Hi all! New member - question about using existing player made skill

• Hi all! New member - question about using existing player made skill
  Posted by Kevin Boyle on 02 Jun, 2018 12:00
• Hi all!
  
  First a big shout out to Phanjam for all of his help and Steffire for being such a positive supportive community member!
  
  I have taken the Elemental Blade Dancer class and used it as my base template; as I feel like Nifihil did an amazing job on the skills.
  
  I am subbing a lot of "vanilla" skills from the 4 vanilla classes and everything works fine - thanks Phanjam for all of your help!
  
  Where I am having problems is with trying to incorporate the Dragoon Skill Dragon Storm into the build (another awesome class built by Thorf) Well neither Thorf or Nifihil have been on for over 180 days so I don't have them to ask.
  
  Are there any current modders that have experience with copying skills from a player made class over to another class that can hop onto the Discord server for Torchlight 2 and talk me through it or perhaps point me to a resource that shows how to do it?
  
  Everything I have found up to now has unfortunately been either very vague or very confusing.
  
  I am in general pretty well everyday just waiting for someone to chat with
  
  Thanks all!
  
  LOVING TL2 and all of the great work done by the modding community!
  
  Rude
  
  
  
   
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• #1 Reply
  Posted by Phanjam on 02 Jun, 2018 23:56
• Hi @Kevin Boyle so youre RudeDawg over on the discord, welcome!
  
  The concept for all skills is the same - all files a skill needs to work correctly must be made available to it.  This is easy for vanilla skills (as you saw) because its files are "always there".  Since the same isn't true for custom skills, you'll just need to copy over all the stuff that it's looking for.
  
  To find out what a skill is looking for a little detective work is needed...
  
  1. The main skill .DAT has a lot of clues.  The top part are main settings which are standalone but there are a few things which are external to the .DAT like...
  
  1a. The ICON it wants to use - If just a vanilla icon there's nothing more you need to do. But if it's a custom icon you'll need to find and copy over the icon image file AND its .IMAGESET file too. Those are usually in MEDIA/UI/ICONS/SKILLS
  
  1b. The ANIMATION it wants to use - If just a vanilla animation there's nothing more you need to do. if it's a custom animation and you want to use it, you'll need to find and copy over the animation .SKELETON and edit your class' .ANIMATION file to include that particular animation.  Look for the .SKELETON in MEDIA/MODELS/PCS/(folder of class)
  
  Note - i suggest you just forego any custom animations for now and specify a vanilla animation in the skill .DAT - that will make your life much much simpler
  
  2. Still inside the skill's .DAT are the [LEVEL] blocks for each level of the skill. These blocks specify a lot of external resources the skill needs, such as...
  
  2a. .LAYOUT files - these files do a range of things from specifying the area within which the skill works to firing off particle systems to make our skills prettier! 99% of the time, .LAYOUTS are called by their complete path-and-filename, so they are very easy to find and copy over
  
  2b. EFFECTS - demarcated by [EFFECT] blocks, the <STRING>TYPE: within that block is the most helpful clue. Usually skills will use straighforward effects like DAMAGE BONUS in which case nothing to copy over.  But if it's a SET STAT effect that's more complex - i'd encourage you to read up on that here tho further discussion will still be needed / lets save that for later k?
  
  2c. AFFIXES - demarcated by [AFFIXES] blocks, the <STRING>NAME: within that block is what's important. That's the AFFIX name which you will have to search for in the source mod's MEDIA/AFFIXES folders and copy over.  Note that it's also possible the skill, tho custom, is using a vanilla affix in which case there's nothing to copy over.
  
  Okay thats like 80% of what u need to remember - give it a shot and we can chat more later - i gotta go get to some chores 
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• #2 Reply
  Posted by Kevin Boyle on 03 Jun, 2018 11:02
• Awesome thank you so much!
  
  I finally got the right icon and the ability to add skill points as I level.
  
  But no skill animation - still working on that
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• #3 Reply
  Posted by Phanjam on 03 Jun, 2018 18:03
• okay the way Thorf set it up is as a combo. U can only fire DragonStorm within 3 secs from using a "combo2" level skill which, in turn, can only be fired within 3 seconds from using a "combo1" level skill.
  
  If you want that same mechanic, you'll have to copy over his entire skill system. Is that what you'd like to do?  Its also possible to just transfer over DragonStorm removing the requirement for use-with-a-combo...
  
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• #4 Reply
  Posted by Kevin Boyle on 04 Jun, 2018 09:33
• I got it!
  
  Thanks so much - your post really helped me nail down what files I missed!
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• #5 Reply
  Posted by Phanjam on 23 Jun, 2018 02:07
• Hey @Kevin Boyle youre RudeDawg from the discord right?
  
  The concept for all skills is the same - all files the skill needs to work must be available to it. The vanilla files were easy bcos their files are "always there".
  
  So for custom skills it just means you need to copy over more than just the.DAT. finding out a skill will look for just takes a little detective work...
  
  1. The main .DAT
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