The Basics

I've often found it useful to modify the objects available in Freedom Force for my mod work. The first tutorial covers how to re-skin and object (for example, a billboard) and how to use it in the editor. To carrrry out the procedure here you'll need a hex-editor and an art program such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro or Gimp.

Re-skinning a Billboard.

First, make sure that art.ff is unzipped. A small tip to modders here, once you've unzipped it, rename the folder (to say myArt). This way, you have the whole directory at hand on your hard drive but the game uses the virgin art.ff file, so any accidental changes that you make in the art.ff repository DON'T appear in your mod and then not work when its distributed.

Set up your mod folders

The game objects all appear in a folder called /Data/Art/library/area_specific, which then subdivides into lots of different sub-folders. The textures for these objects are ALL stored in the folder /Data/Art/library/area_specific/_textures. So, step one is to create the following folders within your mod folder:

\Art\library\area_specific\myObjects
\Art\library\area_specific\_textures

Object files (.nif files) can be copied from anywhere in the area_specific folder to the myObjects folder (and I'm assuming here you won't be creating enough to warrant subdividing this folder, I may be wrong). Texture files (.tga's) need to go into the _textures folder to work correctly.

Create and modify copies of the files

To do a basic billboard: open up Data\Art\library\area_specific\city\street_objects\bilboards\billboard_decal_01\billboard_decal_01.nif in your hex-editor. Now search through for the string '.tga' to find references to its texture files. You should hit 'billboard_cop.tga' (-this is the "You know you're safe with the Law" winking cop poster) Making sure your hex editor is set to overwrite rather than insert, change the texture name to 'billboard_my1.tga' - this is the same length as the existing name so no worries. Save the modified file to your myobjects folder as billboard1.nif, or whatever you want to call it. Now find the file Data\Art\library\area_specific\_textures\billboard_cop.tga and copy it into your mod folder's _textures directory. Rename it 'billboard_my1.tga" and then modify it in the paint program to be whatever you want the billboard to show.

Set up a template

In FFEdit, create a new template based on the billboard one (say call it billboard_mine). If you can't see billboard make sure you've got the 'All' button selected below the list. Change the example NIF for your new template to library\area_specific\myObjects\billboard1.nif. Now close and restart FFEdit - its pretty bad at allowing you to use new templates.

Putting the object in game

Open a city map and edit in game. If you select an existing billboard and change its template to billboard_mine, nothing happens. This is because the object has a nif file entry in the grayed out box. We want this to read 'template object', and heres how to get it to do so: Place a character in the map, and rename them to billboard1 using the N key in the editor. Now flip to FFEdit using ALT-Tab. The character will have Type:Character and Template:, change the Type to Character and the template to billboard_mine, and then save. You'll see the character turn into your billboard object. Rinse and repeat.