Watch Dogs modding: Tools you require

Ubisoft Disrupt™-driven games modding

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Oleg
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Watch Dogs modding: Tools you require

Post by Oleg »

Unpacking/Repacking game files

In order to have initial content to deal with, it's recommended to unpack game files. You will have a lot of standard textures, materials and some models to work with.

Unpacking Tools
First of all, you will need XNA framework installed on your computer, so the unpacking tool can work. Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download ... x?id=20914

The main tool to unpack and repack .FAT, .DAT files for watch dogs:

Author: Rick
Download : http://svn.gib.me/builds/disrupt/

The same tool is used to rebuiild the game files. As this title is related to FarCry3 internally, the mods are not natively supported. However, the game will take in account the "patch.dat" bundle located in the root folder, so you don't need to repack the entire 10Gb game archive to put your mods in. Instead, you pack your modded file into a patch. Unfortunately, only one patch file is handled by the game, so you might need to merge your mods with other mods and/or merge it with original game patch. You can find a lot of related guides on FarCry3, these all can be used for Watch Dogs, so I'll not post much on subject.

I personally have an output folder for a mod, say it is "E:\Mods\" and I have a folder named "Test" over there. This "Test" folder is the root of Watch Dogs modification package. It contains folder "graphics" inside, which in a run has "vehicles_nexus", "land", "muscle_03" one in another. In order to pack the mod, I export into E:\Mods\Test\graphics\vehicles_nexus\land\muscle_03\muscle_03.xbg file and then pack the mod from D:\Mods folder with the command:

Code: Select all

Gibbed.Disrupt.Pack.exe patch.fat Test
...where Gibbed.Disrupt.Pack.exe is the packing tool, patch.fat is the output pack file and Test is the folder to start packing from.

To be honest, I utilize the batch file for that:

Code: Select all

@echo off
E:\Mods\Tools\Disrupt\bin\Gibbed.Disrupt.Pack.exe patch.fat %~n1
copy /B /Y patch.* F:\Games\WatchDogs\data_win64\ > nul
This batch file specifies the location of the packing tool in some folder, packs an %argument% folder folder into a patch.fat+patch.dat files and then copies them both into my game folder located at F:\Games\WatchDogs. I simply drag&drop "Test" folder onto this batch file and it does everything for me; then I launch the game. This batch makes easier messing with multiple tests at a time. For example, you might have multiple folders like Test1, Test_Weapon, Test_Vehicle and you can test them one my one by drag&dropping onto batch file, instead of messing with command prompt.

I guess someone could create a GUI tool that would do this or even make a mods merging tool that will merge mods and pack them into single patch file.


Editing XML files
Watch dogs contains binary packed XML files and plain text XML files. Binary files are not yet editable, however I expect an editing tool to appear some day, as the format and layout is known for binary XML files.
Plain text xml files could be edited with Nodepad, but Notepad++ is strongly recommended, as it will highlight syntax and will help you to avoid compromising the formatting for missing some quotes and ruin the entire file.
Download : http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Converting textures

Native .XBT textures format is generally a repacked DXT .DDS images, so these could be loaded into ZModeler in native .xbt format. If you need to convert .xbt to .dds:

Author : cra0kalo
Download : http://dev.cra0kalo.com/?p=110

...or, more likely, convert .dds texture into .xbt, use can try "Gibbed Tools Dunia 2 GUI-1-04" by Haoose (no download link avail)
Unfortunately, there is no tool to create a XBT file from scratch, the converting tool is generally a DDS injection tool that puts DDS content into existing XBT file. I'm attaching a simple XBT creation pack to this thread (see dds2xbt.zip attached), it can be used to create *.xbt file out of *.dds by drag&dropping DDS image onto "DDS2XBT.bat" file. Additional HEX-editing afterward is require as shown below:
XBT_header_refinement.jpg
Attachments
dds2xbt.zip
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