Watch_Dogs - General moding

Is anyone willing to make a hair texture for Aiden that doesn't look like paint brush strokes?

(I know that there are older versions of his hair which in theory look better, but their formats are different)

 

it would require modifying his hair meshs from head.xbg to really look good

 

I just realized that when using TGXT's headlight mod, when the headlight reflections on the roads are viewed at an angle you can only see the nearest reflection. :|

 

This is because the reflection (specular) is visible only within the dynamic light range. You can see that the reflection cuts off at the edge of the light. In Vanilla its not only the same, its a bit worse, because the light from headlights is more narrow.
This is how dynamic lighting works in WD

 

Alright, that makes a lot of sense.

 

Hi guys! First post, so here goes:

Something which bothered me in WD is the police response near the end of the game. So I did some research and managed to edit the spawns. Since this thread is here to show of findings and I didn't find anything related to this, I'm posting it here.

The spawns can be found when unpacking the common.fat. They are in generated/databases/generic. There is a file 'chasestageconfig.lib' which contains them.

The files that matter are 'Cop.Stage1.XML', 'Cop.Stage2.XML' and 'Cop.Stage3.XML' Stage 1 is the first Act of the game, stage 2 is act II / III and Stage 3 is act IV / V. So if you've completed the game, 'Cop.stage3.XML' is the one you're after.

The file contain a lot of hashes, but the part that does the trick is the upper part.

Code:

  <object hash="7F102ADC">
    <object hash="908B1E39">
      <field hash="908B1E39" type="BinHex">3C499BB6</field>
    </object>
    <object hash="908B1E39">
      <field hash="908B1E39" type="BinHex">10289558</field>
    </object>
    <object hash="908B1E39">
      <field hash="908B1E39" type="BinHex">[B]03069BA6[/B]</field>
    </object>
    <object hash="908B1E39">
      <field hash="908B1E39" type="BinHex">8618922F</field>
    </object>
    <object hash="908B1E39">
      <field hash="908B1E39" type="BinHex">968660E9</field>
    </object>
  </object>
  <object hash="3EBA95A2">
    <object hash="908B1E39">
      <field hash="908B1E39" type="BinHex">48712BD9</field>
    </object>
    <object hash="908B1E39">
      <field hash="908B1E39" type="BinHex">35760E9B</field>
    </object>
    <object hash="908B1E39">
      <field hash="908B1E39" type="BinHex">[B]D54B1729[/B]</field>
    </object>
    <object hash="908B1E39">
      <field hash="908B1E39" type="BinHex">AB76A457</field>
    </object>
    <object hash="908B1E39">
      <field hash="908B1E39" type="BinHex">B12FC476</field>
    </object>
  </object>

There are two groups of 5 hashes. Each one controls a heat level, the upper one heat level 1 and the lowest one heat level 5.

To edit the spawns, I only had to edit the hashes from the top group and it worked.

These are the police hashes which you can use in the last part of each line, there are two each time, the first one for the top group and the second one for the lower group:

2 Police Cavales, officers try to bust.
3C499BB6
48712BD9

2 Police Cavales, officers try to bust.
00BB9939
271979EC

2 Police Cavales
AA799CC1
271979EC

3 Police Cavales
10289558
35760E9B

3 Police Cavales (No foot cops)
5A464E89
0DBFF9B9

3 Police Vehicles (Mostly Cavales but also Sonarus LX) (No foot cops)
3A67CC31
8897BB73

3 Police Cavales + Helicopter (snipers inactive)
03069BA6
D54B1729

4 Police Vehicles (Cavales and Sonarus LX, about 50/50) (No foot cops) + helicopter (snipers active) + SWAT enabled
FCE032C3
AC03F30A

4 Police Sonarus LX + Helicopter (snipers inactive) + Sonarus LX roadblock
8618922F
AB76A457

5 Police Sonarus LX + Helicopter (snipers active) + Polar roadblock + SWAT enabled
3C7B244E
6376DC41

5 Police Vehicles (Sonarus LX and Police Polar, mostly Sonarus LX) (No foot cops) + helicopter (snipers active) + SWAT enabled
6270B4FF
A51A392C

6 Police Polar + Helicopter (snipers active) + SWAT Polar roadblock + SWAT enabled
258DF6B1
B27F615D

6 Police Vehicles (Police Polar and Sonarus LX, mostly Police Polar) (No foot cops) + helicopter (snipers active) + SWAT enabled
968660E9
B12FC476

6 SWAT Polar + Helicopter (snipers active) + SWAT Polar roadblock + SWAT enabled
B3BDF1C6
2C7FCB91

6 SWAT Polar + + SWAT enabled
B0BD76EE
2C7FCB91
(This one is special, since I can't remember it ever being used. The SWAT Polar can contain 2 SWAT Elites, 2 Veteran cops or 2 SWAT Enforcers armed with U100s.

