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The Skullgirls Modding Thread

Fizzxwizz

Fizzxwizz

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Using the tool skullmod one is capable of doing great things to this beautiful game we call Skullgirls. I highly recommend heading over to that there thread in the hyperlink and giving it a whirl. It is a excellent source for modification information and provides an excellent outlet for telling @0xFAIL that they are an excellent individual because hey they are.

Although as much as I'd like it to be, this is not the cool guy appreciation thread. This is the thread about modifications that you may or may not regret creating in the future. So to start it off here are some modifications that I may or may not regret making in the future.

2F7A1BFE9EF06C24C788D78E6F7D67FDD8663244

I was attempting to turn atrium into a space stage, got stuck most of the way through and tried changing it to Rainbow Road. I've kinda stuck with it.
C5F50E02588FA17BD02DA7029A12FEB2CF41922D
This is from me attempting to replicate the leaked spooky as shit eliza stage.



Filia honks when you select her.
workin on dumb ui things

Hopefully me showing my garbage can motivate people to make something cool (like a fully realized stage that doesn't center around yanking art assets from other things or changing sliders).



tl;dr
Show off your mods nerds
​
 
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Fumako said:
How hard would it be to implement Annie?

Depends on your definition of implement.

Slap her wizened space little girl person into the background of your stage of choice? Pretty easy.

Add her into the game as a playable character?

On a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being super easy and 5 being super hard it would definitely fall under the un-sacredly difficult level of "Mike's Job."

In short, definitely not very easy at all.
 
I'm working on replacing music right now. Mostly with the Bomberman Hero OST by the great June Chikuma.
I've got Rooftops good enough for my tastes, working on the loop I'm using for the menu and Glass Canopy, didn't do a great job on those.
Replaced my doublesnap with a Paper Mario TTYD track that I like!

I'll consider graphical editing down the road.
 
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Fumako said:
How hard would it be to implement Annie?
I've been thinking for a while. We all create sprites for the concept characters, but what if we did EVERYTHING?
I mean creating the script, hitboxes, cutscenes, and just leave voice acting and cleanup to Lab Zero.
If we force-feed them complete stuff (without being like the Juju person) why WOULDN'T they use it?

...assuming there aren't viruses, or sloppy jobs included, of course.
 
Skullgirlfanboy said:
If we force-feed them complete stuff (without being like the Juju person) why WOULDN'T they use it?
Legal reasons, time contraints (it takes time to add content), money constraints, publicity concerns (Public backlash: http://kotaku.com/when-players-help-make-games-but-dont-get-paid-for-i-1630795434 ), cleanup and voices are work (and need $), ...

A simple guide to modding
  • Make mods that you like and seem reasonable.
  • If you seem like a nice person and your work is good, who knows, maybe the dev will contact you, but don't expect it/try to force your way in.
  • Never, ever piss off the devs (They are human too)
  • Avoid knee-jerk reactions (You will regret them)
  • Don't let your ego run wild (Fun fact: This may need practice)
  • Modding is fun. Keeping it that way is important.

I wouldn't bother with new characters for now, way too much work for an uncoordinated group without the tools.
Stages and some graphic/sound changes seem reasonable to me.
 
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0xFAIL said:
  • Make mods that you like and seem reasonable.
  • If you seem like a nice person and your work is good, who knows, maybe the dev will contact you, but don't expect it/try to force your way in.
  • Modding is fun. Keeping it that way is important.
It amazes me that this needs to be stated so often. Skullgirls seems particularly plagued with people (not just talking about SGFanboy) who seem to think they should be able to dictate the content that gets added to the game at any time, and not just in the very limited times LZ has been nice enough to include things.

Why can't people just do this stuff for fun? :(
 
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Is the game anal about what file format the music is in? Taking a quick look into the pack it looks like they're in .wav but the music I want to use is in .ogg

Also I assume there's two songs for each stage for when youre on the left/right of the stage or something
 
I want to do something completely and utterly self-indulgent, how would I go about editing a 2d background? Grab the file via skullmod and edit it?
 
ashxu said:
Is the game anal about what file format the music is in? Taking a quick look into the pack it looks like they're in .wav but the music I want to use is in .ogg

Also I assume there's two songs for each stage for when youre on the left/right of the stage or something
The game is VERY anal about what music is used. You need to replace the files in the game with exact duplicates (not counting file size). That means same name and same format.
I've never altered music, but there are a couple of files to change - namely the song needs an intro section in one file and then a looping main body for the second section.
WaterMystic277 said:
I want to do something completely and utterly self-indulgent, how would I go about editing a 2d background? Grab the file via skullmod and edit it?
2D backgrounds are a bit weird. When you extract them in Skullmod their colors are all off. You need to rearrange the color channels in the files, then edit them, then put the channels back the way they were and save your file. If you don't they'll look weird when you put them back into SG.

