Alternate Dragoons

[acoustic trout]

Ever wonder how Dart would perform as the Darkness Dragoon? What about Shana as the fire Dragoon? Lavitz as light? GOOD NEWS THEN! I've been working on a project to do just that. Bear in mind I have no technical know-how for coding or playing around with files much. As such, this mod will likely take a long time and come in stages.

Stage 1 : party recolors - this is already in the works and some good progress has been made
Stage 2 : Actually change character elements - this is going to be more technical than I currently know how to handle. Likely going to try and tackle once step one is complete
Stage 3 : Dragoon magic - recoloring spells 1-3 to fit the new element, and swapping final spells to show the correct element dragon. Likely to come after step 2 is complete.

[nova pasture]

I am here for Australian Dragoons. J/K, this is a rad mod idea. Have thought about shuffled elements for awhile. At first on my own, and then with renewed interest from the JP Demo's alternate element assignments for minor mobs.

[acoustic trout]

"y'free t'sever those chains mate"

but yeah, its a fun little experiment. Light for the only character with a shield spell really fits, and he wasnt even going to be light in the first place

[acoustic trout]

some alternate lighting for Dart

haschel scares me.

[hot zealot]

Would you be leaving weapons that give their relevant (original) element alone or would you be changing that too?

[acoustic trout]

to my (super limited) knowledge, equipment is pretty set in stone in that new equipment isnt a thing right now, and i still havent figured out how to change character element yet to think about weapon element

Gut answer though? Kinda think itd be interesting to keep it to build synergy with other party members. Like a shana fire special field buffing the dark dragoon dart because he has the fire sword

[acoustic trout]

Massive thank you to @edgy otter, we are on our way with vertex edits

[nova pasture]

Medic!

[acoustic trout]

well, maybe? I seem to have messed up the instructions lol

[acoustic trout]

thats a regal paladin right there

[acoustic trout]

bit of a color edit for Rose now that Ive been made aware of the harsh lighting of zenebatos. Should reflect vanilla dragoon colors for Meru better, i'll put it side by side with the old version

[acoustic trout]

due to Shana also being red, I'm wondering if I should make lavitz's clothing color blue in line with the rest of the Basil Knights. Course that also runs the risk of clashing with the new Rose colors...

[glad wadi]

recoloring darts spells to darkness colors is gonna make it look like amaterasu and im down with it 100%

[acoustic trout]

Alright y'all, I require opinions

Please leave a reaction with a dragoon spirit of the color you like best so that I can keep track

[acoustic trout]

also note there is currently a weird black box around his butt that has dark edges. Still gotta figure out how to get rid of that, but for the meantime its gonna look like he's got a buttcrack. So. Thats a thing 😅

[safe fable]

Knight of the 3 eyed Red Kangaroo

[nova pasture]

I still think one of the earlier Shana edits was just Canada theme.

[acoustic trout]

-Nobody- messes with the Maple dragoon

[nova pasture]

You gotta involve Monoxide, Nova, and others for this. Please.

Legend of Canadagoon is coming.

[acoustic trout]

lol

[acoustic trout]

butt box is fixed. Also thanks for the color opinions. White/gold seems to take the cake by far between here, the subreddit, and fb groups

"there can only be one"

[acoustic trout]

this guy has so far proven hardest. His waist plates have tiny patterns on the sides, but much messier on the back. Neither seemed to appreciate deviating from shades of the same color much

[nova pasture]

The white color almost looks too bright compared to the rest. You could try tinting it down a-la Miranda's armor. Maybe that'll make it look too grey though.. I dunno.

Oh I just remembered: lighting is busted to some degree ATM. Models look better or worse depending on which battlefield is loaded. So keep that in mind. Try other battlefields before editing any further. Maybe the devteam can tell you which battlefield to use for the time being.

[acoustic trout]

im sure its a combination of both. I didnt have many shades of white, surprisingly, so had to make more.

[acoustic trout]

think i finally made it work

[nova pasture]

I'm liking this tint much better. Feels like it needs a little something more, but that's just me.

[acoustic trout]

I hear ya, not sure what else I can do without throwing the palette off though, those waist plates were really were picky.

I do love how the chest piece looks though, probably my favorite so far

[nova pasture]

Best thing to keep in mind is that this is your first pass. For a first pass it's mega cool. So keep going and see what you end up with, as you tinker more and more.

[acoustic trout]

going to update the goals a little bit :

1. Recolor base human form combat models : 4/9 complete
2. recolor dragoon forms : 3/9 complete (Leaving Divine Dragoon as is for now)
3. Recolor battle cutscene versions of these (ie turning dragoon or casting spells)
4. Recolor Dragoon FX (the actual magic bits of spells and transforming)
5. Officially change character elements
6. Swap the summon dragon spells to fit the new owners
   SIDE-GOALS :
7. Recolor overworld models for outside battle models to reflect the battle models
8. Recolor non-cgi cutscene models (Hoping this is done by doing main goal 3 but won't plan on it)

[acoustic trout]

I wanna throw another massive thank you to @edgy otter. He's volunteered so much to this project and helped me out tons when it comes to hex edits

[tame wagon]

now can you make lavitz's clothes disapear when he transforms, just like the real light dragoon

[acoustic trout]

actually managed to make that happen to Rose once on accident. She became a floating leg, an arm, and a head with no face. I don't think we want this lol

[tame wagon]

i hate it when i transform and get dismembered
that's just the worst

[acoustic trout]

right? can't even scream because of the face thing too

[acoustic trout]

next steps here are gonna require hex edits. I am really bad at trying to figure which line of code is the one I want to change

``Dart transform TIMs

\4203\0 - Human colors
\4203\1 - Dragoon colors
\4203\8 - explosion edge colors
\4203\15 - beginning wisp colors
-------\17 - ending sparks``

[acoustic trout]

Working on dragoon shana now. Part of her armor palette is the same exact one as her tummy. This means if I want any sort of color cohesion, ive got to give her body paint down to her belly button

This means, for total character cohesion, i legit might have to bring back luchadore shana

.....its ruff, ruff.

OR, i just accept the few bits of skin colored armor and move on.

this is also my fear with meru and miranda

[nova pasture]

You're really sticking to this Canadian Zorro, huh? Love it.

Also the gender flip. <3

[acoustic trout]

Im gonna keep going just to see if by completion it can all come together. The mask may not make a return, but I like the "embroidery" too much to do away with it. Gives her a little flair for herself like Lavs golden armor instead of just copying her colors

[nova pasture]

Yeah, I get that.

By the way, I'm gonna DM you soon with a help request. 👀

[acoustic trout]

👍

If I can I will

[acoustic trout]

trying to keep momentum, but shana is killing me lol

So many colors in her palettes that tie to her actual body. The belly thing, her arms, her eyes. Really making me worry for meru or kongol because im convinced its from the choice to give small seperated pieces instead of, say, a plate like dart or lavitz.

[glad wadi]

could be a minor space saver too. lots of older games link color palettes to different opjects or assets to save space or to shorthand design elements. it was really common in OLD games like the OG mario bros games but its possible that same philosophy crept into the playstation

🤷‍♂️

[acoustic trout]

oh im sure they had perfectly valid reasons, and really the ability to come and change like this im sure was far outside anything they anticipated, but it does present issues

[acoustic trout]

i think...i think i did it

[nova pasture]

Fiery.

[acoustic trout]

im told the belly can be fixed, so im not gonna stress over it. But im glad to be done. I was super excited to get to her, but her colors arent used like the others so far. Was frustrating to try and get the same look when changing colors

[glad wadi]

It feels so wrong. Like my brain os trying to reject it. And yet i need more.

[acoustic trout]

Im gonna have to put on my shades and an edgy voice and say "Forget everything you thought you knew." for any time I try to introduce these anywhere

[acoustic trout]

gotta adjust the beam in the 2nd shot still, but overall she's turnin out

there we go

[glad wadi]

phoenix feathers

[acoustic trout]

took a preview of Kongol. Most of this mans colors are his skin 😅

[nova pasture]

What element are you going for? Would be interested to see any, really.

[acoustic trout]

For Haschel I'm going to go with Wind I think. Kongol will become Lightning, and Meru we'll try earth. This COULD change to where Meru becomes lightning, haschel is earth and Kongol is wind, but we'll see. Just depends if I like the design of one enough to cement the trio in that pattern

dragoon effects though are likely gonna be untouched for Haschel. Lightning is very clearly Lightning even when recolored, so may as well keep those natural/normal and just say something something air friction making a charge?

