Thank you so very much for this wonderful, easy guide. This helped me make my very first mod for my best friend and I, and it has added so much simple joy to our campaigns. We both appreciate your work on this guide very much 💜
Yeah! You'll probably want to still go through making it as a separate dye rather than editing the game files themselves, but you'll use the UUID of the existing dye you want to change so that yours overwrites it! Does that make sense?? Hopefully that didn't sound too confusing, I'm a bit sleepy.
As for finding the vanilla dye information, I'll assume you already know how to use the modder's multitool. You'll want to find the "_merged.lsx" or "_merged.lsf" (depending on if they've been converted or not) file in the folder "[PAK]_DYE_Colors". In that "_merged" file should be all the vanilla dye information! They're not labelled the same as the in-game names, but I think the black and jade green is "DYE_ARM_BlackGreen_01". If you've extracted the game files like I have, you should be able to find the "[PAK]_DYE_Colors" folder here: \UnpackedData\Shared\Public\Shared\Content\Assets\Characters\[PAK]_DYE_Colors
If you need more information or a better explanation, let me know!!
Do you have discord? If you'd like, since it might be easier to message through DMs on there, you can message me (astralsprout) on there and I can try to walk you through it a bit better.
Any chance you could make a video guide in your spare time? 😅 I am a visual learner and struggling to understand some of the parts further along with generating the actual dyes.
Hey, friend! Astralsprout is definitely the expert, but if you still need help, shoot me a message on discord? (same name as my name on here) I can either help you out, or make a video guide for you. It will be based on Astral's work and I don't necessarily know *why* everything works the way it works,, but I've figured a few common mistakes out by trial and error haha
Thanks very much for this guide! I was able to make a dye. It's HIDEOUS!!! ^_^
Arron's like, "Hell, I'll pay you to take this eye-sore off my hands!" xD
But, I deliberately set the various color "channels" to their own vivid extremes, so as to identify what was appearing where on certain armors clothing and undies. Therefore, "hideous" is a complete success!
It helped a lot to unpack a mod which only contained a single dye, to cross-reference against. For me, Aether's Black Dye served this purpose well; partly because I already had it to hand.
I know from experience that writing a guide is a lot more challenging than one might at first expect it to be; having to anticipate every degree of ignorance on the subject (which certainly described me, anyway!). So again, thank you very much and bravo!
That's exactly what I did! I have my own "dye mod" in game now and I swap out the dyes as-needed for different playthroughs, but Dye 0 is always my hideously ugly "test dye" haha
This guide helped me make my own dyes! It was very descriptive, informative and easy to follow. The things I learnt from it I'm sure I will need for other things too. Thanks so much!
This question is more about object definitions and treasuretables than custom dyes.
In the example Object.txt, the dye "inherited from" AS_Dyes which in turn "inherited from" _Dyes. If I understand correctly, this means the dye's "ObjectCategory" is "Dye". Again IIUC, the output of the vanilla treasuretable ST_Dye is an object with/in "ObjectCategory" "Dye": new treasuretable "ST_Dye" new subtable "1,1" object category "Dye",1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 Does this mean the new dye becomes a possible output of that treasuretable?
(I dl'd the file so I could endorse but I'm using the Google doc)
This is an extremely late response and you probably don't need an answer anymore, but I'd feel bad leaving you hanging just in case, and it may help anyone else with similar curiosity--
You are correct in that the dye "Dye" will become an output of treasuretable "ST_Dye," however I want expand and explain a little further, just to make sure I'm not giving a wholly misleading answer:
A treasuretable is going to be some kind of drop table in the game that determines where your objects (in this case, your dyes) will appear. This can wind up being kind of convoluted because you can have treasuretables within treasuretables, etc etc. I'll come back to this though.
Gonna go back to the Object.txt file for a moment- The variable "AS_Dyes" is a custom entry I created to set the value and rarity of my own dyes without interfering with vanilla or other custom dyes. It doesn't affect treasure tables. In the vanilla game Object.txt file, there's an entry for all dyes: "_Dyes," which contains more than just value and rarity. This affects every dye, vanilla and custom, so long as they use the "_Dyes" variable, if that makes sense? So in order to make sure the dyes work correctly, I created the new entry "AS_Dyes" using the "_Dyes" variable.
