Misc. Modding - Possible?

[Chakan]

There's a few things I've been wondering if it's possible to do or not in Magic 2014 that I just want to know about, so if anyone can shed some light on my questions here, that would be really appreciated.

(1). Frames
Is it possible to replace the frames that are used? Like, is there a way we could use old school ninties/early 2000's frames? It'd just be nice to see different frames for once. Surely the game pulls the frames from a file somewhere and can be edited.

(2). Nonbasic Land Positions
Is it at all possible to make nonbasic land appear in normal land zone instead of the enchantment/artifact zone? If you make a deck focusing on the use of nonbasic land, the screen can get cluttered to high hell. Maybe there's a way to mod/hack the game to think nonbasic lands are basic lands? I dunno, just thinking out loud here.

(3). Battlefield Modding
Is there anyway to possibly change the battlefield? Maybe import the battlefield from 2015 to 2014? Or from 2013 to 2015? Or just be able to change the textures on it or something?

(4). Sound Editing
Anyway to edit the sound effects? Like, the tapping sound, etc. An oldschool Micropose soundpack would give an awesome vintage vibe.

[RiiakShiNal]

(1). Frames
Is it possible to replace the frames that are used? Like, is there a way we could use old school ninties/early 2000's frames? It'd just be nice to see different frames for once. Surely the game pulls the frames from a file somewhere and can be edited.

Yes, though the frames appear for all matching cards and we can't "add frames", we can only edit/replace existing ones.

(2). Nonbasic Land Positions
Is it at all possible to make nonbasic land appear in normal land zone instead of the enchantment/artifact zone? If you make a deck focusing on the use of nonbasic land, the screen can get cluttered to high hell. Maybe there's a way to mod/hack the game to think nonbasic lands are basic lands? I dunno, just thinking out loud here.

No. The areas in which cards appear seems to be hard-coded into the engine. By editing the layout it might be possible to change where areas get positioned, but you will never get non-basic lands to show in the same area as basic lands.

(3). Battlefield Modding
Is there anyway to possibly change the battlefield? Maybe import the battlefield from 2015 to 2014? Or from 2013 to 2015? Or just be able to change the textures on it or something?

Possibly (this is sort of what I was talking about in my previous answer). This is going to be related to the layout and some pieces could very well be hard-coded into the engine. Changing textures should just be replacing the TDX files for the battlefield. Though since no one else has really attempted to change the battlefield you would be working in uncharted waters and we probably won't be able to provide much help.

(4). Sound Editing
Anyway to edit the sound effects? Like, the tapping sound, etc. An oldschool Micropose soundpack would give an awesome vintage vibe.

Yes, you just need to put the sound effects you want (with the names of the files you want to override) into a WAD in the DATA_ALL_PLATFORMS\SOUNDS directory. The sound effects are stored in MP3 format. Standard WAD overriding rules apply.

[Chakan]

How would one go about changing the frames? I'm interested to see how it would look now in game. That sucks about the nonbasic land thing, almost makes me wish 2015 was moddable just for that reason alone. I'm almost tempted to start looking into texture modding for the battlefield, but uncharted waters sounds pretty overwhelming. I guess I'll be working on a Micropose sound effect mod then, that should be pretty fun.

Thanks for clearing this stuff up for me, Riiak.

[Xander9009]

How would one go about changing the frames? I'm interested to see how it would look now in game. That sucks about the nonbasic land thing, almost makes me wish 2015 was moddable just for that reason alone. I'm almost tempted to start looking into texture modding for the battlefield, but uncharted waters sounds pretty overwhelming. I guess I'll be working on a Micropose sound effect mod then, that should be pretty fun.

Thanks for clearing this stuff up for me, Riiak.

For the frames, have a look at NeoAnderson's Planeswalker mod. In it, he replaces the frames they use with a clear one so that full card images show through. It'll be the same basic idea, except instead of making the frame clear, you'll be making it a different frame and instead of using full card images, you'll be using normal images.

2015 is moddable now. The main limitation is that there is a limit on the number of cards (which is why I'm still not modding it, myself).

[Chakan]

I assume there's no way to edit/open the .MDL and .LOL files, right? I haven't found anything online that could do it.

Interesting... Planechase assets?

[Xander9009]

I assume there's no way to edit/open the .MDL and .LOL files, right? I haven't found anything online that could do it.

Interesting... Planechase assets?

You should be able to open .LOL files with Notepad or Notepad++. I've never messed with .MDL, so I have no information on that. Which .LOL file are you trying to open?

[thefiremind]

You should be able to open .LOL files with Notepad or Notepad++.