BUT, if I can get it to look right, Meru will emerge from golden crystals and Kongol will encase himself in amethyst

[acoustic trout]

WIP obviously but heres a preview

still debating the accent colors

[hot zealot]

Personally (as much as I would've liked Meru lightning), I think having Kongol be lightning instead of wind would be better overall, since otherwise he would be the only one to get an "opposite" of what he is, and if anything lightning would also help him in the magical department since nothing would be super effective against him

Unless you just want design to just trump any sort of gameplay reasoning/balance then ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[acoustic trout]

its a little bit of both. I start with an element in mind and see how well it can transfer over. Rose as lightning for example was just not great. BUT the way many of these colors are attached to other things can really throw it off when changed, so in that case its how well I can work within those/do i have to pick a different color to make it look more natural?

the initial plan for dart for example was to make HIM my new light dragoon, but at the time I hadn't figured out to change his red textures, so his armor became black and red.

I do want to give Kongol lightning though purely for that buff. And of course anyone who gets fire gets an offense buff, whereas water gets a defensive one. Cant remember where the rest stack up though

(just based on amount of water enemies in game for those two)

[hot zealot]

Yeah shiranda with fire buff would go so hard with magic my god

[acoustic trout]

Well. sorta? She does still have very limited offense options, and factoring in that I plan to give her the fire dragon while giving her dragon to lavitz, I think it evens out.

[acoustic trout]

still messing around with accent colors. Thinking brown belt, white small wrappings for his boots/gloves/headbands

also thinking of reverting some of the lightbeam changes for shanas transformation. Namely I still want the center light pillar to appear super bright, may mess with the other layers instead to give it a slightly more fiery look

[nova pasture]

The green look is really cool!

[acoustic trout]

one character and dragoon to go and disc 1 is done

[acoustic trout]

had to redo the feathers and the flame orbs, so here ya go. Personally think i improved the color progression on the orbs there

[nova pasture]

Dang, going into the particles already. A solid start, considering custom animations would be an assload more work. Working with existing sequences = kudos.

maybe the shadowy feathers can be altered to be more fiery or phoenix-like at some point.

[acoustic trout]

yeah, those are tricky. I actually have to make those blue and hope they reverse to the right color lol

[nova pasture]

you gonna keep the whacky MC-affects-Dragoon-form theory? With regard to the gem colors differing between headband and torso.

or is Lavitz the new MC? oh wait, he dies, world saved. Pro mod, world is saved without fighting a God! Would recommend.

[acoustic trout]

So fun fact, some of the shades in her headband are directly tied to her eye color. But yellow is also associated with fire, so I was able to leave those as is

[nova pasture]

gotcha

[acoustic trout]

so yeah, she still keeps multi-colors. now that I think about it, it's even still green

[nova pasture]

the hottest flames are blue. That'd fit the MC's powers being blue.

or, wait.. white? I forget. Blue is hotter than orange, though.

[acoustic trout]

true

how i test to see "whats this change"

and now I keep thinking of haschel getting his nails done

[nova pasture]

pink or teal nails would be so rad. Both together, would be a sort of cyberpunk vibe.

.... Cyber Punch. 😲

[acoustic trout]

Apparently haschel has 3 different templates just for his fists

[nova pasture]

I take it you don't mean LOD (level of detail)?

because there are indeed multiple, probably 3, levels of detail for many model textures.

[acoustic trout]

nope, within his texture files he has 3 different CLUTs dedicated to his fists and gloves. Havent touched the gloves much but they seem seperated by knuckles and the angle. Like the blue is above the 1st knuckle, then theres a section below that that I made white in testing, and the pink is just the top view.

[nova pasture]

gotcha.

[acoustic trout]

May have to give him a purple belt. Nod to the original colors and helps to hide that his purple insides show whenever he moves his torso

cuz i just cant find that in the hex codes

[acoustic trout]

trying to fix the purple inside the torso, made another facepainter

[nova pasture]

elegant facemask party in Twin Castle

[acoustic trout]

we're goin down the rabbit hole with making transparent colors into solid ones.

-gasp-

I HAVE FOUND THE HOLY GRAIL OF ACCIDENTAL COLORS

WE CAN GIVE HIM A BEARD WITH THE STACHE

im doin it

[nova pasture]

from goatee to green tea.

how long till herbal tea?

[acoustic trout]

rofl

[nova pasture]

or perhaps Golden Tee?

(ironically, the Golden Tee arcade machine is known to have a green cabinet color)

[acoustic trout]

i dig it

[nova pasture]

is good. Ah, you recolored the thin headband as well!

[acoustic trout]

I did, same for the ones on his wrists and boots. Green with white accents is kind of my favorite color scheme. I also can't match it to the belt now because his skin tones share a lot of the same browns so it would blend in

alright, back to testing hex colors 1 by 1 until ive found that stray purple

[nova pasture]

Good luck!

[thorn crest]

I don't know how hard it would be, but has anyone considered transferring the character models with different color palettes to different magic scenes? Just a thought.

I'm not a coding whiz so forgive me if I think too hard on this lol

[nova pasture]

It'd be a royal pain atm, but in the future the modding API will make it easier to modify or create new models as well as spells.

[acoustic trout]

If you mean something like Dart using Astral drain, thatll be kinda hard for a while I think. For now I still gotta figure out how to get the recolored models into their OWN spells first lol

[thorn crest]

Faîr enough.

[glacial plover]

ah yes dumbass spells using duplicate models

[neat bronze]

I'm very curious what the process is for retrieving, editing and inserting the texture files.

[edgy otter]

Its a bit involved, but there are two main parts. TIM files are traditional textures. TMD files are 3d model; Some TMDs have polygons some of which are mapped to a TMD other polygons have an intrinsic color values found within the TMD data. There are free tools out there to edit TIMs. To edit the TMD color value you have to change the hex.

[neat bronze]

Hmm... I'll have to play around with the converter and see what gives me a TMD or a TIM.
I'm not sure what the limits are of putting a file back into the game?
Can you make higher resolution textures that take more space or update models with more points?
I'm assuming that blows the file management apart.

[edgy otter]

No so much the file management per se, the issue with higher resolution textures has more to do with UV mapping, scripts, and the emulated PSX GPU uses. I think in the future, as SC is update, changing texture resolution will be easier. It would be really compilated to add models with more points, but it could probably be done.

[neat bronze]

Hopefully with continued development I'd love to see the mod tools/apis improve too!

Is it the texture extractor that can pull the TIMs and put it back in?

[edgy otter]

SC will pull all the files from disc images. There is no need to repack the files back into the disc images. If you want to edit TIMs look at the program tim2view. If you want to convert the TMDs to a modern form or simply extract most TIMs without knowing what to look for specially then use Doom's tool #1198091177363263550 message

[acoustic trout]

tim2view is the program I'm using to recolor the textures. Not much in the way of taking out and putting things in, more like editing with an autosave that can't be toggled. So y'know, just make some backups. On the plus side it means I can change a color, load up a battle and see the change ive done. Makes for easy viewing, albeit a bit repetitive at times.

[neat bronze]

Yeah I was playing around with the Assets Manager which dumps the textures as a PNG so I was trying to figure out how to stuff it back into the file for the game. 😂

[acoustic trout]

planning to try and hunt down Haschels purple insides again tonight, may go into recoloring darts transformation FX if I can find it. Stoked to see how some black and purple flames are gonna look

[acoustic trout]

I caved

purple belt to blend the inside texture

[acoustic trout]

I fully plan to include my notes on hex changes whenever I release this, I can just tell its gonna take on more personality as I go.

" 4d2600 - inner layer "orb" around dart during explosion. Unfortunately the cc00ff test color actually looks kinda cool. May need a new one "

[wide frost]

Love that, this color fits her so well.

[acoustic trout]

thanks!

[acoustic trout]

due to having his belt as purple, im toying with the idea of changing his boots and gloves to better facilitate the accent color. Gloves are original here, boots are altered, would love opinions and thoughts

in the original coloring the dark blue/purple worked in contrast to his purple/white gi, and his belt and ribbons were red. So its entirely possible I may go with another color entirely, but purple on green is a bit rough to get working together

currently my choices are stay with purple, maybe try browns as the jade dragoon does have some wood brown accents when transformed, or see if i can find a dark teal or something to see if itll harmonize the green and purple

...or keep original

teal for visual

[acoustic trout]

actually. im good with this

[acoustic trout]

Behold, the KING!

tried to tone down his clothing attire (except the cape because it takes most of his view) while toning his armor UP. The cape color is subject to change, much like lavs pants were, so I'm open to ideas there. Just kinda encroaches on his armor color a bit

BUT, all thats left for disc 1 content is Alberts dragoon form once we get that sorted out, and i expect that to be a piece of cake since its lavitz but with slightly less colors.

[hot zealot]

....oh dip?? 💜

Albert looks so good 👀

[nova pasture]

Holy shit I love this color scheme on Albert. 😻

[wide frost]

Albert looks fly

[acoustic trout]

thanks all!

I may take one more crack at the cape to try and give it a gold trim

[nova pasture]

that poor cape. so many cuts, it's barely holding together.