Read this and the couple of following posts for details on this. http://skullgirls.com/forums/index.php?threads/modding-tool-skullmod.1294/page-3#post-149721

It's actually kinda easier to modify the 3D stages because all their textures are stored in regular dds files without their channels jiggled around. Just grab Open Canvas and drag any textures you want to mod into it. OC handles DDS files in SG's default settings easy.
 
When showing off music mods, consider turning down the volume on hit sounds and voices.
 
If you're looking to get clean screenshots of the characters without any backgrounds cluttering the image, a quick hack I use is to replace the 2D backdrop for Class Notes with a plain white or black one and also remove all the UI elements.

To do this, first you need to unpack two files: levels-textures2d.gfs and ui-win.gfs.

Replace Backdrop:
Go into "levels-textures2d\temp\levels\textures\2D\stage_class_notes.dds" and replace this entirely with white or black. Whichever one you prefer to work with. Black has certain advantages later on, but is harder to separate the sprites from. I use this stage because it has very neutral lighting. Most of the other stages have colored and very obviously directed lighting.

Remove UI:
Some characters like Big Band are so big they cover parts of the User Interface like life bars and timer. These can interfere with your screencaps, so you can remove them. Go into "ui-win\temp\UIWin\Textures\TA_1001_1.dds". You'll want to open this in something like Photoshop so you can manipulate the Alpha Channels. To remove every part of the UI, just fill the entire Alpha Channel in with black. This will render almost the entire UI transparent.

There are some issues with this as a couple of the meters (super meter and undizzy) are created elsewhere and I haven't bothered to track them down yet. You can hack your way past this by setting your meters to 0 in training mode and then making your background black. This will ensure the meters and backdrop are the same color and thus invisible.

I'll hopefully have a more fun mod ready on the weekend. Been dragging my heels on finishing it for a loooong time.
 
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Speaking of mods for fun here is something I'm working on for fun, I'm not finished with it yet though. I thought I would save it until Halloween because its super spooky but I don't know if I'll finish it by then so here's my progress.

May look familiar to people in the IRC.

\Ears and eyes warning for those with unprepared ears and eyes/


I've got about all of the stage itself done minus one thing in the background, then the rest of the NPCs.
 
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Fizzxwizz said:
Speaking of mods for fun here is something I'm working on for fun, I'm not finished with it yet though. I thought I would save it until Halloween because its super spooky but I don't know if I'll finish it by then so here's my progress.

May look familiar to people in the IRC.

\Ears and eyes warning for those with unprepared ears and eyes/

dadadoodlecrest

I've got about all of the stage itself done minus one thing in the background, then the rest of the NPCs.
is that hella jeff and geromy...
 
Skullgirlsfanboy said:
I've been thinking for a while. We all create sprites for the concept characters, but what if we did EVERYTHING?
This has been covered multiple times, you should stop now.

As a serious answer, the character data files are part of the group of files that the game checks for changes and won't load if they're changed. You are nicely allowed to edit stages, music, UI, etc, because we intentionally don't check those packages for changes. But not characters.

Oh yeah, and...I will never seriously consider anything that you personally are involved in. Ever. And when anyone asks why, I'll just link that and they will understand.
 
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In honor of the time of the year, I thought I'd try and make a quick stage that looks spooky.


Which is why I made a stage with frightening handwriting and spooktacular bad animation.

This is what I was able to do in about 2-3 days. I consider it finished only because I don't think there is much more that I can do within my capabilities.


Super Milk Chan said:
is that hella jeff and geromy...
oolGYz1.png
 
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@Fizzxwizz I like how you gave the stage an eerie atmosphere. How were you able to distort the music?
 
SkullMan said:
@Fizzxwizz I like how you gave the stage an eerie atmosphere. How were you able to distort the music?

Uh short answer I dicked around with it in audacity.

Clearer answer: I kept the start of the intro the same, slowed it down and pitched it down like halfway through. For the actual song I reversed it, slowed it down, and inverted it (I don't know if that actually does something.)

Results showed Learning One's Craft sounds pretty good backwards.
 
Fizzxwizz said:
Uh short answer I dicked around with it in audacity.

Clearer answer: I kept the start of the intro the same, slowed it down and pitched it down like halfway through. For the actual song I reversed it, slowed it down, and inverted it (I don't know if that actually does something.)

Results showed Learning One's Craft sounds pretty good backwards.
Thanks for the tip!
 
I tried to mod in the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood. Something that could never ever possibly destroy us.

