DOA5LR: Basic modding tutorials

[kholdy]

This tutorial will cover 3 commonly asked questions:

 

1. How do I make a custom DLC using TMC files?
2. How do I replace existing content with modded content?
3. How do I make my own mods?

You'll need the following tools:

Basic tool pack (reuploaded, couldn't find original source)

TMC Polygon and insert tools also get the Noesis plugins from here and add them to Noesis/plugins/python. To make the TMC tools English, remove the .disable on the language file.

lnk_reshuffle V3 If you have used an older version of lnk_reshuffle, I believe you have to reinstall your game, happened to me. V3 is fantastic but will only work on a fresh start.

I also recommend getting Blender, an easy way to view parts of a model, for use with the TMC tools.

You'll also need a cracked .exe. I recommend getting the 3DM version, it has fewer issues in my opinion. If you want to use the Senran Kagura DLC, make sure the game.exe is v1.02A.

 

Let's get started.

 

1. Making a custom DLC with TMC files

 

Let's open up the DLC tool. You'll see the following screen:

 

You'll want the following links open while working with this:

Hair and face guide

Free costume slots

 

For the purposes of this tutorial, I will be adding a custom DLC for Kasumi in slot 23.

 

Click new DLC. In folder selection, I recommend going to your DOA5LR/DLC folder, and type the number of your custom DLC as the file name. I'll use 123456.

 

Under Characters, select Add, female, Kasumi. Next we'll want to enter the costume slot we're using, in this case 23. Make sure the costume slot you use is free, look at the link I provided for info. 

 

Next we'll add the files we have. Under Files, hit Add, and select all relevant files. Usually you'll have a --c, --p, tmc and tmcl file, though the --c or --p files may be missing, which is fine.

If you have any --h and --hl files, you'll have to change the number for Additional Textures to the amount you have. If your --h and --hl files go up to 4, for example, you'll want to change that number to 4. If you have NO --h or --hl files, leave it at 1, NOT ZERO.

 

Next up, hair. Look at the hair and face guide and find your character. For Kasumi, you'll see she has hairs for 0-7, with 0 being bald and 7 being a ponytail for use with a hat. I like her ponytail, so I want to make hair 3 her default. For Hairstyle A, enter Hair 3, Face 1. Note that Face will ALMOST always be 1, be very careful when changing this. If you want to add hairstyles, simply hit Add and repeat the process. Note that hairstyle A will always be the default when you select the costume.

 

And that's it! Now, before you get going, I recommend hitting Save state and saving this somewhere. This way if you made a mistake you can quickly load the state and fix the issue. You CANNOT edit an existing BCM I believe, correct me if I'm wrong on this. If you want to edit one, you have to unpack it then remake the entire thing as a full DLC, which is a pain. So use save states. 

 

Now, hit save DLC, enter the DLC number into your .ini, and check if it's working ingame. If it isn't showing up... you made a mistake. If the game crashes when you try to select it, the costume slot you used was already in use, so change it.

 

 

2. Replacing existing content with TMC files

 

Open up the lnk_reshuffle folder. If you open start.bat, the program will start and will ask you to locate your game.exe. That's a pain if you have to do it every single time. Instead, right-click start.bat and select edit. On the last line, which is the same line that contains the python files, add the following:

on startup: "yourgamehere"

replacing yourgamehere with the path to your game.exe. If done right, when you open start.bat, it'll go straight to your game.exe without asking you to locate it. That's much better.

 

Before using lnk_reshuffle, MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE you've moved the dinput8.dll file to your DOA5LR install folder, or this will NOT work.

 

Now, I want to replace Kasumi's default costume (COS001) with Harry Palmer's nude Kasumi. Get the .tmc and .tmcl files (--c and --p are not needed) from his topic, or (I prefer this method for consistency) get one of the repacks containing all nude mods together, and unpack it with Archivarius (more on this later). 

 

Select Kasumi from the dropdown list, and select COS001. Some files will show up on the left. Select the .tmc file, hit swap, and locate the .tmc file you want to swap to. Repeat for the .tmcl file. If you swap a .tmc file for something that isn't a .tmc file, you WILL crash, same for the .tmcl file. If you have --c files, swap those too. A lot of the default costumes don't have a --p file that lnk_reshuffle can reach, so just ignore that unless it's present.