[acoustic trout]

im curious how long itll take people (who didnt see the original image of it) to notice haschel has a beard now

[acoustic trout]

I am discovering that the coloring between lavitz and albert isn't as 1:1 as I thought. Albert uses shadows differently, and pieces seem to be more connected than Lavitz, like greaves being tied to chest color

so some of this I have to wing just a liiiitle bit. Hoping to make it seem, well, seemless

..also the pose goes hard

[acoustic trout]

dead set to finish the disc 1 textures today

[acoustic trout]

still gotta do hex edits, but finishing albert got me like :

[nova pasture]

So glamorous!

[acoustic trout]

Alternate Dragoons

Name changed, AU dragoons is too easily mistaken for australia dragoons (and i would LOVE to see that) and even if I spelled out alternate universe dragoons then its just too long. Alternate dragoons for now. May evolve to altergoon, who knows

[edgy otter]

All of the australia dragoons would just turn into saltwater crocodiles.

[acoustic trout]

so all those crocodile enemies....

[nova pasture]

Croc Hunter crossover here we come.

[safe fable]

I have been summoned

https://tenor.com/view/kangaroo-australia-gif-5569301945329905539

[acoustic trout]

The Albert Collection

thats it, disc 1 is done except for the special FX like spells and transformations. Though as you can see progress is being made on the latter

In Lav/Als case the only thing I plan to change further is that dang tornado. So elusive. Like trying to grab...air....hmm...

[nova pasture]

Turn it into light energy somehow?

Little beam arcs swirling around.. hmm

[acoustic trout]

Thats the plan. The good news is the white colors can stay in theme, depending how many layers are there to it, but i gotta hunt down that purple/brown for sure

[acoustic trout]

gonna try to touch Shana up a bit to be more in line with her V1 recolor. Made her brighter but think i over corrected. Fingers crossed I dont botch it up

for comparison :

[nova pasture]

I have to ask: why did you abandon your Canada theme for Shana, and when will you reinstate it?

[acoustic trout]

base form will always be canada, colors are too erratic on dragoon form but Im sure some of these shades can be called maple

[acoustic trout]

it remains to be seen whether or not im botching it, but what i CAN say is that online color pickers definitely dont give me the write colros

or colors, even

[wide frost]

Why dont you use desktop color pickers? Are you on Windows, Linux or macOS? I use KColorChooser from KDE.

[wide frost]

I love it

[acoustic trout]

little faith theyll be any better, honestly.

And thanks, the right side is what im trying to get back to, but i doubt itll be exact

[wide frost]

If they weren't any better, the issue is likely not the color picker

The color picker simply evaluates what color a certain pixel is

Idk how you can mess this up

[acoustic trout]

Good question, all I know is that it just doesnt reflect when I take the values from the V1 screenshots and plug them in.

So just gonna stick to eyeballin it and hope it doesnt eat too much of my time

[wide frost]

I would help you, but I am without a laptop at the time

[acoustic trout]

its all good, but I appreciate the thought

[acoustic trout]

didnt adjust every color, but i think the ones I did change turned out well

[wide frost]

I think the area around the neck looks a bit odd

But that doesn't seem to be an issue of the coloring

[acoustic trout]

her armor in general is super odd imo

or do you mean the coloring on the inside of the armor?

[wide frost]

no, more the neck itself

it seems like its not there

[acoustic trout]

ah

[acoustic trout]

apologies for the bit of a break there, monster hunter has pulled me away pretty hard. I did however revert Haschels belt color to brown, and started in on this today

[acoustic trout]

hex edits still to be done, also his pants patterns are weird. May retouch that

-gasp- I need to add his beard onto dragoon form

Haschel is weirdly segmented though. Only 3 or 4 CLUTs and you have the entirety of his armor. So far he's also the only dragoon where I can directly edit pants.

Also, Could I request images to be pinned for ease of use for people to find and look at without scrolling? I apparently am unable to do so myself

[acoustic trout]

trying to fix the coloration, and try to get adjust his pants to fit in line with the vibe im goin for

which means its time for the game i play every session i do this : "Whats this box control?"

[acoustic trout]

new and improved coloration

really just tried to make the metallic shine on the browns...actually brown. And the pants I tried to just apply the color logic seen in his vanilla patterning. Problem is, those patterns are just hard to tell once you actually look at them, so it comes across as a bit of a jumbled mess

and of course his hex edits are eluding me in some key areas. Hopefully nobody pays much attention behind his kneepads....or his back.

rearview

[acoustic trout]

I think i'm gonna call it there for today. Still cant find where to change the purple behind his kneepad/crotch armor, but just crashed my game with a hex edit so that seems like a decent sign to me lol

[acoustic trout]

I said that and here i am 30 min later....

but, at least progress was made

[acoustic trout]

back at work. People been really asking for meru as the earth dragoon. Hoping this scheme works

[acoustic trout]

Merus actually a lot easier to work on than I initially thought she'd be

gold and slate with a touch of ivory/sand accenting her bracers and leg wraps

[acoustic trout]

this guys gonna be a pain, i know it already

CLUT 1 is his gloves. they share colors with his fists. i already know this is gonna be a recurring thing with him

hold on, i might be able to give him storm tattoos

[nova pasture]

omg it's Kongurple. Or is it Purpongol?

I am obsessed with this look.

[acoustic trout]

fingers crossed i can make it cohesive throughout. All the browns and tans share a lot with his bronzed god body.

or the cloth shares with the leather

[acoustic trout]

correct me if im wrong but i feel im cooking

[nova pasture]

https://tenor.com/view/approaching-annie-murphy-alexis-alexis-rose-schitts-creek-gif-20775562

[acoustic trout]

@nova pasture great timing actually

2 characters in a day, hell yeah

metals were darkned to be more gray, hopefully to remind someone of stormclouds. Purple kept as the main theme but faded except for the shoulders and waistcloth, as I feel thats where they stand out the most

and of course, electric blue tats because he now carries the storm inside. and may have watched highlander.

[nova pasture]

I like how the previews are centered..

Being serious, very well done. I think teal and brown are a good mix, and purple bounces off of teal, but overall it looks like a hard palette to bring together. Keep going.

[acoustic trout]

well, thats kind of it lol. the only thing I havent touched is his skin. the rest has been brought in line with the new theme. The main questions are if the body lines should be kept and if the metal bits should be changed

[glad wadi]

i never noticed it before but the texture on meru's stomach showin shes got the makings of abs goin on, or at least very toned

which i guess makes sense since shes supposed to be a dancer

[acoustic trout]

Yeah, a cool side effect of this project is I get to notice things I otherwise overlooked. Haschel for example is very expressive with his eyebrow, they change a lot

[flint bay]

who would work the best as divine dragoon outside Dart

[nova pasture]

There is fanart of Dragoon Lloyd and it looks badass.

but for playable characters, I guess any pick is a good one.

[acoustic trout]

Honestly i'm likely going to leave divine as is. Story wise its just one battle, but the main reason is I can only edit up to 16 CLUTs. DD has more than 20, so theres a decent portion that i just physically CANT change, and i dont want it to look half done or anything

[acoustic trout]

let the record show i am still salivating at the idea of playable Lloyd

[kindred hill]

She looks exactly the way I imagined her as a kid

[kindred hill]

Wow she looks amazing 😊

[acoustic trout]

glad you like it! And as it seems fitting, heres todays preview

[kindred hill]

I can´t wait to test it myself

[acoustic trout]

currently my plan is to finish the recolored textures, then put those out here for people who just want the looks while I try to do other things like recolor FX and learn how to do things like change the actual elements and swap the dragon spells around. So in that sense, first wave is almost done. Working on merus dragoon, then kongols dragoon, then miranda human and dragoon.

wife and kids took a vacation with the grandparents for a couple weeks. I expect to make some rapid progress out of sheer uncertainty of what else to do

[nova pasture]

If you need suggestions for what to do... do LoD stuff. Obviously! 🤪

[acoustic trout]

well clearly thats not an option lol

oh hey, while i have your attention Drew, do you know an easier way I can save all the images together within this thread? I'm unable to pin posts but I'm hoping to make it quick and easy if all anyone wants to do is see the changes

[nova pasture]

Edit your OP (there's an Up Arrow in the upper-right corner on desktop to quickly get you there). Add a URL linking to an external album such as Imgur. Then press enter to save changes.

On that website it's cake to add new images to existing albums - the URL does not change.

[acoustic trout]

ah, hadnt thought of that

[nova pasture]

May I DM you about something semi-related?

[acoustic trout]

of course

[acoustic trout]

turns out changing the color really emphasizes..certain things...

[nova pasture]

Perhaps you can smooth that out or something.

[kindred hill]

Nice ass xD

[acoustic trout]

alright, all thats left for her now is hex edits, but think im gonna call it for today

[kindred hill]

Gorgeous!

[acoustic trout]

"hey emerald how are hex edits going?"

uummmm....yeah.

[nova pasture]

YES!!!!!

[acoustic trout]

im not changing hair, that was just testing a value

BUT.....for rose later on....who knows?

