[SIZE=6]This thread is old! Please refer to the new one for more up to date information!: [url]http://www.pso-world.com/forums/showthread.php?237103-PSO2-Modding-Tutorial-2-0[/url]

Our discord can be found at this link:  [url]https://discord.gg/Kds4V4Z[/url][/SIZE]

Disclaimer: This thread is to promote primarily aesthetic modifications. This is NOT about altering the way the game plays functionally.


Just as an fyi, messing with music will NOT be covered here. There's existing knowledge of this on PSO-World already and none of it requires access to an ICE Repacker. The same goes for the FMV's although I'm not sure there's a way to convert those one way or the other.

	[U]So you want to mod pso2 aesthetics, huh? First things first, you'll need this stuff:[/U]

	*Ice Expansion Tool (Ice Repacker with source) [URL="http://www.mediafire.com/file/jghadxqtcz8jvir/repacker_ice_rev2.7z/file"]http://www.mediafire.com/file/jghadxqtcz8jvir/repacker_ice_rev2.7z/file[/URL] - This is how you'll put your extracted files back together.

	*Deicer (with source)[URL="http://www.mediafire.com/download/f1raj3y3akesjr9/deICEr_v4.zip"]http://www.mediafire.com/download/f1raj3y3akesjr9/deICEr_v4.zip[/URL] - This extracts files. You generally won't be reassembling the results of this, but knowing what's in the Group 1 area of a file is important and the repacker can't tell us this. It also leads to a decent method of searching through files since it can do all of them. Keep in mind it extracts all files, regardless of location, to subfolders of the folder it's in.

	*A way to edit .dds files. These are your textures. Paint.net can do the job okay, but will show artifacts on some. Photoshop's plugin supports viewing these a bit better. GIMP

	*A hex editor of some kind. Any DXT1 .dds with mipmaps will need 8 bytes of padding added to it. I'll explain further on...

[S]	*Access to an Windows system earlier than Win10 (You can use a VM if needed). Windows 10 can't natively support JP locale properly and so this is currently necessary to make the repacker work.[/S] This was proven false. A corrected repacker package is now provided thanks to a silver king.

	*This hacked checksum file. [URL="http://www.mediafire.com/download/7jjwcy48nkz7zin/d5480a26b3dea3dda37abd1b61fb47cd"]http://www.mediafire.com/download/7jjwcy48nkz7zin/d5480a26b3dea3dda37abd1b61fb47cd[/URL] Without it, the game won't load any modified files properly.

	[U][I]Highly[/I] recommended:[/U]

        *Game File List ([URL="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GQwG49iYM1sgJhyAU5AWP-gboemzfIZjBGjTGEZSET4/edit?usp=sharing"]https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GQwG49iYM1sgJhyAU5AWP-gboemzfIZjBGjTGEZSET4/edit?usp=sharing[/URL]) - This is a work in progress, but check here before anything if you're editing stuff. It can save you a lot of time.

	*Sagethumbs [b]DO NOT USE WITH WINDOWS 10[/b]([URL="https://sourceforge.net/projects/sagethumbs/"]https://sourceforge.net/projects/sagethumbs/[/URL])- This lets you view .dds files in Windows Explorer (NOT Internet Explorer, the file explorer). Windows 10 has this feature by default and in fact, using it on Windows 10 can cause issues. On older version of Windows, having this will save you hours of searching.

	*Paint.net ([URL="http://www.getpaint.net/index.html"]http://www.getpaint.net/index.html[/URL]) - Saves .dds files properly in PSO2's formats, but also works well for previewing file sizes and making sure your format is the same file size as the original.

	*A decent HDD to store this stuff. If you have PSO2 on an SSD, I really don't recommend extracting your files to there since there are MANY files to work with and it will likely eat its lifespan. The size of everything after it's unpacked with the deicer will probably be enormous as well.

        *NIFL v0.05 ([URL="http://www.mediafire.com/download/b0e3rmnb7j6aner/NIFL_v0.05.zip"]http://www.mediafire.com/download/b0e3rmnb7j6aner/NIFL_v0.05.zip[/URL]) - This can do a few tweaks to the newer model type and output them to .obj which can be useful for changing models on things that can't be opened with aqp2obj.