 

When you're done, it should look like this:

 

But oops, I made a mistake, I accidentally swapped Kasumi's costume to Marie's nude, and now her boobs are gone. That's pretty bad. So go to your game install folder and open up mod.config in a text editor. Find the relevant line, and delete it. If you cannot find the relevant line (because you swapped a bunch of costumes at once and now your config file is really long, for example), I recommend swapping the costume you made a mistake in to a nonsense file. Like you could swap the .tmc and .tmcl both to the file "WHEREDIDMYBOOBSGO.txt". That's easy to locate in the mod.config file, so you can delete the line.

 

That should be it. Boot up your game, and check if the costume was changed. Note that certain costumes act weird when changed, notably the schoolgirl, santa, and "I'm a fighter" costumes. Their textures don't really like being messed with, you'll know when you see it. I'm not sure how to solve this myself, I just leave them unchanged unless I find a .tmc file specifically for those costumes.

Also, if you swap a costume that has a hat to a costume that doesn't have a hat... the hair will most likely not be very pretty, as it still defaults to the hat hair, which you're not supposed to ever see with no hat. Either make a custom .tmc yourself, or swap the hat hair in lnk_reshuffle for a non-hat hair. Keep in mind that if you swap the hair entirely, any other costume that has a hat will likely clip because of the hair.

 

Also keep in mind lnk_reshuffle can ONLY swap default files, it can't reach any files in your /DLC folder. If you want to swap those you'll have to unpack the entire DLC with Archivarius, then remake it using the DLC tool, using your own .tmc files instead.

 

Note also that the files in lnk/reshuffle are NOT the same order as they appear in the game. For example, Tina's first costume in the game isn't her first costume in the files. If you can't find the costume you're trying to change, it's time for another step...

 

2.1 Using Archivarius and Noesis

 

Alright, so first we'll open up archivarius. Run startgui.bat. Now, we're continuing from the previous tutorial, so we want to view the default costumes. Select open bin/lnk, navigate to your game install folder, and select chara_common.bin. Some costumes are in chara_initial.bin instead, remember that.

Now, we wanted to find Tina's default costume, so let's only use her files. In the text box at the top, enter "tina" and it should only show you her files. Hit Extract all, select a location, and you'll get Tina's costume files (as well as some others we won't be using). That's it, pretty simple.

 

Next up, Noesis. Make sure you've added the plugins I told you to at the start of this post. 

In Noesis, navigate to where you extracted the files with Archivarius. There should be a bunch of .tmc files and some others. Noesis can open the .tmc files, as well as the --p files if you want to see the icons, and will show you what they look like. Let's try to find Tina's default cowgirl outfit. Open the .tmc files until you find it.

You'll find that TINA_COS_004.tmc is the costume we're looking for. So now you can go back to lnk_reshuffle and swap that costume.

Note that if you try to open modded .tmc's, a lot of the time you'll just get an error message. That's normal. It means the TMC Polygon tool was used to remove certain parts of the outfit, and those parts weren't replaced. The .tmc files will still work fine, they just can't be displayed on Noesis.

 

 

3. Links to other tutorials

 

These tutorials are used for actual modding, i.e. making your own .TMC files. As such, they are far more advanced than the above stuff.

 

TMC Polygon tools: This tutorial explains the use of the TMC Polygon and Insert tools. The first post explains in detail how to replace parts of a costume. The same principle can be applied to remove parts - just don't use the TMC Insert tool to replace what you deleted. Blender is a useful application to find out the names of the costume parts, simply open the exported .obj and rightclick any part of the costume/body to see its name.

 

Tutorial collection: This page contains a collection of tutorials as well as various other resources.

 

Vertex numbers for Harry Palmer's bodies: Useful if you only need specific parts of the body, for use with the TMC Polygon Tool.

 

Additionally, there's a program called TMC->OBJ converter that does... exactly what it says it does. It can change TMC to OBJ files, for use with Blender or 3DSMax, and the other way around. This lets you do full modding, by changing single vertices, among other things. A similar program exists for .MQO files.

I will not link these programs without the author's permission as they're very much still in development. Pinkcafe (use google) has them if you're willing to search.

 

Let me know if there's any other tutorials I should add.

 

Thanks for reading thus far, hope this helped! Let me know if I made any mistakes, or if you have any questions.