AB87B934BC43AB3D3E88D526A6E0EBFA53357AD1


(I was originally going to have the Ghostbusters' silhouettes on the fenced roof, but the texture cut off too early for it to work :p)

M5IkRMO.jpg
 
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I tried to write on the Chalkboard in Class Notes to see if I can be able to edit the stage on my own with Gimp. However, when I do it and packed the file after editing it, the game's became unresponsive. I tried following the steps, but I am still not sure what I am doing wrong.
 
SkullMan said:
I tried to write on the Chalkboard in Class Notes to see if I can be able to edit the stage on my own with Gimp. However, when I do it and packed the file after editing it, the game's became unresponsive. I tried following the steps, but I am still not sure what I am doing wrong.

Is the game breaking when you try and load the stage or when you launch the game? Maybe someone else can back me up but if the stage's texture itself isn't working right then it should crash when you try to load the stage, and not when you try and load the game itself. I only know this from packing the games level files without the most recent 3 stages, causing it to crash on those stages.

If the game is crashing on startup I would recommend going into your steam library, going to skullgirls' properties and then verifying your file cache. This will check your game files for anything wrong and replace them. This will, however, delete any of the changes you've made to your game already as well, so if there's something you like I suggest moving it somewhere else beforehand.

Also as an end note are you making sure to save your file as a .dds ?
 
SkullMan said:
I tried to write on the Chalkboard in Class Notes to see if I can be able to edit the stage on my own with Gimp. However, when I do it and packed the file after editing it, the game's became unresponsive. I tried following the steps, but I am still not sure what I am doing wrong.
There are issues with editing DDS files in Gimp.
This might help you: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/edit-dds-files-gimp-49208.html

Also, yes, Fizz asks a very important question. When is your game crashing? As soon as you start the game, or when you select a level?
 
Fizzxwizz said:
Is the game breaking when you try and load the stage or when you launch the game? Maybe someone else can back me up but if the stage's texture itself isn't working right then it should crash when you try to load the stage, and not when you try and load the game itself. I only know this from packing the games level files without the most recent 3 stages, causing it to crash on those stages.

If the game is crashing on startup I would recommend going into your steam library, going to skullgirls' properties and then verifying your file cache. This will check your game files for anything wrong and replace them. This will, however, delete any of the changes you've made to your game already as well, so if there's something you like I suggest moving it somewhere else beforehand.

Also as an end note are you making sure to save your file as a .dds ?
The game became crashed when I selected Class Notes. Also, after I saved the file, it became unviewable in the Windows Photo Viewer.
 
Okay, so it's definitely that file that's causing the issue. Did you have that plugin I linked installed before you modified the chalkboard?
 
I put dds.exe in the plugin folder. Does that count?

*Edit: Yes.
 
Fizzxwizz said:
To distract you from your problem here's a doublesnap music change.
I was more amused by the fact that you tried dash-in c.LP until it worked rather than using c.LK or s.LK. :^P
 
Fizzxwizz said:
To distract you from your problem here's a doublesnap music change.


Ignore the ui stuff that's something I was working on and messed up and gave up forever on.
I liked the measure marks on the HP Bars, useful :3
 
Ok, I found out what I done wrong and then some! Turns out when using Gimp, I should have compressed the .dds file with BC3/DXT5 when exporting it. Without further ado...

*Edit: Forgot to thank everybody for the help with the problem! Thanks, guys!
Something I call Space Notes!
 
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WaterMystic277 said:
Goddamn I love this community.

I'll make you eat those words

spoilered for actual protection of eyes

You thought the scary stages were over?

I've always wanted to have a space stage but I can never figure out how to get it working right.
 
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I have a request if it's not a problem? Canopy kingdom during the day please and with it can you also put black egrets like from parasoul's story? I think that would be cool
 
@Fizzxwizz I want to know how you got the sky in Doodlecrest loop rainbow skies. I wanted to know if it's possible to add something like rain in the background for Streets of New Meridian.
 
SkullMan said:
@Fizzxwizz I want to know how you got the sky in Doodlecrest loop rainbow skies. I wanted to know if it's possible to add something like rain in the background for Streets of New Meridian.

Nah, its likely not possible to do rain the same way I did the sky. At least not until skullmod is capable of adding elements/animations to existing stages.

Nightmare Maplecrest has two sky textures that alternate every time you load the stage. I didn't do anything to make it move, that's just what it looks like normally, a cloud texture moving over a static background.

Heres my non-rainbow version, which is just an edited version of the original clouds
EBOASmV.png


Here is what the rainbow sky actually looks like (in the unedited version it is just a different color for the clouds)
wPch1al.png

To make the rainbow texture I had the help of my smart friend who did the math and divided the pixels into mostly equal columns.
 
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