[acoustic trout]

aaand done

now featuring animal violence

her poses are difficult to capture without feeling like im being weird. I blame the bikini and the frequency with which she does the splits.

but, we are now at a progression rate of 16/19 models recolored

[kindred hill]

Totally awesome 🙈

[kindred hill]

I LOVE IT

[acoustic trout]

so i know this specific color probably aint it for kongols axe, but i just wanna take a sec because I still like it. And also when i get there it will be a good representation for what I hope to turn Merus ice crystals into

feel free to offer a suggestion though for another fitting color scheme. Haschel of course doesn't have one so we're kinda wingin it and seeing what a stone axe can be turned into

....I AM however, taking those axe colors into his color scheme instead of the lighter pink

[nova pasture]

PURPLE WEAPON!!!!

<--- professional critic

[acoustic trout]

look more purple

also, for the most part while i find kongols armor to be fairly bland in comparison, i do like the wave patterns on his boots, as well as what could be a dragon pattern on the back of his neckplate

i think today i finally realized you are with purple how i am with green. respect

i also still think im unfortunately gonna have to decide on a new axe color at some point. initial thoughts are keep it grey but lighten it a bit, blue, or see if i can use an electric yellow pattern somewhere

[nova pasture]

grey with lightning-crack effect? See Violet Dragon summon intro for reference.

like, a lightning bolt frozen in time, etched into the axe. Multiple smaller ones maybe?

[acoustic trout]

thats a good idea, i'll see what i can do

i really wish the axe details transferred over better

because in THIS you can see the chain, and that strange spider/demon face design that spider legs its way down to it

and then in game...

like you gotta make the image super small to even see it

[nova pasture]

is that image wrapping wrong? Wonder if it's a retail issue, SC issue, or devs just didn't know how to make it fit right.

[acoustic trout]

my moneys on the latter tbh. Even on my old console or emulator playthroughs i never once noticed that the axe had any real design other than "its made of rock now".

But if nothing else the chain does connect all the way through, id imagine if it was an error it would look messier

[nova pasture]

yeah same here.

[glacial plover]

uvs are wrong probs

[nova pasture]

That was my guess. Maybe I should ask in sc chat

[acoustic trout]

hex edits done on Kongol, Miranda's all thats left

[edgy otter]

[acoustic trout]

well. and some cleaning up of previous hex edits since ive figured out how to better adjust the gradiants better

[tame wagon]

just mod miranda out the of game and call it a day

[acoustic trout]

im afraid thats not an option, i am too committed

but damn if im not unsure what to make her secondary color be.

the armors gonna be the red. her clothes couuuuuld stay white to be a white hot flame, but i feel thats lazy

[acoustic trout]

went with ashen grey clothing, silver lining on the red leather. Next is hex edits, then dragoon form

[acoustic trout]

I CAN CHANGE HER WING COLORS

thats going to be fun later.

[nova pasture]

Wing Patterns!!!?!?!?!111;11!!!1iillll

[acoustic trout]

THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN DO THAT APPARENTLY

[nova pasture]

Really? If so, could it be linked to the fact she's the only one with the old Dragoon armor design?

[acoustic trout]

idk. havent looked for much logic behind these things. Like Haschel for example was the only one whose pants i could edit

it may just be that they had to do more to differentiate her from shana since her armor is actually fairly simple so far

[nova pasture]

I realize you wouldn't know, just trying to spark more conspiracy theories. xD

and wanted to confirm you can't edit wings of any other Dragoon.

like, whether it's a "you just don't know how" or "Miranda's wings are fundamentally different" thing.

[acoustic trout]

fair lol, I'll take another look but im about 90% sure hers are just different

[nova pasture]

interested in any details you can offer!

[acoustic trout]

gonna have to test them once i get finished with miranda here, it very well could be ive just overlooked them due to them having transparencies. Decided to just test miranda because she had so many on CLUT 1

the good news is my decision to have miranda incorporate the idea of ash and white-hot into her flames seems to be working well enough that i maaay not even have to do any hex edits.

[acoustic trout]

overall im actually fairly happy here

[nova pasture]

This looks really good! Wow. The color is like.. perfect. orange with a tinge of red in it.

She was always the wrong Dragoon element LOL. More fiery than Dart.

[tame wagon]

Will you be making more versions or just the 1 set of alts?

[acoustic trout]

ok. Checklist for the most immediate actions

1. Review hex edits and improve where needed
2. apply changes to transformation scenes
3. cross off "all characters recolored" from my BIG checklist.
4. Put it out for you guys
5. Work on the next phases. FX changes. Changing the element in engine. reassigning dragon spells.

[acoustic trout]

for now just the one set, as the whole plan for this is to change elements/dragon spells, FX....doing all of that just for one version is a ton, let alone for others. But we'll see. If nothing else I'll try to show how i do this so that people can attempt with their own imaginations.

[flint bay]

a suggestion for dart normal outfit, you can try replacing the red with white kinda like Lloyd

[acoustic trout]

Not a bad suggestion. Was actually considering redo-ing Dart. His armor is kinda hyper metallic right now. Not sure if I wanna tone it down a bit.

[nova pasture]

You gotta make Dart Wind Element at some point

Because it would be so fitting for him to have a spell where he shouts TORRRNADOOOOOO,

(same feeling / sounds as Volcano)

[acoustic trout]

suppose kongol should also be fire then because inferno.

sigh you guys are gonna make me do it arent you lol

[acoustic trout]

Fun little discrepancy to whomever it matters to. For the most part, transformation TIMS follow the pattern of (and we'll just use Miranda for example) of file number/0 is human form and file number/1 is dragoon form. So Mirandas human form transformation model will be 4267/0 and dragoon will be 4268/1.

This means I can easily copy the hex code from the textures to these specific files for a quick one and done recolor of the transformation textures

Kongols however, breaks the trend. His dragoon form TIM is 4227/0 and human form is /1

[acoustic trout]

Ok, so. All characters transformations now reflect the new recolors. I have also applied the transformation FX changes to Miranda. HOWEVER, I will be going back to hex edits on Rose. I'm currently still unsure if I want to go back and revisit Dart due to that design getting a lot of praise. So I will come with a mockup and present it, and the current design side by side and I'd appreciate it if you guys could give your input

[acoustic trout]

obviously hex work isnt done being a mockup, but heres what I was thinking

personally lean to new style, but maybe im missing something with the hyper reflective metal

[nova pasture]

Nah, you can simply spark the fire and let it blaze from there.

pro question: why aren't you recoloring Dart's turtleneck? That collar is begging to show off a bit of contrast. xD

[acoustic trout]

It might just be on a CLUT i havent touched yet

[nova pasture]

Just be sure to avoid CLUTter.

[acoustic trout]

jeeez lol

[nova pasture]

What!? 😆

[acoustic trout]

starting my morning off strong with the puns lol

[nova pasture]

It's pretty much mandatory.

[acoustic trout]

okay, ive determined it best to move forward with the revised version I presented a few days ago for Dart. I can likely finish that up tonight with hex edits. Then I want to hex edit Rose to remove some leftover primitives of her base color. Fingers crossed I don't change her hair on accident. but who knows, i might do it on purpose.

[acoustic trout]

hex edits pending, thatll change the remaining red areas

except eyes. that was intentional

[acoustic trout]

ok soooo i maaay have to leave the bandana. crashing too many times here trying to chase down these red xx0000 codes

[nova pasture]

Oh look. It's the Red-Eye Dart'n.

[kindred hill]

I don't really understand why you can't change bandana 🙈

[nova pasture]

I can only say... you cannot put on a Bandana if you are already wearing one. LoD taught me this. One Bandana at a time!

(but two belts is okay)

[acoustic trout]

because its tied to a hex code on the model itself instead of the texture as far as i can tell. RGB to hex codes place red as the first 2 digits. For example a 55 0 0 RGB code translates to 370000 for hex. The problem with those zeroes is theres a ton. So that 37 can be the first two digits, or maybe im suddenly cutting off and changin something halfway through. Or maybe its not even a color code, but is just a random 370000 in the middle of the code that stops the game from crashing.

[acoustic trout]

naaaah, you just stack it to make it one BIG bandana

[kindred hill]

Damn...

That's sounds problematic

[acoustic trout]

its been pretty difficult tbh. wasnt expecting it since the actual texture itself for him was the easiest to work with. including dragoon

[kindred hill]

His bandana is the only thing left for you to complete the mod, right?

[acoustic trout]

its between that and rose hex edits, which im hoping will be simpler. just changing the near black inside her model joints that go with the old color scheme.

once thats done i can put the textures out, then continue working on the FX

[kindred hill]

I see
You're really doing a hard work
Thanks for it 😊🤞
For real, Shana's fire dragoon was like one of my childhood's dreams

[acoustic trout]

d'aaaww, i appreciate it

oh god. oh god. what have i done

WHY IS THAT ONE COLOR ACROSS SO MANY THINGS

[kindred hill]

Hahahahha WTF

[nova pasture]

Give her some light blue anime hair.

