copy files in The Walking Dead - Definitive Series/Archives
I'm happy to introduce you to my new mod. Today you'll have the chance to play season two from a new, scary, and dark perspective: that of a zombified Clementine. I hope you like this mod.
I would like to point out that in the scene where Clem stitches the wound on her left arm, the view does not work well and Clem's original arm appears. I still haven't been able to fix that scene. Since it's at the end of the first episode, you can easily start the second episode; you won't miss a thing. If there is any experienced modder or developer who knows how to fix that scene I would gladly accept their help.
Some people who have had success with swapping may have noticed the trend where you have all the files with your swap character’s name on it – but there are clearly some files not there. Maybe they don’t have any ptables, or maybe you’ve done your swap and parts of your character are just missing. You can’t find any files you missed and you’re wondering where they must be if you don’t have them already.
And the reason this happens is because your swap character normally uses reused assets. They don’t have their own ptables because they are using someone else’s, or they don’t have unique textures for their eyes because they share a file with other characters.
You can trial and error your way into finding which assets they are using, or you could try using the Telltale Inspector Tool created by Lucas in the Telltale Modding Group. (massive brain on this bloke – if you want to donate to him for his major efforts, it would definitely be appreciated) The readme and information on the tools can be found >>here<< and the most current release can be found >>here<<.
At the time of making this mini-tutorial, the most current version is ALPHA 1.0.2 – the information I’m presenting here and the screenshots used relate to this release, things may look or work differently in future.
The tool itself is capable of a lot more than I’m making note of here, and can be used to edit the information within the files if you know what you’re doing… I’m only giving a very layman’s explanation of one use of it to look at file information. Below you will find a very simple set of directions on using the Inspector tool to open props to find a character’s ptables, and then opening a character mesh to find the associated textures.
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Ptables and Animations
For example, let’s say we want to figure out what ptables Carley uses in season 1, and we notice that she doesn’t have any ptables in any of the data archives. We therefore have to find out whose ptables she is using if we want her to have an animated face during swaps.
First of all, we want to use Telltale Explorer to export out her prop file (save it somewhere handy so you can find it again later), and from there we can use Lucas’ Telltale Inspector to look at it properly.
1. Run the TelltaleInspector.exe, and click the [Open] drop down menu and select [Open Prop]
2. There will be another drop down menu that says [Select], we want to select the game where this prop file came from – in this case we need to select [The Walking Dead: Definitive Series]
3. Press the [Select] button to confirm you have selected the correct game
4. You should now have the interface for prop files from that game, but to look at the specific file we have previously exported using the Telltale Explorer, we need to click on [Import Property Set]
This should open up an explorer window where you need to direct the Inspector to the prop file you want to open.
5. Once you have successfully loaded the prop file, you need to click on the [>Properties] sub menu to expand the information shown at the bottom of the window. The information about phonemes is right near the bottom of the list as shown here when hovered over:
Click on the [Modify Handle Value] on the right column next to where the phoneme information was shown.
A new window should open, and here we can see the name of the phoneme file that her default state is drawing from. In this case, we can see Carley is using Lilly’s ptables.
However, I will note that in other seasons of the game, this same information can be seen in a different location but with the same 5 steps leading up to it… for example, in A New Frontier, if you wanted to know which ptables and animation files are used on Javier’s father when he appears in flashbacks near the end of the game, you could look into the sk61_salvador305.prop.
Here we can see that his “Skeleton Face” is wd300GM – this means he uses the ptables and animations with this name. I assume the name implies “Walking Dead, Season 3, Generic Male”, I don’t know if that’s accurate, but what matters is that you now know it’s these generic files that he uses.
And if you want to look for a minor character in The Final Season, like the rancher who was taking care of baby AJ, the same situation applies here.
Her skeleton face is the same as Lilly’s in season 4, and therefore when Rancher Helen doesn’t have her own files to load, she is loading Lilly’s ptables and animations.
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Meshes and Textures
Let’s say we have tried to do a swap, but for some reason part of the swapped character isn’t loading. A common one that can happen is characters having missing eyes, but it could be something like missing hands or missing hair if it turns out we are swapping a character who uses a texture that is not named in the same manner as their mesh.
Since it has been a problem I’ve seen a few times, let’s use Kenny in season 2 as an example. If you try swapping him into another season without knowing what files he uses which are not named with “kenny202” at the start, he won’t have eyes or hands. And since Kenny in season 2 is one mesh called “sk54_kenny202.d3dmesh”, we can use the Telltale Inspector tool to see what textures we are missing.
1. Run the TelltaleInspector.exe, and click the [Open] drop down menu and select [Open D3DMesh]
2. There will be another drop down menu that says [Select], we want to select the game where this prop file came from – in this case we need to select [The Walking Dead: Definitive Series]
3. From here we need to click on [Open File] and an explorer window will open – we need to direct it to the mesh we want to look at.
4. And now we should have all the relevant information about the selected mesh.
What we are particularly interested in is the list of “Mesh Textures” shown at the bottom. Here we can clearly see the texture files that aren’t named consistently, and what we likely would miss without prior experience or knowledge of the character files.
Aaaaand because I have the opportunity to share this little titbit, if you have tried editing textures, or simply swapping textures to see the results – you may encounter some instances where you simply wonder “I thought this would have changed? Why didn’t it?”, or alternatively “I changed this, why did this also change?”
Here’s my contribution to fun trivia that I found myself quite some time ago, but now I can show it with the Inspector.
Dropping the link to the Telltale Modding Community's Christmas themed mod for TFS. Key features being a snowy change to the environments, a gingerbread themed school, and numerous other texture changes to bring the whole season into the holiday spirit.
I had a lot of fun contributing alongside other talented mod people in creating textures for this, and I hope people who use the mod can feel the effort we all put into it.
Merry Christmas, mates!
Ok model swapping is so hard. All I want is shel to replace bonnie in amid the ruins is that so much to ask for and if someone could help me ill love u forever