        *aqp2obj ([URL="http://www.mediafire.com/download/n4ei3gc8gwcxkpr/aqp2obj.zip"]http://www.mediafire.com/download/n4ei3gc8gwcxkpr/aqp2obj.zip[/URL]) - A model converter of sorts. You can use drag and drop to use files with it. Run a VTBF model through this to convert it to .obj format. Make sure not to delete the "backup" .aqp created since this is necessary for repacking. When your editing is done, run the .obj back through this program and you can repack it with the rest of its files.

        *AFP v1.01 ([URL="http://www.mediafire.com/download/dbu8vrzc1c5yduw/AFP%28.aqp%29_v1.01.zip"]http://www.mediafire.com/download/dbu8vrzc1c5yduw/AFP%28.aqp%29_v1.01.zip[/URL]) - Packs and unpacks .aqo's from .aqp. Doable by hand, but there's some sizes you have to measure in hex. This avoids that, so if by chance you need it, it saves a lot of time. Keep in mind that converting deicer .aqo's will require you to strip the first four bytes (aqo. ASCII) of the header in a hex editor.

        *Noesis ([URL="http://www.mediafire.com/download/c90ky9kxt88vyau/noesisv4177_w_pso2_plugin.zip"]http://www.mediafire.com/download/c90ky9kxt88vyau/noesisv4177_w_pso2_plugin.zip[/URL]) - This is a model viewer that will let you look at .aqo files. The plugin hasn't been touched since closed beta so bear in mind that a LOT of models don't work with it, but it will work for many outfits and weapons.

        *SEGA-PSO2 Viewer ([url]https://www.dropbox.com/s/lg38quztte974gx/PSO2ReadTool.zip?dl=0[/url])- This is another model viewer which is originally a part of a larger program that supports more models than Noesis and can scroll through folders and files much easier. It does not support any kind of rigging for pso2 models however. You can use Ninja Ripper to export the models into something usable. The full program is here [url]http://www.credes.com/product/254/forumdata.aspx?arg=MTEzL0ddTVNWYlFWWFQ%2bP0BBQj%2fV[/url] although this viewer is included in the free version, the free dl itself is large, and the author wants you to make a login to download it. So hopefully nobody minds that I'm uploading this by itself. For reference, the actual program supports FFXI and FFXIV models though.

[B][U]**Preface**[/U][/B]

	Okay, so with that out of the way, let's talk about how we begin this. Currently, there's not a public listing of this game's file contents that's anywhere near complete, and as it's constantly being updated, you'll need to likely recheck things often anyways. So what I recommend to do is put the deicer on a drive with a lot of space and set it to go after removing the files below temporarily from your game folder.

	**TRYING TO EXTRACT THESE FILES WITH THE DEICER WILL CRASH IT. PLEASE TEMPORARILY MOVE THEM TO ANOTHER FOLDER BEFORE EXTRACTING**

	Thanks to asqvenkl for this list. As of this writing, I believe these are the only ones that will crash deicer.:

17cc64bb922e9ef4be897b5c1fd85263
6d853ed891a0ec524ba5ab4a6cf5b667
9f2af7843a769fce9cc4a01d2352b0ba
e59b86227ee26dcd26502a3bc051e34c
fd238cec3dc65d6b573eaf8eb81c78c7
4f78ce7584205cd16b4d83c039690600

[B][U]**Main Guide**[/U][/B]

I've tried to make this as understandable as possible, but please understand that by it's nature, a guide like this will be difficult for some people to go through. I'm happy to answer any questions, but realize that there are technical things you will need to understand to do some of this.

[U]*0. Quick Things to Note*[/U]

Just as quick note before all of this, in some cases it's not necessary to repack files! Weapons of the same type, for example, can essentially be freely swapped with each other. So if you knew what say, the bio jet boots file was, and wanted to make a mod that replaced a camo with them, you could simply copy the file, rename it to the filename of the desired camo, and replace. This works for many area skyboxes as well.

[U]*1. Extract files (Running this off of an unhyper-threaded i7 4820k processor clocked at 4GHZ, I can say this will take a long time.)*[/U]

If there's ever a more formal list of what's what, this may become less necessary. But for now the best way to set up is to extract everything with deicer aside from the aforementioned files. Your deicer's folder is where all of the extracted file folders will be created so pick carefully. You may actually want to separate out your game files and deicer folders a bit to avoid lag in your file browser. Start it, hit multi, hit List Dir, and navigate to your pso2_bin/data/win32 folder. Check "Check all ICE" and select Extract All before clicking Done. After a long while, (as of this writing, PSO2 has over 40 THOUSAND files) the Multi Extractor will say "Operation Complete!". There will be a LOT of folders and files, so be patient if your computer lags a bit trying to move through that.