[acoustic trout]

if i ever change the hair id probably make her blonde

[glacial plover]

hot

[acoustic trout]

still not fully done. The white lights so far only strobe with the color I want instead of just have it reflect throughout. Also havent began to touch the flames that cover his body or wings when he transforms, nor the small little fireballs yet. BUT, gettin there

[acoustic trout]

there we go

[kindred hill]

😍

[glacial plover]

hes about to goon

[acoustic trout]

having a bit of a rough time with this portion. I've got the colors I want, but apparently changing them prevents them from hiding his body behind the flames. And if i go too dark then its just basically invisible

[nova pasture]

MORE PURPLE!!!!!

[glacial plover]

lean dragoon

[acoustic trout]

heres what it looks like when the change actually happens

[kindred hill]

That´s too much purple hahaha

Can´t you change flame color?

[acoustic trout]

having trouble locating that part, but I hope so.

[kindred hill]

I was thinking about the flames of Black Castle

[acoustic trout]

and yeah, the purple/blue mix from Rose's colors get hard to even out. I'd go darker if I could, but again, then its gets more invisible

[kindred hill]

That purples flames are good example

[acoustic trout]

fair, I'll pay more attention to it when I get there in one of my earlier campaigns

The FX changes are a ways away from release anyway, the only ones done are jade and white silver. so theres no reason to rush it....I do hope to find those damn fireballs though.

[kindred hill]

Don´t worry, the wait will be worth it ^^

[kindred hill]

Just look around Black Castle, that flames are almost everywhere haha

[nova pasture]

hopefully this can help advance the file mapping project. DooM is the lead on that IIRC.

could help pave the way for future modders.

[acoustic trout]

thatd be awesome. I already use his info to figure out which file is responsible for which piece of the transformation. Likely going to do with spells as well

hmm. whats this though....

[nova pasture]

It's a dagron.

[acoustic trout]

frankly i'm surprised by how easy that was to swap over

[nova pasture]

That's hilarious, given that Darkness Dragon was one of the most problematic spells to repair for SC.

@unreal orbit can attest.

[acoustic trout]

just swapped all dragons to their new owners and it was the easiest part of this project by far. copy/paste and done

[nova pasture]

LOL really?

[acoustic trout]

yyyyep lol

[nova pasture]

is it visual-only or game mechanics too?

[acoustic trout]

i dont know yet if the STATS carried over, but the effects did. white silver dragon on lavitz/al has a healing aspect

I would also need to still test if it keeps the element damage of the spell or ties it to the characters element

final burst does 909 to my chicken nemesis i keep battling. darkness dragon did 1212 so it appears the stats transfer

using it on a sea dragon to check for fire resistance, using same mdef value of 120 as the chicken aaannnddd 1212. so it also appears to keep the original element. going to test against a dark or light enemy next

[nova pasture]

Spells are element-agnostic save for Dragoon Space.

so that's what we'll be testing for.

I'm sure someone will make a STAB system as a mod for LoD, however. Some day. (Pokémon thing)

[acoustic trout]

ah, gotcha

[nova pasture]

The only tie-in is theming, i.e. a Wind Dragoon has Wind spells which makes sense to the player lore-wise.

but it's more loose for bosses. Polter is all about Darkness yet has one Light spell because reasons. xD

the element of Polter plays no part in its spell damage.

[acoustic trout]

well, until i can figure out how to change dragoon space, the dragon spells portion is done. And fair. Greham also throws light spears and crucifies you on a stone spear, so i mean.....shrug

going to update the goals a little bit :

Recolor base human form combat models : 9/9 complete
recolor dragoon forms : 9/9 complete (Leaving Divine Dragoon as is)
Recolor battle cutscene versions of these (ie turning dragoon or casting spells)
Recolor Dragoon FX (the actual magic bits of spells and transforming)
Officially change character elements
Swap the summon dragon spells to fit the new owners - DONE
SIDE-GOALS :
Recolor overworld models for outside battle models to reflect the battle models
Recolor non-cgi cutscene models

[nova pasture]

Hey yall! We're gonna be looking for a handful of testers starting today for "version 1" of this mod.

We will need users with a range of operating systems for sake of being thorough. At least one person for Win10, Win11, Mac, Linux, and SteamDeck. This will help Emerald catch any issues that may arise. If interested, comment here with your OS.

Testing will involve:

• overwriting some of the unpacked files from Severed Chains.
• Ensuring that the modded textures show up correctly on the characters in battle
• ensuring Dragon summons are swapped (i.e. Kongol's Dragon summon should proc the Violet Dragon, not the Golden Dragon)
• reporting any crashes (copy-paste from the command prompt)

@kindred hill you have first dibs thanks to your enthusiasm. Are you in? If so, what is your OS?

[kindred hill]

Hii Drew ^^
I have Windows 10

Yeah I want to help with that

[nova pasture]

we will have instructions posted later today.

[kindred hill]

Perfect ^^ I´ll see tomorrow, because here is late night already

[nova pasture]

@merry arrow welcome. Instructions coming later today.

[merry arrow]

Thank you kindly. I'll be able to give 'em a look tomorrow

[acoustic trout]

woohoo

[nova pasture]

@merry pewter welcome to the madness.

[glad wadi]

wooooah

[edgy otter]

There may be some color info that is not stored in the textures or primitives. The ring effect that occurs before every use of magic gets its color a different way.

[acoustic trout]

hmm. that complicates things a bit

[edgy otter]

From PlayerBattleEntity.java:

There is also the script function scriptAddConstantColourScalerAttachment

[acoustic trout]

and here i was hoping my eventual foray into java would just be adjusting elements

[nova pasture]

SetSpellRingColor - > this.FF0A0A? xD

I wonder how ring colors are assigned... i.e. by character, by individual spell, by spell element..

[edgy otter]

There is a switch statement that matches charId with some hex values. The weapon trails work the same way.

but i got no idea how it works for the dragoon ghosts

[nova pasture]

Don't they all have grey rings?

[edgy otter]

... that would make make sense. The base ring texture has no color.

[nova pasture]

It'd be so cool to control the ring color, as well as that of the central pillar...

or different colors for each ring.. but that seems like a lot of granularity and mega low priority.

[edgy otter]

Swapping the values is easy. To make the values moddable they must be (eventified?/put into a registry)... I think.

[nova pasture]

might be worth a mention to Corey, if it's a simple PR.

else we should wait.

[edgy otter]

I will see if can make the changes and then send him a DM. It seems straightforward and should make alternate dragoons possible using the mod API.

[acoustic trout]

bless 🥹

[acoustic trout]

i have Feyrbrand ASCII.

[nova pasture]

Mod download has been sent to initial batch of testers. 👍🏻

[acoustic trout]

sweet

[kindred hill]

Morning! Yeah when I can (I hope soon haha) I'll test and share my thoughts about it
☺️

[strange nymph]

How do we do this, I want black n purple dart

[nova pasture]

@strange nymph Would you like to sign up as a tester for version 1? :)

[strange nymph]

sure

What's version 1 have that's different about current version?

[nova pasture]

the difference is, there's no other version yet. :D

v1 includes retextured combat models (normal and Dragoon form). It also includes swapped Dragon summons for most characters.

[strange nymph]

Okay so in the QoL version the game will freeze if using albert/lavitz dragoon form ''white texture one''

https://prnt.sc/CBDtCH-w0mcu

[kindred hill]

I think there is a bit of red in one of Dart´s arms (the left one in the screenshot)

I dont´know if that´s intentional but there´s still some parts of Meru´s costume in blue (here you can see more than three parts)

Dart´s dragoon armour still have many red parts

¿green trousers?

Meru´s dragon spell remains the same, is not changed

Dart´s dragon spell same as Meru´s case

Kongol´s still has some brown yellow arms

Rose´s dragoon still has a bit of "darkness" during her attack xD

[kindred hill]

Yeah that happened to me too with Albert, he can´t transform, I´ll try with the Special

Ok "Special" doesn´t work if is Albert´s the one doing

The spell animation of Rose´s "new" dragon spell has many graphic issues, couldn´t catch all, I´m going to record it

Miranda´s clothes are not red xD

Some white in Miranda´s dragoon armour

At least the FX of transformation is fine

Albert´s dragoon wings have a bit of green

Crash during Miranda´s dragon spell

Okay, about Haschel´s dragon spell, works fine, did damage to all enemies like intended

Albert´s "new" dragon spell needs to be checked, some weird "visual bugs"

Kongol´s dragon spell seems to work fine

Shana´s still has some white around the chest

[edgy otter]

Are the background for the dragon summons of each characters original element?

[kindred hill]

Yep

I did the Special with Miranda, because Albert can´t transform

Right now I´m checking Shana and Lavitz

Shana´s dragoon has too much green for my taste

Also blue

[edgy otter]

Also, as an fyi the weapon trail effects should all be unchanged as this point.

