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Post by rondeeno on Jan 22, 2017 0:47:22 GMT
Hi everyone,
I'm working on a mod that will allow Kaidan and Ashley to be romanced by both male and female Shepard. I think I have most of the dialogue work completed (there are a few things I still have to test), but I've run into a major roadblock with the romance scenes.
In the sex portion of the scene, Shepard becomes invisible if they are the same sex as Kaidan or Ashley. Looking in the ANIMCUTSCENE_ROM_03_X_Finale sequences for all three love interests, it seems that Ashley and Kaidan's scenes use a BioPawn in place of Shepard, while Liara's scene uses an Extern: Naked Player, likely due to the fact that male or female Shepard can be in the scene.
Thinking this was what the Kaidan and Ashley scenes were missing, I converted the BioPawn in Kaidan's scene to an Extern: Naked Player (and believe me, finding the right hex codes was a mission), but Shepard was still invisible during the scene. So, upon further inspection, I noticed that Liara's LoveSceneAsari sequence has a few more objects in it than Ashley and Kaidan's.
There is a PMCheckConditional which checks if Shepard is male, and then, depending on if it is marked as true or false, it leads to two different SetObjects which then link to two different BioPawns, presumably one for male Shepard and one for female Shepard (I hope I explained that correctly, lol). I'm guessing that this has to do with the Extern: Naked Player in Liara's scene being used for both male and female Shepard, and that the two SetObjects are what tells the Extern: Naked Player which BioPawn to use? I'm basically just shooting in the dark here, lol.
That's pretty much the extent of my understanding on this, if it's even accurate. Every time I try to jump in and change something with the Package Editor, I end up feeling very confused. If someone with more experience modding could help me out, I would greatly appreciate it. I also hope I haven't bored anybody with all my rambling, lol.
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Post by rondeeno on Feb 4, 2017 13:45:57 GMT
Update for anyone who's interested: I actually managed to get the sex scenes working right. I didn't use the same method Bioware used for Liara's scene, but it still works just the same. I'm really excited about this because these scenes were some of the biggest issues with using the console to make the romances available (MaleShep would turn into FemShep and FemShep would have MaleShep's body). Now, players will finally be able to see their own Shepard in the scene. Also, as a very novice modder, I'm just happy I was actually able to figure it out, lol. As for the rest of the mod, I think the dialogue is pretty much done at this point. I still haven't tested everything yet, but I ran through the game with MaleShep/Kaidan and FemShep/Ashley and everything seemed to work fine. I definitely want to make sure I haven't accidentally broken the opposite-sex romances or the platonic conversations, so I'll have to run through the game a few more times and post another update. But until then, working sex scenes everybody!
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Post by giftfish on Feb 4, 2017 15:12:28 GMT
Animcutscenes are difficult stuff, so kudos for figuring that out.
I can tell you from creating BackOff that there *will* be bugs in the remainder of the game. At least if folks attempt to set imported romance bools for Shepard of the opposite gender (the game assumes any imported romance for Kaidan is female, and any imported romance for Ash is male). There are also checks for this during the romance scene, that will only work if Shepard adheres to that standard. (I'm assuming you've changed these.)
Doing runs of other convos in game isn't the ideal way to *track* things down. The best way is to step through each convo in the files (sequences and dialogues), and use the gibbed dialogue dump to hone in on plot checks. Then test any edits you make in game.
When you release, please be clear with your users that your mod won't be compatible with BackOff -- at least not if you edit any of Kaidan/Ash's content outside of the romance scenes. They would conflict inherently, and a patch would not be feasible or advisable.
Good luck!
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Post by rondeeno on Feb 6, 2017 21:38:21 GMT
Thanks, giftish. BackOff was actually what inspired me to get into modding. I actually haven't edited any ME3 content yet. I was planning to release the mod as a standalone for ME1 and then hopefully release separate versions for the later games. There isn't much information about ME1 conditionals or state transitions (at least from what I've seen). I can't view them with ME3Explorer and I haven't been able to find anything like a gibbed dialogue dump for ME1, so I've pretty much had to rely on guesswork and trial-and-error to get this far. I've tested almost all of the romance conversations for MaleShep/Kaidan and FemShep/Ashley, the only ones I haven't yet are the conversation after choosing Liara over Kaidan/Ash (which I can't get to trigger for some reason) and the breakup when you started the romance too late in the game (which I didn't even know existed). I just haven't tested the other variations of the same conversations, so I just want to make sure everything still progresses correctly.