I don't know if the description is completely right for each hash but it should come close.

In the code I posted at the top of this message I have made two hashes bold, thats an example of the heat 3 spawn replaced with police cavales and a police heli.

 

@Yorpie: Wow what a first post! Awesome tutorial, thank you very much for sharing!

I have something to share too, I've found a way to convert the .cseq files to the usual XML format, this involves a little hex editing though, I will post a detailed tutorial soon.

 

Can't wait! Dying to see this!

 

Glad you like it and thank you, I did my best to make everything clear.

I already had a lot of fun with the spawns, but it would be cool if we would be able to edit the spawn sets themselves, like enebling/disabling helicopter, roadblocks, SWAT and editing their numbers etc...

Also, good find yourself, your 100th post will be an important one

 

I hope so, thanks!


Ok here we go, to convert the .cseq files to the usual XML format you need to "prepare" the file so it meets certain conditions, otherwise the Gibbed tool will crash.
To prepare the .cseq file you must edit it using any Hex Editor you want, I'm using Hex Workshop but the task is so simple that even the most basic free hex editor should be enough.

Before proceeding be sure to make a BACKUP of the original file!

So open the .cseq you want with the hex editor and look at the start of the file, you have to select all the data before nbCF (as you see in the picture) and delete it, then save the file (I've highlighted the only area you should care of, it will be almost the same on any editor):


Now you can drag the modified .cseq file to the Gibbed.Disrupt.ConvertBinaryObject.exe and it will not crash, instead you will get a file with the same name of the starting .cseq file but that will end with _converted.xml, this is what you have to edit.


After you're done you must do the same steps backward to make it readable by the game again:

So drag the xml to the Gibbed.Disrupt.ConvertBinaryObject.exe and you will get a file with the same name but that ends with _converted_converted.fcb that you have to rename to the same name and extension of your starting file, so delete the ending part _converted_converted.fcb and replace it with just .cseq
Now the only step remaining is to insert back the data that you've previously removed from the file, so open both your edited .cseq and the original .cseq with the hex editor, select again the same data as before from the original .cseq and copy it, now select the new .cseq and paste that hex data inserting it at the start of the file, now you can save your final .cseq and try it ingame.


Here's an example, the converted profiler.xml with comments included, these are just the recognizable text from the hex view ported in the corresponding lines of the xml, feel free to use it as you want, you can keep the comments in when converting it since the Gibbed tool simply ignores them: profiler.xml


I hope this will be useful for deeper modding of the game, let me know if further explanations are needed.

 

Uhm... Soooo... noone is interested now? Or maybe hex editing sounds too difficult? :O Believe me it's not, just give it a try.

PS: Actually I've also tried to find a way to create a tool that automates this step, just like the xbt dds converetr (basically it does the exact same thing) but I don't have much time, if someone knows a bit of programming I'm pretty sure that it would take less than one hour to make.

 

I threw together a few scripts and uploaded them with some gnu tools. They should work or be easy enough to adapt. RemoveHeader splits cseq into head and tail file. Convert .tail file with Gibbed.Disrupt.ConvertBinaryObject.exe as you described. AttachHeader merges .head and .fcb.

Download: 1drv.ms/1LsTzvt

Sorry I didn't have time for more.

 

Thank you very much! It's perfect!

Anyway, just a clarification for the modders: To reattach the header you must rename the .fcb so it have the same name of the .header file because the Gibbed tools append _converted after every operation, this way when you drag the .fcb on the AttachHeader.bat the tool created by Thrax can recognize what header must be attached to it, otherwise it wouldn't work.

 

hi guys
if I want to change the Exposure Value in the environment lighting witch file do I have to edit ?
thank you

 

Every file that is labeled E3.2013.

 

Why every E3.2013 file?
Isn't "E3_2013.Clear_Lighting.xml" and "E3_2013.Clear_Lighting.Stormy_Lighting.xml" wouldn't be enough?

 

In case people want to edit interior lighting just like me.

 

Thanks a lot

 

Good point, but still there's no need to edit evey E3.2013 file. The one's that are with "CG" at the end of the file name are likely used only in cutscenes. There's no need for changing "CG" xmls, unless you wanna change the lighting in cutscenes.

 

is there a mod for car handlings?