For visuals, here's my entry in Object.txt: new entry "AS_Dyes" using "_Dyes" data "ValueOverride" "1" data "Weight" "0.01" data "Rarity" "Legendary"and here's the "_Dyes" entry in the game's Object.txt: new entry "_Dyes" type "Object" using "OBJ_Bottle" data "ValueUUID" "4c5217d8-0232-4592-9e32-2fd729123f53" data "ValueOverride" "3" data "Rarity" "Uncommon" data "ObjectCategory" "Dye" data "MinAmount" "2" data "MaxAmount" "6" data "Priority" "0" We don't want to override all of that information, so by creating a new entry ("AS_Dyes" in my case) that uses vanilla game "_Dyes," I can pick which data variables I wish to change. In this case, my dyes will override the value, weight, and rarity of the original "_Dyes" entry, while leaving everything else untouched so that it works correctly in the game.
If you do not use a custom dye entry like I did, you shouldn't have to touch any "ST_Dye" treasuretables, because they should inherit the the "Dye" objectcategory! At least, that's my understanding of it.
So for example, if your dye was: new entry "Example_Dye" type "Object" using "_Dyes" data "RootTemplate" "RootTemplate-UUID"
Then there would be a chance Example_Dye would drop in any container/vendor that can pull from the "ST_Dye" drop table. If that makes sense? And this would work if you used the "_Dye_Rare" or "_Dye_VeryRare" variables instead of "_Dyes" as well, as there are corresponding vanilla treasuretables for those ("ST_DyeRare" and "ST_DyeVeryRare")!
However, if you did the same thing I did (like make your dye legendary and therefore not an uncommon drop), you would have to manually add your dye to the table: new treasuretable "ST_Dye" new subtable "1,1" object category "Dye",1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 object category "Example_Dye",1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
Though if you wanted to mess with those types of treasuretables, you may also need to adjust the numbers for both the subtable and the dye frequencies so that you aren't completely overriding the vanilla dyes from popping up in containers and such throughout the game. Though I admit I'm not fully familiar with that aspect since I haven't tried to set my dyes to be found naturally throughout the game, haha. I've really only used the vendor treasuretables and the tutorial chest!
I hope that explained things a bit, even if you probably have learned this all by now... 😅 Apologies for taking two whole months to respond!! And for if this doesn't make a lot of sense, haha. I'm exhausted from work, but I tried!!
32 comments
You'll probably want to still go through making it as a separate dye rather than editing the game files themselves, but you'll use the UUID of the existing dye you want to change so that yours overwrites it!
Does that make sense?? Hopefully that didn't sound too confusing, I'm a bit sleepy.
As for finding the vanilla dye information, I'll assume you already know how to use the modder's multitool. You'll want to find the "_merged.lsx" or "_merged.lsf" (depending on if they've been converted or not) file in the folder "[PAK]_DYE_Colors". In that "_merged" file should be all the vanilla dye information! They're not labelled the same as the in-game names, but I think the black and jade green is "DYE_ARM_BlackGreen_01".
If you've extracted the game files like I have, you should be able to find the "[PAK]_DYE_Colors" folder here:
\UnpackedData\Shared\Public\Shared\Content\Assets\Characters\[PAK]_DYE_Colors
If you need more information or a better explanation, let me know!!
I am a visual learner and struggling to understand some of the parts further along with generating the actual dyes.
Arron's like, "Hell, I'll pay you to take this eye-sore off my hands!" xD
But, I deliberately set the various color "channels" to their own vivid extremes, so as to identify what was appearing where on certain armors clothing and undies. Therefore, "hideous" is a complete success!
It helped a lot to unpack a mod which only contained a single dye, to cross-reference against. For me, Aether's Black Dye served this purpose well; partly because I already had it to hand.