The LOL files we make are plain text, but the official ones are compiled, you can't open them with Notepad unless you decompile them (hence why we have a "Decompilable LOL contents" page on the Wiki). And still, luadec can't decompile them all, and the result is not guaranteed to be 1:1 with the compiled version (it's a sort of reverse-engineering, sometimes it can fail).

[Xander9009]

You should be able to open .LOL files with Notepad or Notepad++.

The LOL files we make are plain text, but the official ones are compiled, you can't open them with Notepad unless you decompile them (hence why we have a "Decompilable LOL contents" page on the Wiki). And still, luadec can't decompile them all, and the result is not guaranteed to be 1:1 with the compiled version (it's a sort of reverse-engineering, sometimes it can fail).

Ah. I was under the impression that the compiled versions were .lua files. I made a tool to make decompiling them a small bit easier awhile back, so I knew that at one point. It's obviously been too long. Thanks for the clarification.

[Chakan]

Well, I tried doing some basic (very basic) texture modding of the card frames and the battlefield. What I did was I replaced the card frame with a pre 8th edition frame for blue, and did some debug textures for the battlefield, just to see where each texture displayed. What happened was rather interesting to say the least...

Battlefield:
http://i.cubeupload.com/f0k4Gf.jpg

Card Zoom:
http://i.cubeupload.com/ruYWYh.jpg

Even though I only replaced the standard blue frame, most of the rest of the frames in the game became sort of corrupt, and artwork started to display like that, and the battlefield looks just about as corrupt as the cards. It was sort of refreshing to see the battlefield differently however, even though it was totally warped. I did some testing with new (technically old) sound effects too, and they worked out fine. Was pretty excited to hear some different sound effects going on.

Also, is anyone here aware of a way to make the game load with loose DATA_CORE files? It's kind of time consuming to go through the process of packing the .WAD every time I make a change that I want to test.

Just to clarify as well... The .ZED files from 2015 cannot be extracted yet, right?

[Tejahn]

I'll go through and explain a few things I noticed when modding the aspects of the game you mentioned.

Deathgaze Cockatrice

Riptide Chimera

(1). Frames - As previously stated, we can edit existing card frames to make them appear in game. If I remember correctly, the same effect of making the cards display the full art sideways can be achieved by simply removing the card frame TDXs from the game folder. The game will place the card inside the black border regardless but in a 'Vertical' way. I found this quite interesting and wanted to implement an idea I called 'Play Horizontal' but I never did ask if there was a way to accomplish it. By following the link directly below and looking at Deathgaze Cockatrice and Riptide Chimera you will see that I was able to 'Rotate' the art so that it displays 'Vertically' in an upright position.

(NeoAnderson) MTG - GRAPHICS UPDATE M15 - ALTERNATIVE PLANESWALKERS 3D MOD

(Tejahn) Custom Card Frames

(Tejahn) Question Thread

Hero of Iroas

Lastly, I know the ability to 'Play Horizontal' is there because cards can enter the battlefield tapped and be made to not untap and still be able to block. An example would be Masako the Humorless which was officially added to to DOTP 2014. However, I didn't know if there was a way to add highlight and change the color of the text to make the card information easily readable. Another problem is that we would have to find a way to make the text of the cards display 'Horizontally' while moving the P/T box to the bottom right side of the creature cards. I saw in an XML file how certain numbers are used to posistion the text and mana cost, maintain their font size, and placement of the P/T boxes but I never did any experimenting. Also, I wondered if it was possible to to make just make certain words appear a different color or make one word appear a different color. You can visually see the result I was hoping to achieve by following the link below. Brago, King Eternal and Selvala, Explorer Returned are the examples.

MTG Article - Betrayal

Brago, King Eternal

Selvala, Explorer Returned

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(2). Nonbasic Land Positions - As RiiakShiNal explained, it's not possible through the normal game engine to achieve this. However, it may be possible to implement by using the same method we use to make the Planeswalkers Types and Subtypes appear. Using the Compound word method you can make the game visually display any Subtype or Supertype. You can use two Supertypes such as BASIC, BASIC and then add LAND, ISLAND. Try the code below and let us know if it works after following the instructions outlined in the links below for more insight and implementation.

Code: Select all

<SUPERTYPE metaname="Basic" />
<SUPERTYPE metaname="Basic" />
<TYPE metaname="Land" />
<SUB_TYPE metaname="Island" />

NeoAnderson explains a method we use to alter card frames

RiiakShiNal explains how to add Subtypes

RiiakShiNal explains how to display created Supertypes by making Compound words

Thefiremind explains how to add Subtypes

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(3). Battlefield Modding - I started a brief experiment with changing the battlefield and discovered that I was actually changing the Transition Background that displays before you get your opening hand. I'll probably look more into this at a later time.

