A Modding Tutorial: Putting It Together

A. The Basic Way

Okay, you know how to code and recolor, now let’s put it all together and get your recolored monster in the game.

Copy the myconid definition into a new Notepad document.

Here’s the mushroom file:

Just for fun, rename him ‘Minifig the Evil’. Now let’s look at how to tell it to use your image as a skin.

Here’s the model:

Change it to:

This will work only if you name your skin the name of the original monster skin. Now save the evil minifig definition file in your Mod’ MONSTERS folder as “monsters.dat”.

Play the game and summon your monster!

This will work for any item in the game, though for helms and weapons you have to change the folder for the model ( *.MDL ), for armor you change the animated model ( *.SMS ).

B. Material override

This is a simpler way to do it. For the mushroom under MODEL add this line:

If the monster has an alpha, you put that where none:none:none is right now.

Note:

Simpler, yes, but notoriously unreliable. Works only for monsters, frequently doesn’t work at all, and sometimes over-writes default texture files.

C. How to do it with weapons, helms, and shields

Take the *.MDL file for that weapon and put it in a folder named "PLAYER" inside your mod folder. You can actually name it anything that the default game folders are named, as long as it's not “ITEMS”. Then, in that folder named PLAYER (or whatever else you want) add your redone texture and the reference file that already exists (usually called the name of the texture with an A on the end or the name of the original thing with _alpha or _spec on the end). OR add a new alpha made by you... as described above in recoloring.

Then, in the code, reset the MODEL entry to reference the same model file except in the folder you put it in.

D. How to do it with armor

Take the *.SMS file that goes with the original piece or armor, and put it in a folder named “ITEMS” (or whatever you want other than PLAYER) in your mod folder. Then add your new texture with the alpha.

Then, add these files:

All these are located in the player folder.

If you don't add those files, your guy wearing the armor will look roughly like this:

So, the point: ADD THE FILES.

Then, change the ANIMATED MODEL to the same file but in your mod.