The repacker may be able to do this as well with much less HDD space usage, but I've not put much testing into it for mass amounts of files and friends claim it to be unreliable for that. In addition, it does NOT preserve Group folders which means that you'll have to run any particular file through the deicer to know what it might have. More on Group folders later.

[U]*2. Decide what you're looking for.*[/U]

More than likely, you're trying to mess with the textures on things. Even if you're trying to model swap though, textures are going to be key to figuring out what you're doing, more than likely. Narrowing this down can make searching through files much less painful in any case. A list of helpful naming conventions is listed at the bottom to assist with this. Also keep in mind that for example, a background, might be an amalgamation of multiple objects rather than simply a single archive.

[U]*3. Use Windows Explorer to search. (If you're using some other way to sort this stuff or already have your file(s), skip ahead to step 4)*[/U]

So Shadow, you might say, what use is having this stuff extracted if I have no way to sort and search through it? Well, this is where Sagethumbs is very useful. First off though, you'll probably want to uncheck "Always search filenames and contents" in your Explorer search options, as seen below.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/824pPl6.png[/IMG]

You'll also probably want to make sure that when you're searching, you sort by type or name for simplicity's sake. You can do this by searching something in the place you want, right clicking and selecting sort by type, backing out and restarting the search. We restart the search after this because otherwise, Explorer has a bothersome habit of searching the files, seeing "oh wait, we should be sorting these", and then searching AGAIN after it realizes they should be sorted.

Now, if we type say, wp_, into the search bar in explorer in the folder above all of our extracted files, we can search out just weapon textures. If you want, you *could* type .dds or something very vague. But if you do, be sure you have a lot of RAM and that your computer overall isn't a potato. Even on a strong computer, searching by smaller categories will eat your resources to a degree. It's also worth noting that Windows Explorer can become unstable due to the sheer amount of crap we'll be looking through.

To open a folder with what we want, I'd recommend right clicking the file, going to properties, highlighting and copying the entirety of it's Location text (It will scroll if it goes beyond the window), and pasting this text in a SEPERATE window. This is so that we don't have to search all over again in the case that we got the wrong file. You can try to be clever and click "Open File Location", but this won't open a separate window and you'll be forced to search again if you need to look more through the files.

[U]*4. Figuring out which variant to edit.*[/U]

So you'll notice certain files have multiple versions. This is because multiple archives use the same file and so contain duplicates. For this reason, certain effects alone aren't worthwhile to edit on their own. However in a lot of cases with relatively small numbers of duplicates, it simply means there are a few cutscenes that use it. You'll generally know it's a cutscene from the presence of other types of files alongside yours (ex. enemy files among weapon files) and files with ev_ somewhere. You can edit these too if you want to make your creation show up in more places, but I can't guarantee they'll compile and only the file that doesn't appear in the cutscene will show up in most areas of the game. Just keep in mind the folder name ex. _0bc297307aaab85c91ee4c781fa241ca, or whatever your folder may be under, is the name of the file you want to edit minus the underscore.

[U]*4.5. About PSO2 and .dds files*[/U]

A quick note about .dds files for PSO2. Your files can be a larger resolution or smaller resolution than the originals seemingly as long they are a power of 16 ex. 256, 512, 1024... So you can have a file that is 4096x256, but not a file that is 500x500.

The game is also picky about the subformats of your .dds. Ex. if your dds is dxt1 originally, your edit/replacement of it should also be dxt1. Opening the original dds in a hex editor will show you the variant in the first few text bytes.

Lastly, if the original .dds has mipmaps, yours will need these as well. Since .dds files aren't compressed, an easy way to tell if a .dds has mipmaps is to open it in Paint.net ([url]http://www.getpaint.net/index.html[/url] since the paint.net website is something else), try to save as your dds file, and look at the preview file size. Checking and unchecking "generate mipmaps" for a particular resolution and dds variant will tell you what size a texture of a particular size will be with or without mipmaps.