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(4). Sound Editing - RiiakShiNal already explained this as well.

[Chakan]

What I'm gathering about the land situation is that you can make nonbasic lands appear as basic lands, but in that case, wouldn't the game still classify those lands as basic? That's obviously incorrect and cards that work with nonbasic lands wouldn't function right. That's what I gathered about what I read anyway.

[RiiakShiNal]

What I'm gathering about the land situation is that you can make nonbasic lands appear as basic lands, but in that case, wouldn't the game still classify those lands as basic? That's obviously incorrect and cards that work with nonbasic lands wouldn't function right. That's what I gathered about what I read anyway.

That is correct, if you give a non-basic land the basic supertype (to show up with other basic lands) then yes, the game would classify the land as basic for all intents and purposes (even using the compound types trick to change the text) and there could be several incorrect interactions. This also means that if a non-basic land has a land sub-type such as Swamp or Island then the game will automatically assign a MANA_ABILITY to the card for the appropriate sub-type which could lead to land issues with multiple MANA_ABILITYs on the same card which allows for free mana (the land will refuse to tap if the game decides to try and use both MANA_ABILITYs at once).

[Tejahn]

You're both correct. The complications with certain card interactions will be somewhat widespread. However, I thought you wanted to give it a shot. Sometime I experiment with altered cards I don't plan on releasing just for testing purposes.

[Chakan]

You're both correct. The complications with certain card interactions will be somewhat widespread. However, I thought you wanted to give it a shot. Sometime I experiment with altered cards I don't plan on releasing just for testing purposes.

You're right, I wanted to give it a go, it's just that I know there'd be more problems than the whole thing is worth. I do appreciate you taking your time to suggest that idea to me though.

[Chakan]

Sorry to bump this topic so longer after the last post, but I figured this would be better than making a new thread. For the past couple of days I've been testing and experimenting on miscellaneous modding again, and I feel like I've been much more successful than I've been in the past. Here's a little log of what I've been doing lately, if anybody is at all interested in my tests.



Frames
I've pretty much got modern frames going for Magic '14. The only two problems I've had so far is that I can't seem to get the artist's name at the bottom of the card to display in white, and of course, the hologram symbol used on rare and mythic rare cards don't display for such cards, but I knew that would likely be impossible despite any effort I put in.

card_layout.xml
This file looked like the holy grail of frame modification when I first came across it, since it had so much relevant lines of text inside of it. It's in the core.wad in the CONFIGS folder. However, any modification made to it does not alter anything inside of the game, which was beyond disappointing. Another file named "general_config.xml" houses some interesting lines of text, but just like card_layout, it doesn't change anything in game.

Battlefield Modding
I have not had any real success in terms of trying to modify the battlefield. The Duels '15 battlefield sort of works, the fog does anyway, but there's a lot of glitches with it, as you can see with the screenshot from above. The lighting file from Duels '15 (the .cnt file) causes an instant crash, which I assume has something to do with turning it from red to white, but even then I seriously doubt it will actually animate the board (not that I would want to implement that into Duels '14 anyway since that was annoying.) There's also a huge black space at the top of the screen, which, assuming again here, has something to do with positioning in the card_layout.xml and general_config.tdx files, but since both files are complete red herrings, I've found no way to modify battlefield positioning in order to try to fix anything. Another problem is that, to my knowledge, there aren't any programs to view, edit, decompile/recompile .light files, .mdl files, or .mtl files. I assume the .mdl files are 3D models, and .mtl files are sort of like definitions for the .mdl files. I'd at least be able to compare coding between the 2014 battlefield and 2015 battlefield to see if anything is vastly different if I could decompile some things. I think this is something that is beyond reach until there's a way to decompile the files I mentioned previously. Lastly, the Origins battlefield simply crashes the game, unlike the 2015 battlefield, which manages to display, although very glitched.

Expansion Symbol
Almost forgot to mention that I changed the expansion symbol. The symbol is from Origins, and I just think it looks better to see all of the cards not have the 2014 core symbol, because of the Community WAD and all has many cards from outside that set. Wasn't hard at all to port over, and it looks nice.

That's about all I have to report at the moment. I'll likely be taking an indefinite break from this stuff because I think I've gone just about as far as I can go at this point, but if anybody else is interested in miscellaneous modding, I encourage you to post your results here.