[kindred hill]

Yep the weapon trail effects remain the same for all

I´m only cheking the things you asked in doc xD

[edgy otter]

There is doc? This is news to me.

[kindred hill]

Btw Dart´s dragoon armour has "green/blue" and a bit of red, you can see

[kindred hill]

Yep there is xD

I assumed you created it, but must be Drew´s work

[edgy otter]

The creator of AU dragoons is not me but the emerald dragoon. I only helped with figuring out some initial edits.

[kindred hill]

Ok game crashed again with Shana´s summon, it must be related to that and not to the characters itself

[kindred hill]

OH, sorry xD I was confused

Ok everything checked, I don´t have more to say xD

[acoustic trout]

alright, mornin all, gonna adress some things

[acoustic trout]

dart, his dragoon form, and mirandas were intentional with the red and white respectively. Except for the armor pieces during his transformation. ill check that

[kindred hill]

I see ^^

For me it was a bit weird but if it´s intentional that´s fine I guess

[acoustic trout]

mirandas recolor is correct here. armor is red clothing is grey. And the brownish arms on kongol are there because to change those specific tones will also change the color of his hands

[kindred hill]

Gotcha

[acoustic trout]

and yeaaah, i get it. He just kept crashing the game when i changed the reds

As for Dragon spells, @nova pasture are you able to verify if you sent them the files that theoretically shouldve fixed that or did you send the original reorganized version you did?

[acoustic trout]

as for this one, good find, ill get to work on that

[kindred hill]

I am on windows 10, and some of the files couldn´t be replaced

[nova pasture]

I don't think you sent me any changes? I could be mistaken.

[kindred hill]

The ones related to "0"

[nova pasture]

you can use my restructure, and modify it to create a V1.1

[acoustic trout]

yeaah, i forgot to add some dragons the first go around, thought i sent an updated one. but alright, i will try do that

[nova pasture]

I apologize. Go ahead and create a 1.1. Participants are Meru, Ehko, Kritis, Kenshiro.

[acoustic trout]

no worries, just wanted to make sure it was a missing file issue instead of something more serious

[nova pasture]

On the bright side, this is your chance to practice writing Patch Notes. :)

[acoustic trout]

alright. caffeine acquired. Queueing up the mulan soundtrack to get down to business.

[nova pasture]

Do it! I'm also being productive, so we can be in this boat together.

[acoustic trout]

Any chance you can clarify where to look? Having a hard time seeing where the blue is here. We're not mistaking the grey here are we?

[kindred hill]

Plenty of blue
I should taken more screenshots
Anyway give me a few seconds and I'll be more specific in this screenshot

One more, look at leg

There's more blue

[nova pasture]

You realize she can't be literally 100% gold, right? j/k

[acoustic trout]

OH. the waist wrap and hammer patterns i left since i saw them as just being light grey and still fit the design. As for the arm, the bracer still looks like the new one. Maybe some blue within the elbow joint though

[nova pasture]

I see it as going from blue primary, yellow secondary, to yellow primary, blue secondary. Which may defeat the purpose a tad but eh. Could go for a different secondary color if you're feeling extra adventurous, but not needed.

[acoustic trout]

tried for grey and gold as the main 2, ivory as a tertiary (bracers and leg wraps) then the hammer inverted that. Still looked good to my eye, but im willing to cede if people disagree

really cant tell for that elbow joint though. It doesnt look like they tried to make it blue since her joints are her skin, which makes me think they meant more as a shadow than anything

[nova pasture]

I guess if anything, gold doesn't stand out from her skin tone the way purple or green did for Kongol and Haschel respectively. That might be why those designs draw me in more than Dart and Rose? Not sure.

[acoustic trout]

ok, i believe ive fixed the dragon spell issues (not the visual bugs though) and the transformation issues for Albert. Darts partial coloration I think came about due to me using partially edited files and some vanilla files because I wanted to hold back until I finished his FX and particles. So rather than try and cheat again Im gonna finish that next and then I'll DM the participants the new file.

just be aware of this specific visual bug when getting the new dart transformation

[kindred hill]

I agree with everything I guess haha just my point of view
For me the best designs are Haschel, Lavitz, Albert
Also the dragoons of them and Meru were perfect

[kindred hill]

Gotcha

[acoustic trout]

fingers crossed i can get the wings to work

[acoustic trout]

and also your POV is very much appreciated. Please speak up whenever you feel you should

Like even if I like the design im not exactly super savvy on what looks good or fashionable, and i certainly dont want to put out a bad design

[nova pasture]

You could poll testers to see which reskins they like most. Might help you pinpoint weak links?

[acoustic trout]

maybe eventually for a different version unless I hear just a ton of feedback saying one is ugly or something. For now I just wanna get these ones working

like this....this makes me sad. any edit on the wing colors also just cuts out the connecting bit apparently

[nova pasture]

that's bizarre but there must be a reason.

[acoustic trout]

we'll see. im making what I think to be very minor headway in clearing up the flame armor. I'm hoping thatll also apply to fixing the wings

[nova pasture]

good luck.

[acoustic trout]

i need it. its the 000000's

....maybe.

[nova pasture]

Percolate! PERCOLATE!!!!!

[acoustic trout]

i need someone to send me their version of \4203 and \4204 please

not sure what i did specifically, but my game now freezes when trying to turn dart Dragoon

[glacial plover]

i'll send one in 15 mins

[acoustic trout]

appreciate it

[glacial plover]

unless someone else does it before

[kindred hill]

I'm happy to help 😊

[acoustic trout]

nevermind, managed to get it up and going. had to delete it and copy over the versions from RB2

gotta recolor them, but thats not too much an issue

[acoustic trout]

good news

[acoustic trout]

im actually gonna nevermind my nevermind and still ask you to send, sorry for the back and forth

[glacial plover]

sent

[acoustic trout]

ah, sorry. thought that wouldve just attached as a video Meru. Its just showing the graphical error not there when albert casts white silver dragon.

rose issues are still there. have to find a way to attach the water effects and whirlpool. May just be swimming in the void a while

[kindred hill]

Hhahaa don´t worry, is fine

[nova pasture]

Discord expects an MP4 container for uploaded video embeds. Your alternative is to upload to YouTube as an unlisted video and embed that.

I use mkv a lot, so I get it.

[acoustic trout]

yeaaah i figured thatd be the case after the fact lol

but not important enough to warrant that. just wanted to say "hey this works now" is all

but. Im not sure what exactly caused it. When I try it with Albert for example it comes out fine. But when I try with Lavitz it gets weird

[glacial plover]

if you're running from source, breakpoint and see where its stuck running

if by freeze you mean complete application hangover rip, if you mean game plays but it doesnt progress, you can use script debugger to see where game is stuck aswell

[acoustic trout]

just graphical issues. No freezing on my end with the spells

[kindred hill]

I´ll check too

[acoustic trout]

fixed albert wing texture

[acoustic trout]

started trying to tackle Darts dragoon red leftovers after all

accidentally made him fabulous

[acoustic trout]

fun fact, most the dragoons have carpal bones in their wings that connect the wing membranes. Its those phalanges that come from the wing and hold those translucent wings.

haschel doesnt.

its just...wings.

[acoustic trout]

Took care of Shanas blue pieces. Going to call it there for today
Tomorrow problems ; Transfer texture and model hex changes over to transformation cutscenes. along with anything else that pops up

[kindred hill]

👏👏👏👏👏

[nova pasture]

LoD is gay, and we're dealing with it. 😎

[acoustic trout]

Hey guys, just a heads up. If you're still getting crashes transforming Albert after downloading the updated file i've messaged you, I want you to go into \files\SECT\DRGN0.BIN\4234\0 and delete mrg

its just a leftover from the previous version that didn't get replaced because the correct file doesnt have it there

please keep mrg within \4234 itself though

[kindred hill]

Everything new checked ^^

Also take note of what Emerald says

[acoustic trout]

facebook group got me with this lol

[nova pasture]

The one on the right looks mega weird.

why is that one lower-res than the game image?

if only humans were rendered in 4K smh my head.

[kindred hill]

🤣

[acoustic trout]

heads up, goin outta town so i wont be available for the next 10 days. Please continue to post if you run into bugs and if its something i can do i will help when im back

[nova pasture]

@twilit dragon this is the channel to provide feedback for the Alternate Dragoons mod. @acoustic trout can send you the zip folder.

[acoustic trout]

hiiii. I cant for the next week and a half, but feel free to look around and ask questions

[nova pasture]

Oh, I think you did send me 1.1. I'll be home later tonight to handle it.

[acoustic trout]

sounds good

[acoustic trout]

@strange nymph Saw your post in Dragoon Modifier. The game tries to be tricky at times, for transformations and spells it loads its own model that has to be recolored. The transformations should all reflect the new colors though. Is it one specific character that doesnt or is it all of them?

