it to the archive for download.

Hopes this helps someone. =)

[Durdz]

Hi, this is a great tutorial, but I want to know how to ADD custom items into the game. I also want to make it so that my character loses a certain value of sanity when killing something that isnt a monster (a rabbit, beefalo, bird, etc), how do i do that? And back to the custom item. I want to add a wearable magic donut (weird, i know) that emits a small amount of light and can be eaten for a bonus to all stats. If hat items can’t be coded to be eaten, then im fine with it being a food item too. Can anyone help guide me for what to do to add this, and to make it craftable, Thanks.

 

P.S. I also wanted to make it so that you can haunt the donut to respawn. 

I added pictures to help anyone understand the perks.

[InkY149]

Hey, i had just tried this tutorial but in the zip, bigportaits\ there isnt any esctemplate_none. I think that is what makes my mod crash, what should i do??

[Dragolantis]

I'm working on a character mod, and I followed the steps right up to the point with modmain.lua, everything works, but the name of the character is still Sample! What do I do?

[Dragolantis]

Don't reply to me, I found out what it was, I hadn't edited the bigportraits yet

[Crazytomato]

I do not now what the first part for building the mod

I can't find the "don't starve together set" thing.

[lilblue22]

For the modicon.tex part of your awful tutorial you said to make it 2D (you also said to drag the xml into "the folder" when it doesn't even create an .xml nor do you need to drag it anywhere). Gotta say you are actually terrible and wasted about an hour of my time trying to figure out why the game is crashing. Hopefully someone will read this before getting stuck with your misinfo. You're in fact supposed to make it 1D and the xml you can just leave that where it is.

[Dark Vapor]

On 5/18/2021 at 6:45 AM, lilblue22 said:

For the modicon.tex part of your awful tutorial you said to make it 2D (you also said to drag the xml into "the folder" when it doesn't even create an .xml nor do you need to drag it anywhere). Gotta say you are actually terrible and wasted about an hour of my time trying to figure out why the game is crashing. Hopefully someone will read this before getting stuck with your misinfo. You're in fact supposed to make it 1D and the xml you can just leave that where it is.

Well thanks for writing this, I was about to try this tutorial. Are there any better guides out there for making character mods? And is this one still up to date? Because I can’t find anything recent :/