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Post by giftfish on Feb 7, 2017 19:56:37 GMT
rondeeno -- Ha! You never actually mentioned the mod was for ME1 and not ME3. I assumed the latter (obviously). Very cool that you did this for ME1. I haven't yet looked into ME1 conditionals or state events/transitions. ME2 conditionals work entirely different from ME3; we still don't have an editor. State transitions/events for ME2 are close to ME3. There's no support in the editor yet, but we should get there eventually. FYI, so BackOff won't conflict with this, per se, but, ME3 still won't handle these plot changes correctly, and I definitely can't guarantee BO will work. In fact, there's a good chance it will not. The correct romance bools will be set (or should be), but Shepard's gender is still assumed by ME3 to be female for Kaidan and male for Ashley. This impacts audio, body animations, face animations, and dialogue, all due to the lack of gender plot checks. In short, correct romance bools aren't enough for ME3 to truly handle the imported romance properly. I handled BO in the same manner.
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Post by rondeeno on Feb 10, 2017 23:30:08 GMT
I hope I didn't come off as rude in my last post. I really appreciate all the work you guys have done with ME3Explorer and ME modding in general. FYI, so BackOff won't conflict with this, per se, but, ME3 still won't handle these plot changes correctly, and I definitely can't guarantee BO will work. In fact, there's a good chance it will not. The correct romance bools will be set (or should be), but Shepard's gender is still assumed by ME3 to be female for Kaidan and male for Ashley. This impacts audio, body animations, face animations, and dialogue, all due to the lack of gender plot checks. I spent some time listening to ME3's audio files and looking through the gibbed dialogue dump, and I think I tracked down which conditionals would need to be changed in order to skip lines that are gender-specific and/or have no audio for MaleShep/FemShep. Would creating new male/female-only versions of the conditionals be the right way to go about it?
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Post by giftfish on Feb 11, 2017 0:00:50 GMT
I hope I didn't come off as rude in my last post. I really appreciate all the work you guys have done with ME3Explorer and ME modding in general. FYI, so BackOff won't conflict with this, per se, but, ME3 still won't handle these plot changes correctly, and I definitely can't guarantee BO will work. In fact, there's a good chance it will not. The correct romance bools will be set (or should be), but Shepard's gender is still assumed by ME3 to be female for Kaidan and male for Ashley. This impacts audio, body animations, face animations, and dialogue, all due to the lack of gender plot checks. I spent some time listening to ME3's audio files and looking through the gibbed dialogue dump, and I think I tracked down which conditionals would need to be changed in order to skip lines that are gender-specific and/or have no audio for MaleShep/FemShep. Would creating new male/female-only versions of the conditionals be the right way to go about it? Partly. You don't need to create any new conditionals to check Shepard's gender. You can use bool 17662 set to T/F (T=Shep is female). The key is that you'll need to insert the gender check for every dialogue in every place it is needed. From there, you'll likely need to make new convo paths so that the dialogue makes sense when its in the context of Shepard with the wrong gender. In other words, simply "going around" the missing dialogue isn't enough - at least not for an immersive solution. You need to put something in its place. That likely means using some type of friend content from the same convo, splicing new audio together, or something. Then there are at least two other problems: 1. You'll need to edit a bunch of their existing conditionals to accommodate the gender change. For example, Ashley's lock in conditional explicitly checks for BroShep. A female Shepard cannot lock in a romance. To track down all possible conditionals, you'll have to do some strategic searching of the CND by using their romance bools and relationship integers. FYI, there are lots. I edited almost all of them for BO. 2. You'll need to pay special attention when you are editing the dialogues, that the proper state transitions can be earned by the Shepard of the new gender. Otherwise, a pre-relationship, flirting Shepard will not earn enough relationship points during their conversations and won't be able to lock in the romance.
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