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Creating a Dwarven Hero from CAH

robnkarla

Category:	Code
Level:	Intermediate
Created:	Saturday April 7, 2007 - 21:47
Updated:	Saturday June 27, 2009 - 18:34
Views:	14751
Summary:	Create your own hero off of the Dwarven Sage Create-A-Hero

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21 votes

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Portraits and Textures

Portraits and Buttons:

If you want to use an existing portrait that is fine, just replace the references with the image that you want and skip the information below. To create your own, follow the steps bellow.

There are a number of Portrait and Button references in the Dwarven[HeroName].ini file. I've included two photoshop files to help create your own custom buttons that mimic the feeling of EA's images. Below is the list of images that you will need to create/replace:

HP[HeroName]Portrait
HI[HeroName]
HI[HeroName]_res

First, we'll create the portrait. The file I provided is from Photoshop 5.0. I'm not sure what program is the best to provide, but that is what I use for 2d art. If anyone wants to update this area for me, feel free to send me a PM.

1) Create a portrait using any method that you want that is 192X192. You can grab a screenshot of your hero, a capture of the movie, or whatever you wish to use. For the custom heroes that I created, I would grab the screenshot/capture and mask the character to only pull what I want.
2) Copy the portrait as a layer into BlankCharacter.psd. There are two layers currently, the background showing the scroll, and another scroll layer giving the color for the portrait with an 80% opacity. This gives the semi-colorized feeling of the EA portraits. I'm sure it is possible to use other programs to capture tha same look.
3) When finished, flatten the image and save it in the art folder in the correct place as a dds. Create an entry for the mappedimages. I usually have a seperate file in \data\ini\mappedimages\aptimages for all of my images.

Code



MappedImage HP[HeroName]Portrait

  Texture = HP[HeroName].tga

  TextureWidth = 256

  TextureHeight = 256

  Coords = Left:0 Top:0 Right:192 Bottom:192

  Status = NONE

End

For the buttons, I've provided another file to use to create the buttons both for the selection at the base of the screen, when purchasing the hero, as well as when reviving the hero. The file to use is BackgroundButton.psd. As with the other file provided it is in Photoshop 5.0 format.

1) Take the portrait that you created in the previous step and scale it down to 64X64.
2) Copy and paste the rescaled portrait into the BackgroundButton.psd file. If needed, reorder the layers so that the portrait is right above the background and below the adjustment layers.
3) Save two copies of the current file. Both of the in \art\hi\, one as HI[HeroName] and flatten the other as HI[HeroName]_res.dds.
4) You are done with the [HeroName]_res.dds image. With the HI[HeroName], delete the adjustment layers to get rid of the blue coloring.
4) If you wish to have your hero selection button look like the other EA heroes you will need to work with the alpha channel. Color the area you wish to hide black and then save the file as HI[HeroName]
5) Lastly create two entries in your mappedimages file

Code



MappedImage HI[HeroName]

  Texture = HI[HeroName].tga

  TextureWidth = 64

  TextureHeight = 64

  Coords = Left:0 Top:0 Right:63 Bottom:63

  Status = NONE

End 

MappedImage HI[HeroName]_res

  Texture = HI[HeroName]_res.tga

  TextureWidth = 64

  TextureHeight = 64

  Coords = Left:0 Top:0 Right:63 Bottom:63

  Status = NONE

End

You now have your own custom portraits and buttons. I realize this is probably a big mess, but I'll try to clean it up soon.

Textures:

This will be coming soon. The default textures will be somewhat bland. I'll walk you through taking the existing textures and livening them up. If you are looking for the textures they are found in the \art\ch\ folder, usually starting with chdw_.

You now have your very own dwarven hero based on the create-a-hero dwarven sage model. Add him to the buildable heroes in the dwarven faction and play him to your hearts content. I hope you made it!

	Hits	Added
RJ-RotWK	2188	April 8, 2007 - 2:03
Sage .rar file to use	2832	April 7, 2007 - 21:48

Comments

Display order: Newest first | Page: 1, 2

Anthem - Saturday October 3, 2009 - 13:18

Well Ingwe, you'll have to do a few things to make that work. Frist you need to set the Weaponsets like this:

Code

    WeaponSet

        Conditions = None 

        Weapon = PRIMARY    [Your melee weapon]

        AutoChooseSources = PRIMARY FROM_PLAYER FROM_SCRIPT FROM_AI

    End    

    WeaponSet

        Conditions = WEAPONSET_TOGGLE_1        

        Weapon = PRIMARY    [Your bow]

        AutoChooseSources = PRIMARY FROM_PLAYER FROM_SCRIPT FROM_AI

    End

And then you have to add this:

Code



    Behavior = DoCommandUpgrade ModuleTag_CreateAHeroMakeSureArcherUsesBowInitially

        TriggeredBy                        = Upgrade_ObjectLevel1

        GetUpgradeCommandButtonName        = Command_CreateAHero_A_ToggleWeapon

        RemoveUpgradeCommandButtonName    = Command_CreateAHero_A_ToggleWeapon

    End

And then make sure that that the hero gets the upgrade "Upgrade_ObjectLevel1" at level 1. If you want to put the weapon toggle at later levels I don't know what to do at the moment, but if you really want to I'll check it out.

