Modding radiated animals - or - How to tint entities?

[seven]

So let's say I want to add radiated chickens. I can easily add a new entity to entityclasses.xml using the vanilla chicken as a base. Is there a way to change their appearance, like the green glow or something to indicate they are radiated, without adding custom assets?

 

DF has a radiated dog that appears to just use the vanilla assets and then somehow apply a tint to it. There are also variations on zombies that are just different tints. On the DF discord there is mention of a patch that allows tinting of zombie models. Is that available somewhere? (I asked on the discord, no response)

 

Or any mods that already have radiated versions of animals/zombie animals?

[Evil_Geoff]

I'm no expert, by any stretch of the imagination.  But after checking some custom items and blocks that were based on vanilla ones, but used a different color, I found a property line that would be similar to this:
 

<property name="CustomTint" value="ffb0b0"/>

But nothing on custom entities.  Soooo, I'm thinking that because entities have tags and other properties that point to their Unity assets, and have their meshes, textures, skins etc, if you want to custom color things, you might have to learn how to crack open Unity. 

Check in the Game Modification > Mods forum with creators that add custom animals, NPCs, and zombies (like bdubyah, arramus, Xyth, Rizzo and more), to their mods to see if they can share how they recolored entities/Unity assets.

[seven]

From what I've read, adding a tint to an entity was possible in the past but that was removed or no longer worked with changes to the game. As I mentioned, tinting has been added back in DF apparently through a custom patch but I haven't had any response to my queries.

 

Other custom entities I can think of in various mods use new assets, or blending of vanilla assets like putting a hat on a zombie. Not really appropriate for animals.

 

I certainly haven't played all mods though so I can keep looking. Thanks for the reply.

[seven]

I did find a solution just in case anyone finds this topic in the future.

 

Zilox has a patch mod that allows you to tint materials. This patch is incorporated into Darkness Falls from what I understand. A standalone mod is available at https://github.com/Zilox135/MaterialModifier

[JoeSloeMoe]

Just noticed this.

For entities you can use:

<entity_class name="someEntity" extends="someOtherRntity">
	.
	.
	.
	<property name="ParticleOnSpawn" value="ParticleEffects/RadiatedParticlesOnMesh" param1="SetShapeToMesh0"/>
	.
	.
	.
</entity_class>

to get a flaming effect

cheers

[seven]

Interesting. I wonder if it's commented out in the files for performance reasons? It's not actually enabled anywhere.

 

It would be a great effect to have if it was toned down a bit. Well, quite a bit. It's rather too much as it is.

[JoeSloeMoe]

On 6/7/2024 at 6:19 PM, seven said:

Interesting. I wonder if it's commented out in the files for performance reasons? It's not actually enabled anywhere.

 

It would be a great effect to have if it was toned down a bit. Well, quite a bit. It's rather too much as it is.

 

Fully agree on it being overkill so I only use it very sparingly.  It can work with smaller or one-off entities like bosses etc. I'm using it for pigeons (smaller less aggressive vulture entities) and the effect is not as intense as when applied to Trader Rekt , size seems to increase brightness maybe. But also, there are only 4 pigeons and they spawn one at a time over a period of several days. Its used mainly to get the players attention and so they know something is up. (and its already available and easy to use)

cheers

[bdubyah]

I think that's the old way they used when the rads used to have their aura. And I do believe performance was one of the issues. But if it's on something you won't see a ton of at once, it shouldn't hurt. Can always experiment with it, but they could always cut that property out in future versions.

[seven]

For a rare or boss entity I agree it could work well, but simple rads aren't that rare. I only tried it on radiated zombie dogs but the effect was quite intense. On some entities it might be ok. The current rads in the game vary a lot. Some are really glowing. I prefer the less intense ones like Arlene.

 

I did spawn in 50 rad dogs and didn't really notice performance worse than what I'd expect with 50 normal dogs. But it might be an issue for someone with a PC near the minimum specs.

 

That mod by Zilox has some other properties (like emmisive_color), and wonder if they might do something. There's really no documentation though and my trial and error testing hasn't discovered anything.