FOR DXT1 FILES THAT HAVE MIPMAPS, YOU MUST ALSO ALWAYS ADD 8 BYTES OF 00 TO THE END OF YOUR FILE OR THE GAME WILL CRASH. This is why you need a hex editor. For some reason SEGA's DXT1 .dds's with mipmaps are strange and the game cannot handle the footers of them missing those 8 bytes.

[U]*5. Using the Repacker*[/U]

Now you'll need to unpack the file you picked with the ICE Repacker. You should be free to drag whatever file you want to mess with onto ice.exe. Keep in mind that ice.exe was not thought out particularly well here and that because of Windows limitations, an extensionless file and a folder with the same name cannot exist in the same folder. Therefore, the program will fail to create output if you don't rename your file's extension to something before you try to extract it while it's in the same folder as ice.exe. This is why deicer puts a _ in front of it's folder names, for reference. You may also need to have the file stored on the same drive to be able to drag and drop it on.

You'll probably notice that unlike deicer folder outputs, this dumps everything in one folder and DOES NOT have separate group folders. For files that have a Group 1, not all (ex. many outfits ) do, this is a problem. And so, we look back at our deicer version of the folder and read the group 1 file list text file to figure this out. As a side note, even though there are commands to create a file list output, this does NOT differentiate Group 1 and Group 2 files.

When you know what files are in Group 1, be sure they or their extensions are listed in Group1List.txt. Make sure that no subfolders of the ice.exe folder have any files with names/extensions from the Group1List.txt and that your Group 1 files you wish to include are in a subfolder of ice.exe's folder.

When your Group1List.txt is set to go and your group 1 files are placed appropriately, drag your folder onto one of the ICE Repack .bat files. This will assemble "Yourfoldername".icefile. Remove .icefile and be sure your filename is correct. Then, place it in your pso2_bin/data/win32/ folder and replace the original. Make sure your checksum file is also in the win32 folder there or your mod WILL fail. Note that these things ARE possible without issue while the game is running, although changes will not show until said file reloads. Voila. You've made a mod!

If your game crashes when you try to load your mod, be sure that an unmodified version of your file can be successfully repacked with the repacker and used ingame. A few files that SHOULD work are 93e47f9a37fb5d3bd72dccdb6e91ae89 (Ult Lilippa terrain textures), d5480a26b3dea3dda37abd1b61fb47cd (Yasminkov 8000), and 7eb672c69dae00b33532a088b47ab3b8 (Default Yellow Rappy Suit). If these don't work, you've likely fumbled somewhere.


Remember, this repacker does not work with every file, but it works with many and it should at least let us as normal players have *some* modding capability. If you want more, the source is available above and the people who made the superior compiler (which they can use/distribute at their own discretion) that's used for the English Patch are around.

That's all folks!... except for this hopefully helpful section that explains the some of the unpacked filenames below. And let me know if any links go down!

[B][U]**Unpacked Filename Explanations**[/U][/B]
[spoiler-box]
This may not list or explain everything, but it should at least give an idea of where one can start.
Many files will be named in these formats:

ad_!!_@@_##_$$_%%_+_&
-the ad denotes it's a unit file.
-!! relates in some way to the time peroid of a file was produced in, currently ranging from 01-03. No known, meaningful dates to note though.
-@@ denotes which area a unit is for. 01 for rear, 02 for arm, 03 for leg.
-& denotes a letter defining which texture type the .dds is. d is for diffuse, the basic coloring. s represents specular, a map defining how shiny a texture is with red colors, if it is self illuminated by blue, and something else with it's alpha channel. n is the normal map and defines how light affects the object in order to add extra detail.
Currently unsure of other numbers here.

am_
-Used for casino game textures. These are fairly self explanatory.

eff_
-Used for effects textures. These may contain unexpected things like certain enemy models as well.
-eff_ams relates to casino effects
-eff_bs relates to effects for bosses. Characters following these files denote the specific boss it relates to.
-eff_com is common effects
-eff_en is for enemy effects
-eff_ev is for event effects
-eff_it is for general ingame item textures
-eff_lby is for lobby action props
-eff_meat Ultimate infection points?
-eff_pa PA effects
-eff_pb Photon Blast effects
-eff_sn Area related effects
-eff_te Technique effects
-eff_wp Weapon effects

en_
-Used for enemy textures
-en_kobito used for lilippans
-en_meat is used for infection points. Every enemy that can have one has one here, basically.
-en_mono Used before shironian/kuronian enemy textures
-en_ptm Used for phantom enemies
-en_rappy self explanatory, but there are many variants
-en_toy Used for toy darkers
-en_umincyu used for vopar sentients
-en_unk used for many rare enemies
-en_wtr used for vopar enemies

ev_
-used for event textures

gacha_banner/load_banner/shop_banner
-These are some of the pictures you find in loading screens

mg_
-Mag textures.

