Duke Nukem Forever

The Duke Nukem Forever demo is out. I can't even convey how surreal it is to me to be typing those words. But anyway, I've been poking around the demo for the last couple of days, and a new version of Noesis is up now that supports extracting 5 different variants of its included .dat packages.

The picture is of the world's first (well, probably) right and proper DNF content mod, with Duke sporting his brand new Takei Pride tanktop. Noesis spits out all of the info you need to re-inject textures while it's extracting them, and I've already got a fully functional repacker that I intend to release sometime relatively soon. I've also finished hammering out the model format now, and Noesis v3.27 and later can view/export them.




The process of exporting the models is pretty simple, but requires a few steps. Here's a step by step of what you need to do.

1) Using Noesis, extract the contents SkinMshes/defs.dat, SkinMeshes/meshes.dat, and SkinMeshes/skels.def. By default, Noesis will want to extract these to separate folders. You don't want this, and instead you want to extract them all to a single folder. (e.g. "c:\steam\steamapps\common\duke nukem forever demo\SkinMeshes\allfiles")

2) Browse to the .msh of your choice in Noesis and open it.

3) If .skl or .def files cannot be found automatically you will be prompted for them. Additionally, Noesis will attempt to find MegaPackage.dat and TextureDirectory.dat relative to the path of the .msh file. If it cannot, you will be prompted for those files as well.

4) Export and enjoy. Note that materials are still a work in progress, and it can't automatically find the right materials in most cases. But certain models are working. (like Duke and one of the Holsom twins)

I've got model re-import/modification working, but the material situation limits it pretty severely. In the coming days/weeks, I'll be continuing to reverse that data and trying to figure out a reasonable process for replacing/overriding assets that doesn't involve rebuilding all of the game's packages.

Also, if you haven't heard yet, you can play the vehicle sequence in first-person. It's much nicer this way.

Update: I've successfully exported a model to COLLADA, modified it (re-weighted, added and modified geometry, modified the texture), re-exported it to .msh using my in-progress Noesis exporter, and got it to load in the demo. Have a look:



Wait for the scene with the twins.

Comments

131 comments in total.
Post a comment

jojo

June 14, 2011 at 7:27 pm (CST)
Oops. I meant last.sav

Rich Whitehouse

June 14, 2011 at 5:25 pm (CST)
It looks to me like last.dcp is a plain-text unicode file. Am I missing something? You should be able to modify it with no problems, so long as you make sure you retain that last 0000 wide-char at the end. (if you edit it in notepad.exe or something that 0000 will likely be replaced by a space, so you might want to use a hex editor)

jojo

June 14, 2011 at 2:37 pm (CST)
have you been able to look @ the "Last.dcp" file encryption? i know you are a busy guy, but i am just curious if you had a chance to work on something for that.

and btw, the progress.ini tool works like a charm :) thank you for the great work!

jojo

June 14, 2011 at 1:39 am (CST)
Rich... i love you

Rich Whitehouse

June 13, 2011 at 4:16 pm (CST)
jojo: I haven't taken a look at either format, but I'd imagine progress.ini is just simply xor-encrypted or something. Will let you know if I get around to it. Edit: Here's an encryption/decryption tool: DNF progress.ini decrypter and encrypter

Leonardo: Sure do, and it's much appreciated. :) The donation button is under the About tab.

Leonardo Pellegrini

June 13, 2011 at 11:12 am (CST)
Do you accept donations? I intend on keeping you motivated for a Map editor of the game.

jojo

June 13, 2011 at 5:07 am (CST)
hey, i have a question. do you know how to decode the progress.ini or the last.sav files?

i lost my save game and realy dont feel like playing through all that crap again.

i guess i could start by making a backup of the save files and continuing on what i have just long enough to do a difference comparison in a hex editor to help give someone a start on the decoding process.

there is already one available for the xbox360 save files, but not for the pc

gnounc

June 13, 2011 at 3:35 am (CST)
It is a good system indeed.

SPTX

June 12, 2011 at 4:53 pm (CST)
I am afraid that borderlands still doesn't have modding tools. Which is a shame because of the half assed arsenal, other items and skill trees.

Rich Whitehouse

June 12, 2011 at 6:57 am (CST)
SPTX: I was informed of their plans for DLC right after the demo actually came out, but it seemingly has little to do with their plans to release DukeEd.exe. I understand the logic when people accuse Gearbox of withholding the editor because they're afraid it would put a dent in potential DLC sales, but based on what I've heard from people closer to the project, those accusations are based on nothing but random speculation. I don't think Gearbox is that stupid, either. Not to mention, they're very certainly far more vested in DLC sales for consoles than PC.

I'm going to try pinging Gearbox again next week after the official US release has gone down, and see if their stance on releasing an editor/script sources/etc. has changed at all. If it hasn't, I'll see if they're willing to cooperate with me to any extent as far as at least providing me with a few headers or format specs that will help out with their map/node formats. If they're not willing to do that either, then I'll resort to jumping in blind. It's only a few days to wait, anyway. If I get the urge to work on DNF stuff again in the mean time, I've got plenty else to work on. Like static models and fleshing out their material system some more. (I presently have 34 shader parameters handled, as well as combiners and sub-materials, but there are still a lot of parameters used throughout the models that I haven't bothered discerning the arguments for)


Comment Pages:
Previous ... 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 [11] 12 13 14 ... Next

Post a comment

Name:


Enter the following (refresh if you can't read it):



Comment:

Stream Tags

Projects

Everything

Personal

Analysis

Indie

Technology

AVALANCHE

R-Cube Engine

Modding

Game Design

Commercial

iPhone

Rapture

Recent Comments