Grey Beard - Wednesday January 21, 2009 - 13:05

can someone not mkae somthing like this for bfme1

Ingwe - Sunday March 2, 2008 - 2:44

Oh ok. Thanks. We figured some of the stuff out as well since then, at the time we were quite stumped. We (chrisbolling2 and me) spent five hours on figuring it out. ROFL. A lot of bling had to be eliminated LoL. Got the sword to turn to a normal bow too. But as far as using switch command set from bow to sword, haven't tried it quite yet.

Ridder Geel (Staff) - Sunday February 10, 2008 - 3:43

Ingwe,
you have to use the code for the bling hiding:
HideSubObjects =
instead of doing:
Showsubobjects =

I figured that out myself when i was fooling around with the wizard CAH.

If you have noticed there is the 'shining' thing around your hero,
thats because its a dwarf:
you need to remove this part of the coding above the design parameters:

Code



    ;Draw module just for the HeroSelection

    Draw = W3DScriptedModelDraw Icon

        ModelConditionState = NONE

            Model                    = Icon02

        End

    End

about your person shooting with a sword you should look in the CreateAHeroWeaponUpgrades.inc
at these 2 weapon things:
Belthronding Weapon upgrade.
MithlondBow Bow Weapon upgrade.

Im not sure how the toggle weapon thing for the archer CAH works so i can't help alot there...

Oh, and BTW, robnkarla the tutorial is great except for the points i adressed up there.
But without your tutorial i wouldn't have the fun heroes I made, so thanks for the great tutorial!

chrisbolling2 - Friday January 11, 2008 - 15:19

Having the same problem as Ingwe, started a topic in the forums. Tutorial seems a little incomplete to me.

Ingwe - Friday December 14, 2007 - 2:05

I applied this method with an Elven Archer custom hero. All the sounds are right. She has the same powers as Elrond does just because I didn't feel like messing with all that yet. She has a cool upgraded arrow that looks like a Silverthorne arrow (added my own weapon in weapon.ini). And (most) everything works great! Great tutorial. However, there are two problems when I applied this. For one thing, she shoots arrows...with a sword. For another thing, she has tons of bling. She has some kind of tan cape and a shield on the back along with a red hood. I want just a plain hero. I didn't add any bling to the file or anything but the bling is still there! I've searched for things to help on this problem but don't find anything on it. I usually don't like to put up posts asking for help because I like to figure this out myself; alas, I can't for the life of me figure it out. Help. :o

--------

I applied this method with an Elven Archer custom hero. All the sounds are right. She has the same powers as Elrond does just because I didn't feel like messing with all that yet. She has a cool upgraded arrow that looks like a Silverthorne arrow (added my own weapon in weapon.ini). And (most) everything works great! Great tutorial. However, there are two problems when I applied this. For one thing, she shoots arrows...with a sword. For another thing, she has tons of bling. She has some kind of tan cape and a shield on the back along with a red hood. I want just a plain hero. I didn't add any bling to the file or anything but the bling is still there! I've searched for things to help on this problem but don't find anything on it. I usually don't like to put up posts asking for help because I like to figure this out myself; alas, I can't for the life of me figure it out. Help. :o

--------

I applied this method with an Elven Archer custom hero. All the sounds are right. She has the same powers as Elrond does just because I didn't feel like messing with all that yet. She has a cool upgraded arrow that looks like a Silverthorne arrow (added my own weapon in weapon.ini). And (most) everything works great! Great tutorial. However, there are two problems when I applied this. For one thing, she shoots arrows...with a sword. For another thing, she has tons of bling. She has some kind of tan cape and a shield on the back along with a red hood. I want just a plain hero. I didn't add any bling to the file or anything but the bling is still there! I've searched for things to help on this problem but don't find anything on it. I usually don't like to put up posts asking for help because I like to figure this out myself; alas, I can't for the life of me figure it out. Help. :o

Bart (Administrator) - Monday June 25, 2007 - 7:34

check out data\ini\mappedimages\

{IP}Sauron - Monday June 25, 2007 - 4:44

@aragon94: the reason why some commandbuttons is on the same pic is becuz there's a ini file which cut out small reas of the image and name it :P

aragon94 - Monday June 4, 2007 - 4:27

Ok, I found the portraits... But they are with the CommandButton images in the same pic!! Does anyone know how to make the portrait then??

aragon94 - Monday June 4, 2007 - 4:24

By the way, where is the art folder where you put the portrait into? I only find apt, not art.

I always wondered where the CommandButton images and the hero portraits are...

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Creating a Dwarven Hero from CAH

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