ob_!!!!_..._&
-!!!! denotes the object number or, with objects that have another _ separated area for numbers in their name, an area related number. If it's an area number, the second number determines the object number.
-& denotes a letter defining which texture type the .dds is. d is for diffuse, the basic coloring. s represents specular, a map defining how shiny a texture is with red colors, if it is self illuminated by blue, and something else with it's alpha channel. n is the normal map and defines how light affects the object in order to add extra detail. p is related to glowing effects I think.

pb_
-Photon blast creature textures.

pe_
-Pet textures.

pl_
-player character textures
-pl_ah used for accessories.
-pl_ba used for body paint.
-pl_bd used for normal outfits.
-pl_bp used for stickers/emblems.
-pl_bs used for basic skin textures.
-pl_ey used for eyes.
-pl_hb used for eyebrows.
-pl_hd used for head parts?
-pl_hr used for hair.
-pl_hs used for face paint.
-pl_lg used for leg parts.
-pl_mob random civilian textures?
-pl_rm used for arm parts.
-pl_tr used for torso parts.

sn_!!!!
-Denotes area textures
-!!!! is the area number. Most of the time, all textures that share one are for the same place
-010X lobby textures. ep3 will be listed for the modern lobby.
-0150 campship textures.
-018X-019X team room textures
-021X City Textures
-022X Darker's Den textures
-023X Mothership textures
-024X Double's Innards textures
-029X Luther boss area?
-031X Naberius Forest
-032X Naberius Tundra
-033X Naberius Ruins
-0390-0391 Elder Boss Area
-0392 Double boss area
-0393 PD boss area
-041X desert area
-0420 tunnels area
-043X Mos Eisle- er, Quarry
-051X Caves
-052X Skyscape/Floating continent
-053X Sanctum
-0590 ?
-061X Coast
-062X Seabed
-063X Facility
-069X ?
-071X Shironia
-072X Kuronia
-079X Shiro/Kuro Boss Areas
-081X Tokyo
-089X Tokyo boss areas?
-090X Parallel areas?
-10XX room textures.
-15XX ?
-200X ?
-2100 Tower Defense 1-3
-2110 Tower Defense 4
-2200 Ult Naberius
-2210 Ult Lilippa
-2220 Ult Ruins (story)
-2300 Magatsu part 1
-2310 Magatsu part 2?
-sn0101-sn0200 early city textures
-sn0290 Ragne Arena

sqenv
-environment reflection maps

ui_
-User Interface (menus etc.)

vc_robot
-AIS mech

wp_!!_@@_##_$$_%%_r_&
-weapons and camos. In the client, these are handled EXACTLY the same way. Only the server designates them as anything else.
-!! production group. Again, no idea how much this means.
-@@ 01 Sword, 02 Wired Lance, 03 Partizan, 04 Twin Daggers, 05 Double Saber, 06 Knuckles, 07 Gunslash, 08 Rifle, 09 Launcher, 10 TMG, 11 Rod, 12 Talis, 13 Wand, 14 Katana, 15 Bow, 16 Jet Boots, 17 Dual Blades, 18 Tact
-$$ number
-%% version, more for early weapons with alva and vita variants
-& denotes a letter defining which texture type the .dds is. d is for diffuse, the basic coloring. s represents specular, a map defining how shiny a texture is with red colors, if it is self illuminated by blue, and something else with it's alpha channel. n is the normal map and defines how light affects the object in order to add extra detail. p is related to glowing effects I think.
[/spoiler-box]

Edit: In addition, Madevil made this list of the extracted contents of everything as of April in the game's ICE files: [URL="http://www.mediafire.com/download/yfmxe7x9s9qb4a7/4.0101.3.txt"]http://www.mediafire.com/download/yfmxe7x9s9qb4a7/4.0101.3.txt[/URL]
This does not explain what they are in plain words, but can be helpful for those who have an idea of what they're looking for already.

Please let me know if anything is unclear or if you have any questions!