[miki wilya]

LINK???

[Jim.Raynor]

Awesome...thanks

[kholdy]

LINK???

 

I don't even know how to respond to this.

[siframe]

A useful resource. Linking to here to answer a question is sooooooo much easier than navigating to other forums to copy urls so thanks kholdy. One suggestion, you might want to include that c and p files are interchangeable, I've seen a few mods uploaded without them.

[kholdy]

A useful resource. Linking to here to answer a question is sooooooo much easier than navigating to other forums to copy urls so thanks kholdy. One suggestion, you might want to include that c and p files are interchangeable, I've seen a few mods uploaded without them.

 

Done. I had that in tutorial 2, but added a note in tutorial 1 as well.

[siframe]

Nice one! Too bad I can't unlearn how to do this so I could try using your tutorial alone as a 'test' of sorts, but I guess you'll just have to wait for the questions to start coming in to make any amendments. I find it difficult to know where to start with teaching stuff I know, cos there's always the little assumptions of knowledge that mean I skip some small part that someone might find totally confusing. This should certainly be pinned when it's finished anyway. Thanks again!

[kholdy]

Gonna be away for the entire day so I'll write the last tutorial tomorrow.

 

On a side note, I'll probably write up only a basic guide of the TMC tools - I'll be swapping the body on the costume, then removing some parts of it to get rid of clipping issues and end up with the result in my teaser pic. For anything more advanced, I'll refer to other guides people have written, no point in me repeating them.

[miki wilya]

 

Can you upload all mod like this picture and share the download link

[Farphignougen]

Does lnk_reshuffle need the game to be installed somewhere other than Program Files? When I point the program to the DoA5 executable located in Program Files, the command line window throws an error and closes too quickly to read the error message. I put a copy of the DoA5 executable on my desktop, and the program opens when pointed to that, but it obviously can't find the other files it would be editing. Do I just need to move the game installation somewhere else?

[kholdy]

Does lnk_reshuffle need the game to be installed somewhere other than Program Files? When I point the program to the DoA5 executable located in Program Files, the command line window throws an error and closes too quickly to read the error message. I put a copy of the DoA5 executable on my desktop, and the program opens when pointed to that, but it obviously can't find the other files it would be editing. Do I just need to move the game installation somewhere else?

 

Mine is in a different folder so I don't get any errors. Have you tried running lnk_reshuffle as administrator?

[formenost]

hey i hope someone can help me with an archivarius problem.

 

i downloaded a mod that i need to repack with the dlc tool, because the dlc number is identical with a dlc i have already installed.

 

So now i started archivarius and managed to extract the -p and -c file but always when i try to extract the tmc and tmcl file i get an error message saying the decryption failed. I already tried with an without forced encryption of files under 4 mb but it still doesnt work. I run version 1.8 beta.

 

Can anyone give me a helping hand or post a link to a tutorial? I also tried to extract the file from a dlc i packed myself from tmc and tmcl files provided by a modder but it didnt work either.

 

Thx in advance

[Randark]

thanks, needed something like this to finally start attempting modding,  problem I had was that the tools were all over the place being updated every now and then and tutorials elsewhere...   this will make life so much easier when trying to find something or ask how to do something.

[syfjhz22]

Very interested to know whether there is a relatively simple way to remove a part of an object (i.e. remove some polygons without knowledge of HEX), or to know which area the TMC Polygon Tool index correspondance with. Thanks a lot

[kholdy]

Sorry for the wait on tutorial 3, it is coming =P

 

Been busy trying to get familiar with Harry Palmer's new tools (believe they're his anyway) - lets you convert TMC to obj files for use with Blender or 3DSMax, and back. 

[Y2Ryoko]

I've run into some unexpected problems with numbering my costume slots, and it feels like I'm missing something extremely simple.

 

I recently tested a sizeable (premade) mod that used slots 37~39 on most of the characters, but I've also been using the latest version of the nude mod from Holden's thread, which uses slots 38~39 on many of those same characters. These slots being the ones represented in the DLC tool, not in the actual game. I didn't want to have any conflicts, so i went through and extracted the TMC files from Holden's nude mod to repackage into different costume slots, like switching Ayane's nudes to 35 and 36, which no other DLC should be using to my knowledge. When I did, some characters' Holden nudes would show up, but none of the other mods I had would. I uninstalled everything but the edited Holden mod and I could no longer get ANY of those characters to show up.

