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.
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I waited so long

June 9, 2011 at 7:13 pm (CST)
Do you realize quite a few people who waited for over a decade for this game, were totally let down by what Gearbox is about to release, have been given hope for mod fixes by your post?

Rich Whitehouse

June 8, 2011 at 3:32 pm (CST)
You should have bones, if you exported to a format that supports bones. (COLLADA, SMD, etc. - OBJ does not)

DNF France

June 8, 2011 at 10:22 am (CST)
Just 2 questions...
I have no bone in my exported model.
And how do you add the bones animation files on Blender/3ds Max /Maya ?

Harlequin

June 7, 2011 at 8:12 am (CST)
Error message, when I try to open .msh:
"File could not be previewed".

Tea Monster

June 7, 2011 at 5:08 am (CST)
obj export working nicely...
http://i53.tinypic.com/2vb1qw7.jpg

DNF France

June 5, 2011 at 8:02 pm (CST)
Quote :
I was wondering if it could be a standard file format like ASE and they just renamed it.

*.SKL files

Rich Whitehouse

June 5, 2011 at 7:23 pm (CST)
Oh. Yeah, no, it wouldn't be anything like that. If anything, it'd be derived from something Unreal.

Tea Monster

June 5, 2011 at 4:09 pm (CST)
I was wondering if it could be a standard file format like ASE and they just renamed it.

Tea Monster

June 5, 2011 at 4:08 pm (CST)
I tried 3dobjectconverter and an msh importer for Blender that is used to import/export msh files for the 'Orbiter' game.

Rich Whitehouse

June 5, 2011 at 3:25 pm (CST)
It's not based on any existing .msh format, to my knowledge. I Googled around a bit to try to find some info before I started reversing it, and came up with nothing. I may have missed something, though. Which readers did you try?


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