[strange nymph]

All of them did that for me, but i'll test it again to verify if it's all of them

[acoustic trout]

Could I also get you to check if the characters summon their base dragons or the swapped ones? It may just be you installed the character files and not the numbered ones. or at least going from QoL to non-QoL made things weird

[acoustic trout]

hey @strange nymph just checking in, were you able to take care of that issue you were having or test it out? I'm back from my trip and back into a normal schedule so should be back at it soon

[strange nymph]

I'll have to retest it on the 3.0 version, as on qol it didn't work. i'll check when i get on next time

[dawn ice]

Hello everyone, I am interested in the mod 'alternate dragoons' could someone share the file with me? Thanks a lot

[acoustic trout]

Heya, I can probably hook you up soon. Just bear in mind we're still kinda testing things with it.

[dawn ice]

@acoustic trout Hey, thanks a lot! No worries, I totally understand it's still being tested. Just let me know whenever you're ready to share it. Really appreciate it!

[acoustic trout]

darts explosion when he transforms goes hard when you look at it from another angle. and remove the transparency from some textures.

I can ALMOST give you guys a black flower in it. almost.

[acoustic trout]

@kindred hill her poses and lighting make it hard to do full on "cool", but hope this works

mid gates of heaven

[kindred hill]

Thank you @acoustic trout 💙

[nova pasture]

You know Emerald, you have a special opportunity with Shana here. Remember how we took notice of her Dragoon form being altered, unlike any other Dragoon? What if you did that some day in a future update of this mod?? Instead of the armor looking just like when Dart and Zieg wear it.. perhaps it could have a unique accent color (blue again, like her White-Silver form?).

[acoustic trout]

theres a good chance of it, tbh. For now I still like the green. Personal color obsessions aside, it's a tie to Dart for her, since Mirandas accent sort of does away with most the green in favor of white

[acoustic trout]

Plans for this upcoming week :

1. Get a fresh side-version of SC so that I can personally look at any issues that come up during installation.
2. Apply textures to the model shown for spells
3. try to work on adjusting transform Fx some more. Dart was NEARLY finished. light and wind dragoons ARE finished
   Also 3. May work on adjusting spell FX at some point in between this all.

For my testers though, how does the swapped dragon spells feel regarding game balance? I expect Lavitz probably excels at support even more, but what about the rest?

(Not planning to adjust stats, just curious what feels like a buff vs what feels like a nerf)

[kindred hill]

@acoustic trout the only fourth spell that makes a diff is from Sharanda (light summon), everything else is not relevant for balance purposes

[acoustic trout]

fair, but does her now having the fire one still hit like a truck? Theoretically shes now more effective against more enemies, but obviously that dragon itself is weaker.

conversely does it still feel like strong utility on lavitz, who has lower magic

[nova pasture]

Pfft, item magic all the way. If you're gonna play as Shana, you need to come correct.

[kindred hill]

Her original spell is the best AOE spell in game
That fire spell's not worth it
Trust what @nova pasture says

[nova pasture]

if we're talking about Red-Eye Dragon, it's not worth it. Multi-part/Multi-enemy bosses are less common, and item magic makes for much better AoEs in general when needed.

this ties into how D-Magic is imbalanced across the board. You can seek to retool the potency of each spell as part of this mod, though.

[kindred hill]

Yep

Unless he changes potency of each spell, they're not worth it

For example, more potency to the spells tied to weak spell damage dealers (Kongol, Lavitz/Albert...)

[nova pasture]

It can also be offset by "global" buffs or debuffs. See the MAT multipliers per D'Level-up.

but since each spell can differ a lot, manual tuning on a per-spell basis may be better in most cases.

Another problem is when a moveset has too little variety. All Kongol's magic is AoE, no single-target option. Haschel has the opposite problem.

Atomic Mind, Thunder Kid, and Thunder God can be consolidated down to 1-2 spells, making room for 1-2 AoEs or a Status ability. This is because, once you get Thunder God, there's little reason to ever use AM or TK ever again (the spell cost efficiency is negligible between them). So instead of having spells that sit unused for a majority of the playthrough, there should be a focus on having most/all spells be viable even in late-game.

[kindred hill]

True

[acoustic trout]

Yeaaahh, I hear ya. Just until I get that part figured out in java though this is all I have in regards to checking the balance of alternate elements and spell loadout.

Like white silver dragon is really the ONLY reason people used dragoon shana, so with that not there I'd hoped having a harder hitting fire dragon would even out since theres more water enemies. But that dang mana cost is always a factor.

Then of course BECAUSE white silver is so good, does it stay good when nerfed magically, and now youve actually gotta contend with it AND flower storm in the same spell list.

I guess I'm just trying to figure out that fine line between whats considered a buff and whats considered a nerf for the new versions as I hope to make them, as it will be the leaping point for if I ever DO decide to adjust things further.

[kindred hill]

@acoustic trout Shana/Miranda´s dragoon has many utilities, not only the summon xD all their magic is useful
Giving Lavitz/Albert the white silver dragoon was not the best idea, because they already have flower storm

[acoustic trout]

i mean....only useful for revivals, given merus rainbow breath is also an aoe heal with less of a mana cost. And star children.....exists lol

And yeaaahhh. Thing with that is now you cant abuse flower storm if you want the dragon. Unless you go for an MP build, in which case ive just made a magic build possible for lavitz whereas before there was never a reason to.

Of course this is very much me just rationalizing my decisions, and im obviously biased. I do still appreciate the opinion. And at the end of the day LoD was never super balanced anyway, so its not what I'm ultimately striving for......yet. For now though, information gathering and coloring is nice

[nova pasture]

Like white silver dragon is really the ONLY reason people used dragoon shana,
Are you kitten me? Star Children, while a low power increment, does huge damage thanks to Shana's MAT <_< I get it though.

also Moonlight is great if you're doing a no-Angel-Prayers run to open more inventory slots.

[kindred hill]

Shana can revive all with her third magic

Star Children stands with her god magic stat

[kindred hill]

But yeah, game was not balanced, don't worry either, I'm just saying my point of view
You are doing a good job with mod anyway

[acoustic trout]

okay, so far Darts spells now apply the changed armor texture on the model, and a simple copy/paste within a fresh SC folder has transferred everything successfully (though the visual bugs on roses blue sea dragon and Als white silver dragon still persist)

Which, seems like a small and obvious thing, but I was worried the copy/paste would make it so the folders EXACTLY copy the download instead of only replacing what it needs to. And now I know that its fine, so cool

[kindred hill]

Nicee

[acoustic trout]

okay. I call upon smarter people than I to (again) explain a problem as if I'm five lol.

Using this image as a reference, which has been a big help from Grey Mad, RGB values appear approximately right after the same location but the next line down.

HOWEVER, even when strictly adhering to this pattern I still get visual issues. For example :

[nova pasture]

Emerald's certainly doing something here:

[acoustic trout]

"bE nOt AfRaId"

[unreal orbit]

Number of eyes checks out

[acoustic trout]

fun fact : Lavitz's dragoon cutscenes have swapped a couple CLUTS around compared to the battle textures. Hence biblically accurate face. its better now

[acoustic trout]

Fun fact again : Haschels HAND has 3 of its very own textures when casting spells. Can be seen when he's charging the magic for thunder kid and atomic mind.

probably thunder god too. but havent gotten that far in my adjustments

....not in thunder god

Alright. Spell textures applied to all spells for :
Dart
Lavitz
Shana
Rose
Haschel
Albert
Meru
Kongol
Who?

[acoustic trout]

why does a random texture in Meru's spell feel like I'm about to get an invitation to the dark brotherhood?

[kindred hill]

Because it's from me 🤣

[acoustic trout]

fun fact for today : You guys are gonna love what comes next 😉

[kindred hill]

🧐🥰

[strange nymph]

https://tenor.com/view/youre-joddamn-right-jod-joddamn-walter-white-breaking-bad-gif-24853055

[austere saddle]

@acoustic trout I may have posted in the wrong place the first time. But you wouldn’t still need testers would you?

[acoustic trout]

Actually gearin up to release to the public soon 😅

like, juuuust in that sweetspot where youd basically just get an early personal release

[austere saddle]

@acoustic trout That’s fantastic!

[dense skiff]

DAMN this is good work.

[acoustic trout]

Appreciate that!

[nova pasture]

When Emerald orders me to appreciate him, I listen.

[acoustic trout]

https://tenor.com/view/captain-phillips-i-am-the-captain-now-captain-now-captain-tom-hanks-gif-17194281

[nova pasture]

https://tenor.com/view/mmhmm-okay-davidschitts-creek-yes-gif-6454695919976270214

[acoustic trout]

sooooo

its been a while

how are you guys?

and also :

all those purple bits, gonna be a pain to hex edit if i can find the file

[nova pasture]

new tags are available for modding threads: SC version supported, special instructions, fork, and so on. I have added the Devbuild/3.0 and Special Instructions tags to this pre-existing thread.

[acoustic trout]

thanks drew!

