New to amnesia modding, various questions

[Osbor]

i have a somewhat simplistic project in mind, but from what i have been reading it would be technically classified as a total conversion mod

anyway, my goals are severalfold. just wondering if anyone can chime in on how to start on any of these

1) customizing the lantern model, removing the human hand and replacing it with a sort of cloud of magical energy near the handle (implying telekinesis), possibly a semi transparent animated model, possibly a sprite effect

2) adding an entirely different monster. made from a custom model with its own rigging and animations (either from in the hpl editor or from blender and such)

3) replacing the walking sounds with different ones

4) replacing the monster sounds with different ones

5) adding custom, spoken lines to certain parts of the game (with environmental triggers), with included subtitles.

6) replacing the "hovering hand" icon that appears when you mouse over and interactable object with some other image

6) a custom story of course, but editing one of those is pretty easy with the hpl editor.

[Apjjm]

Firstly, the wiki is a great resource, and in the following reply I will be linking to it, so if you have yet to give the hpl2 section a good read-through, it will really help you out. http://wiki.frictionalgames.com/hpl2/start

Secondly, this reply is really a quick run through of what is required for each stage. A guideline. You are going to have to work a lot of stuff out, and it will take time experimenting. I suggest you get all the config stuff sorted out first, then move onto assets such as the HUD / Icons / Monsters.

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To start with, you will want to make folder inside the amnesia directory where all of your full conversion stuff will live. You can then just zip that up and distribute it to make it trivial for users to install.

you will want to look at the documentation on the main_init.cfg (which, for ease of typing i will now refer to as MI) as this is the first file the game looks at when loading in the details for you full conversion! Check out and mod a copy of the MI in the game's config folder.

The next thing to do is to make yourself a custom resources file. You will want to specify your own in the MI:

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Resources = "MyConversion/resources.cfg"

You can then add the following line to a copy of the resources file situated at the correct location:

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<Directory Path="/MyConversion" AddSubDirs="true" />

You can specify then any other config file replacements you want to make here.

1) The answer to this lies in the resources file. First, though, copy the whole models folder into your full conversion folder, and them modify the copies of the hand entities until you are satisfied. You can now tell the game to not bother looking at the original hand entities. This is done by simply removing this line from your modded resources file:

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<Directory Path="/models" AddSubDirs="true" />

As all the stuff from your full conversion is loaded in already, the hand objects should be replaced!

2) You will want to check out this as well as look at the exisiting models. Not everything is documented here, so you are going to have to spend some time trouble-shooting and playing around. I strongly suggest you try modding copies of the original enemies first to understand what stuff does what, and how they work.

3) This is done in a file called "game.cfg". You can specify a custom game.cfg file in the main_init file (just like we did with the resources!). Copy across the original file, you will be looking for lines like:

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JumpSound = "player_jump"
CrouchSound = "player_crouch"
StandSound = "player_stand"

Lets say we change them to:

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JumpSound = "player_jump_modded"
CrouchSound = "player_crouch_modded"
StandSound = "player_stand_modded"

You will then need to create custom .snt files in your full conversion directory (or subdirectory of) with the appropriate names. E.g: something with a path of "MyConversion/sounds/player/player_jump_modded.snt" could be used with the game.cfg settings suggested.

4) This can be done inside the monster properties in the model editor. You again will have to make custom .snt files (open the existing ones up to understand how they work), and put in your own .ogg files. You can then save the modified entities into some subfolder in your full conversion folder.

5) You are going to have to look at language files for that, as well has scripting and notes as to how it is currently done. I haven't really toyed about with this too much myself, but it should be possible to work this out.

6) This is something out the graphics folder. Resources.cfg stuff again to tell the game to ignore the current game graphics stuff, and copy across the whole folder and replace as necessary.

In your case, you might want to look at stuff in the HUD subfolder with names like "HUD_crosshair_over_grab".

7) A custom story is different from a full conversion ONLY in that you cannot do any config file changes, and that you need to set up the custom story in such a way as the game recognises it as such. There is plenty of info on that here

There is lots more stuff to play about with. Just remember to work in stages, and create backups of stuff that works in your FC before changing them.

[Osbor]

ah, excellent, thanks
from your description, it seems like amnesia modding is a little roundabout.

Do new models need to be "passed through" the hpl editor before being put in the game? since the game probably cannot recognize plain old 3d model files or animations? that's what it seems like, and that's what i was sort of afraid of. stuff getting lost in translation is a pain.

i expected most of the image and sound edits would just be digging through the game files and replacing things, just wanted to make sure..
but, a .snt file? i assume sounds also need to be passed through the hpl and converted into a proper format before amnesia can recognize them.

and it seems strange that full voice would be that troublesome to work with. the game itself seems to use a very straightforward triggering system that just plays a sound file, at least that's what i get from playing the single player.

i kind of miss the days where all the textures and images were stored as simple .jpgs, and you could make the whole game pink with MSpaint and copious use of the bucket

[Apjjm]

Well, it is just providing you much more control of the resources (perhaps more control than is required in some areas, given other limitations). The model conversions done are actually just specifying information about that "entity" in game, such as physical properties, attaching sounds and telling the game if that entity is an enemy, or some other form of physics object. Sadly, the documentation on the model-editor is sparse (I've spent hours trying to work out what a certain check-box does to no avail).

The .snt file is again like this. For straight-forward sounds activated via script and other means this isn't required, but for enemies the .snt file provides information about the sound, for example it allows you to pick one out of a set of sound files to play at random, and also specifies volume information and details about blocking IIRC.

These are both just text xml files, however you get a model-editor for the entities as there are quite a lot of options there.

As for the voices, the hardest part is putting in the lines and stuff in the language file and setting up the language and flashback files. I haven't really played around with this myself as I haven't really had to do subs.

Edit:
Just took a look, open up the flashbacks folder and you will see some .flash files. Open in note-pad, and these are again some xml files:

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<Voice VoiceSound="flashbacks/CH01L03_MapRoom_01.ogg" EffectSound="" TextCat="Flashbacks" TextEntry="CH01L03_MapRoom_01" />

Is a sample line. So it looks like you specify a sound file as the bit, then the catagory and entry in the language file which corresponds to that line.