I know from experience that writing a guide is a lot more challenging than one might at first expect it to be; having to anticipate every degree of ignorance on the subject (which certainly described me, anyway!). So again, thank you very much and bravo!
In the example Object.txt, the dye "inherited from" AS_Dyes which in turn "inherited from" _Dyes. If I understand correctly, this means the dye's "ObjectCategory" is "Dye". Again IIUC, the output of the vanilla treasuretable ST_Dye is an object with/in "ObjectCategory" "Dye":
new treasuretable "ST_Dye"new subtable "1,1"
object category "Dye",1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
Does this mean the new dye becomes a possible output of that treasuretable?
(I dl'd the file so I could endorse but I'm using the Google doc)
You are correct in that the dye "Dye" will become an output of treasuretable "ST_Dye," however I want expand and explain a little further, just to make sure I'm not giving a wholly misleading answer:
A treasuretable is going to be some kind of drop table in the game that determines where your objects (in this case, your dyes) will appear. This can wind up being kind of convoluted because you can have treasuretables within treasuretables, etc etc. I'll come back to this though.
Gonna go back to the Object.txt file for a moment-
The variable "AS_Dyes" is a custom entry I created to set the value and rarity of my own dyes without interfering with vanilla or other custom dyes. It doesn't affect treasure tables.
In the vanilla game Object.txt file, there's an entry for all dyes: "_Dyes," which contains more than just value and rarity. This affects every dye, vanilla and custom, so long as they use the "_Dyes" variable, if that makes sense?
So in order to make sure the dyes work correctly, I created the new entry "AS_Dyes" using the "_Dyes" variable.
For visuals, here's my entry in Object.txt:
new entry "AS_Dyes"and here's the "_Dyes" entry in the game's Object.txt:using "_Dyes"
data "ValueOverride" "1"
data "Weight" "0.01"
data "Rarity" "Legendary"
new entry "_Dyes"type "Object"
using "OBJ_Bottle"
data "ValueUUID" "4c5217d8-0232-4592-9e32-2fd729123f53"
data "ValueOverride" "3"
data "Rarity" "Uncommon"
data "ObjectCategory" "Dye"
data "MinAmount" "2"
data "MaxAmount" "6"
data "Priority" "0"
We don't want to override all of that information, so by creating a new entry ("AS_Dyes" in my case) that uses vanilla game "_Dyes," I can pick which data variables I wish to change. In this case, my dyes will override the value, weight, and rarity of the original "_Dyes" entry, while leaving everything else untouched so that it works correctly in the game.
If you do not use a custom dye entry like I did, you shouldn't have to touch any "ST_Dye" treasuretables, because they should inherit the the "Dye" objectcategory! At least, that's my understanding of it.
So for example, if your dye was:
new entry "Example_Dye"
type "Object"
using "_Dyes"
data "RootTemplate" "RootTemplate-UUID"
Then there would be a chance Example_Dye would drop in any container/vendor that can pull from the "ST_Dye" drop table. If that makes sense?
And this would work if you used the "_Dye_Rare" or "_Dye_VeryRare" variables instead of "_Dyes" as well, as there are corresponding vanilla treasuretables for those ("ST_DyeRare" and "ST_DyeVeryRare")!
However, if you did the same thing I did (like make your dye legendary and therefore not an uncommon drop), you would have to manually add your dye to the table:
new treasuretable "ST_Dye"
new subtable "1,1"
object category "Dye",1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
object category "Example_Dye",1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
Though if you wanted to mess with those types of treasuretables, you may also need to adjust the numbers for both the subtable and the dye frequencies so that you aren't completely overriding the vanilla dyes from popping up in containers and such throughout the game. Though I admit I'm not fully familiar with that aspect since I haven't tried to set my dyes to be found naturally throughout the game, haha. I've really only used the vendor treasuretables and the tutorial chest!
I hope that explained things a bit, even if you probably have learned this all by now... 😅
Apologies for taking two whole months to respond!! And for if this doesn't make a lot of sense, haha. I'm exhausted from work, but I tried!!