[acoustic trout]

hiatus possibly over?

so far doels unique in that his leggings/body suit share a color scheme with his actual armor. Also the elementally infused blades. That, I don't know if I can change. But, progress is being made. Just gotta find the color for his knee spikes.

[acoustic trout]

still need to find those lightning effects, hopefully change the colors to greys, whites, and a very odd kind of purple to look like the wind during the jade transformation.

BUT, for the moment, behold the enemy light dragoon

the jade dragoons have so far been the easiest to edit, and its not even close. Greham uses the colors almost exactly like lavitz does, and they all had the same colors when it came to model hex edits, so it was just a matter of search and replace for the values i already had written down.

I did make the "wood" part of the armor an in-between of the original dark wood from his jade colors, to the new white version of lavitz and al. So its brighter than it used to be, but darker than the heroes.

[acoustic trout]

the good news : I have found the colors for the lightning effect. the bad news : changing the effect breaks it, much like darts flames during the transformation scene. I suspect its a script thing, and currently over my head

[grand steppe]

how to use ??? i mean i would like modifie texture 😛

[acoustic trout]

I can send the files if you have SC, just needs to be ran so that everything can unpack, then copy/paste it all over.

unless you mean you want to modify textures yourself, thats its own can of worms

[grand steppe]

can i modifie texture ground ?? i would like to work with this texture 3D grass , stone rock etc

[acoustic trout]

im not sure, tbh. Out of combat, the backgrounds are pre-rendered art pieces that then have the walkways, entries, and exits coded into them. In battle its a bit different, but I wouldnt know that process much

[night geyser]

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo i love everything about this especially when you put together the idea of elemental opposites becuse at one point in my youth i thought what if there was a dlc that did that dart water lavitz earth shana dark rose light

[acoustic trout]

Thanks! I'm still doing recolors for enemy dragoons, hopefully though the next SC update makes it easier to do things like change the element mechanically instead of just LOOK different!

[acoustic trout]

@wanton bay

[acoustic trout]

slight visual update : Similiar to how I felt the need to redo Darts "super metallic" coloration that, while at the time I thought I did a good job, over time it became a little bit of an eyesore. I have since learned more natural methods of coloration and keeping the respective shadings even when I change the colors. These lessons are now applied to everybodys favorite knight Lavitz

old / new

I suppose I should also make a goals update as well

1. Party recolors - all playable party members have had human and dragoon form recolors completed (barring potential adjustments like the above)
2. Enemy recolors - 2/7 enemy dragoons have been recolored as well to reflect the changes
3. Spells - All characters summon dragon spell now reflect the respective elemental dragon of their recolors. (there are a couple visual bugs that come with this for the time being. Other spells are more rigid, flame shot for example has no way of coloring the fireball itself, only particles around it.)
4. Transformation effects - red eyed Dragoon, Jade Dragoons and White-silver Dragoons have altered visuals when transforming.
5. Mechanical elemental changes - Sorry, still haven't made progress on that one.

and apologies for the radio silence. It started as a small break to celebrate all party recolors being done, as well as some visual effects being changed, and to rest and re-galvanize for more. The visual effects portion takes a LONG time for me to nail, and oftentimes the mere act of making a change will break the effect (just see darts flame armor issues earlier for example). Then life just got in the way, good and bad. The project may have slowed down a ton, but it isn't dropped, rest assured.

[raw wyvern]

at some point is the goal going to be every character as every element of Dragoon?

[nova pasture]

It is one shuffle, not a full spectrum.

[acoustic trout]

if SC is updated to where this process becomes easier, then maybe? As it is, I wanna get this version to a finished and complete state before contemplating that

It would be all seperate versions of course, so youd pick which one to download if I ever did it.

[raw wyvern]

cool

[raw wyvern]

it's awesome to see Dragoons not just for the other characters but with enough mods maybe even the spells for and by other characters

[acoustic trout]

yeah, when the day comes where we can reassign spells other than the dragons (already did that here), things are gonna get nuts. Or even just imagine adding secondary effects to spells. Kongol Grand stream giving you a str/def buff, demons gate slowing enemies when it cant kill them, etc etc. Possibilites in the future are insane as long as someones willing to try it

[acoustic trout]

@frigid vapor If possible, I'd like your input on something that doesn't seem to be within the TIMs that I can find. It involves merus Diamond dust spell and her hands there. Hope its okay to ask, I just know you've got the deffs and stuff for spells pretty well sorted since i use your repository to navigate and do this

the problem is that her hands seem to be within SECT/DRGN0.BIN/4193/34 and .../33 specifically, but I have already edited those to be golden. I just cant seem to find where i can finish the rest of the hands

[acoustic trout]

AHA, nevermind, it is one of the "Extra TIMS" within /4123

(if youd like I can go through these and see what they are for proper labelling? Like I'm fairly certain 4115 relates to Star Children

[frigid vapor]

yeah

take this

I was already prepared for something like this hehehe 😅

I use LibreOffice

you'll see something like this

any Dragoon Transform/Magic/Addition which load extra TIMs

there it is

[frigid vapor]

For some DEFF they load additional Parts (another DEFF used as a SubSubDEFF {Since Battle it's a DEFF itself}) and additional Textures, most of them are parsed from some functions that are in Battle.java and SEffe.java in SC, since we have a list right now of them in that file I sent you, there is no need to you of hand checking... but be aware that are listed Dragoon stuff in there only... since are the files I checked one by one and their Scripts

yeah I read 78 Scripts

each Script of more or less 3k code lines...

that's why sometimes I get upset whenever I cannot pull this DEFF Stuff on my code... it's like viewing the candy behind an impenetrable window glass...

some of the textures are a little more 'high res' compared to the original from the model, others are for changing a little bit the colors to be more 'unified' to the scene... and sometimes they load high quality 3D models, like Sharanda hands when cast Star Children

or the hand of Lloyd when he pulls the Dragon Buster for first time under the hood...

[acoustic trout]

Interesting. appreciate the help!

[frigid vapor]

Anytime mate!

[acoustic trout]

almost wondering if those extras with the blue sea dragon spell are tied to the whirlpool. and if so, i'm hoping i can find a way to connect it to rose

[frigid vapor]

let me check in my files, but If you edit the script will load whatever you want, meanwhile you know more or less what are you doing... for example, like a year ago I edited Red-Eyed Dragoon Transformation to get the fire ambers particles to the max values in each of the 4 emitters, just to wonder if SC could handle it... well got less than 5fps but it works hahaha

and yeah... the Extra TIMs are pointing to be the whirlpool and the bubbles

[acoustic trout]

I assure you, when it comes to scripts, i am clueless lol

[frigid vapor]

So do I but I try my best lol

[acoustic trout]

yeaaaahhh but I mean i know literally nothing about doing it or anything to do with coding in general

[acoustic trout]

updated star children textures

.....and now I should probably update mirandas version, huh?

ffffffffffuuuuuu-

[acoustic trout]

at least the particle effects are fine. Initially worried the orbs would be too solid and overpower the visuals. A second look at the original though put those worries to rest in that I get the same feeling from the white orbs as well

[frigid vapor]

most of the Dragoon Magic shares various things between... but sometimes direct replaces are not working because of some flags that are not set from one file to the other or simply because are loaded in different places in the VRAM...

[acoustic trout]

Oh I learned the direct replacement thing early on. Think I inverted lavitz's face or something early on. Its no longer something I try to do. My frustration was because I thought miranda was in a "finished" state, then I adjusted shanas spell and made more work to do on miranda lol

[frigid vapor]

ahhh the classic 'shoot I forgot to write it down in the TODO list' lol

[raw wyvern]

major and possibly really cool future project for much later everybody getting a Divine Dragoon form

[acoustic trout]

That likely wouldnt be tooooo hard overall. Main color schemes just grey and red. From there its just gemstone colors that would likely be the main deviations

Probably wont do it myself, as with the DD really just being there for one battle, I wanna keep it special. Havent even touched its textures here for the same reason

[raw wyvern]

was thinking a bit more extensive so everyone gets seven wings, the canon, and ball, though maybe resized and styled for each character

[acoustic trout]

that will be waaaaaaay outside the scope of what i can do lol. Im just doin color palettes and hex edits

For something like that itd be creating entire new models for each character, then creating entire new cutscene models for the spell, creating the spell itself and coding it to use characters stats, particle fx, attack and idle animations as well for the new models.

To my understanding, all of these things ARE possible, but someone would have to go through a not-small amount of work to implement it. Even moreso than trying to make Lloyd playable with custom additions

I do hope it happens though, I just dont see me being the one to do it

[frigid vapor]

Indeed was the main core of my tools... hehehe... even what did impulse me to code my tools were adding all characters Divine Dragoon forms, custom additions and custom models... and the "Omega Master"... NOTE (this is my theory): In my head that should be a Dragoon Magic executed between the 7 Dragoons into the Divine Dragoon to made a super powerful attack (like a finisher move)...

[acoustic trout]

not TOO happy with this coloration, but its something