 

I'm currently working on reediting it again and figured I'd ask for some insight into this. This time I'm going to separate the Holden mod into individual costumes for each character, but I'm still kind of clueless as to what I did wrong. What are the rules of costume naming? What causes crashes and what causes things to just not show up? Is there a difference between mods sharing costume slots in the DLC tool and mods sharing slots in-game?

[Guest GuachaLover23]

 

i try to make an topless nude Cop for Leifang but when i try to remove the shirt in Hex Edit, and try to test it out in game, the costume freeze the game and crash, or better yet, when i import the file in blender and edit the mesh and remove the shirt , i have no idea on how to import it back to TMC, i have an lot of idea but i just need more help

[ohgodwin]

Thank you for making a convenient place to find these utilities as well as a simple means of using them. You managed to make an idler like me make my own content.

 

I primarily use the second tutorial and swap out default outfits I don't like with other outfits that I do. However, the only one that hasn't worked is taking Phase4's white bikini (PHASE4_DLCU_015) and swapping it over Ayane's default costume. How would I go about troubleshooting this?

[kholdy]

Made some changes to the original post. The more I wrote of the final tutorial, the more I realized I was just copying other tutorials. So instead, I changed the final part to contain links to other tutorials which should accomplish the exact same thing. 

 

That should complete the entire thing. Let me know if there's anything you think I should add, if there's anything you don't understand, etc.

 

 

 game 2015-07-21 01-34-14-13.png game 2015-07-21 01-56-56-82.png

 

i try to make an topless nude Cop for Leifang but when i try to remove the shirt in Hex Edit, and try to test it out in game, the costume freeze the game and crash, or better yet, when i import the file in blender and edit the mesh and remove the shirt , i have no idea on how to import it back to TMC, i have an lot of idea but i just need more help 

 

 

I've actually never really done the hex method so I can't help you there. As for converting blender files to TMC, look for the TMC->OBJ program (explained in first post).

 

 

Thank you for making a convenient place to find these utilities as well as a simple means of using them. You managed to make an idler like me make my own content.

 

I primarily use the second tutorial and swap out default outfits I don't like with other outfits that I do. However, the only one that hasn't worked is taking Phase4's white bikini (PHASE4_DLCU_015) and swapping it over Ayane's default costume. How would I go about troubleshooting this?

 

 

What exactly is the error? Garbled textures, nothing showing up, clipping...? Also make sure you've tried other Phase 4 costumes on Ayane.

Also keep in mind that swapping costumes directly like this can have bad results as the bodies won't match - gaps between neck and head, for example.

[ohgodwin]

 

What exactly is the error? Garbled textures, nothing showing up, clipping...? Also make sure you've tried other Phase 4 costumes on Ayane.

Also keep in mind that swapping costumes directly like this can have bad results as the bodies won't match - gaps between neck and head, for example.

 

The game crashes in its entirety when I hover over where the swapped costume should be. I know for certain that costume slots and things like that are the not issue. I have encountered issues such as discoloration or neck gaps, but those are fixed more easily for obvious reasons.

[kholdy]

 

 

What exactly is the error? Garbled textures, nothing showing up, clipping...? Also make sure you've tried other Phase 4 costumes on Ayane.

Also keep in mind that swapping costumes directly like this can have bad results as the bodies won't match - gaps between neck and head, for example.

 

The game crashes in its entirety when I hover over where the swapped costume should be. I know for certain that costume slots and things like that are the not issue. I have encountered issues such as discoloration or neck gaps, but those are fixed more easily for obvious reasons.

 

I'm not sure if certain costumes can be flat out incompatible, but it might be happening here. Make absolutely sure you've swapped the right files and didn't put a TMCL file over a TMC or something.

You can swap other costumes onto Ayane's default, and can put Phase 4's bikini on other costumes?

[pringles89]

thank you! just did my first swap using lnk reshuffle.

[Guest GuachaLover23]

so can u please upload this TMC>OBJ file, or OBJ>TMC, i serch for days and still can not find it

[Guest GuachaLover23]

 

see this is how far i gotten with the modding Kholy

[kholdy]

Metaseq 2015-07-25 14-10-23-73.png

 

see this is how far i gotten with the modding Kholy

Sent you a pm.