How to Mod Fable

Table of Contents

Getting Started


The first thing to do is to ask yourself, "What do I want to do?" The answer to that isn't always direct. If you just want to screw around with the game and see how things work and what you can do, then there are two options.

  1. (Preferred) Look through this tutorial and figure out how to do things, then try to make your mods.

  2. Look through section 1 and then do whatever you want and don't complain if nothing works.
back to top

Section 1: Basics


BACK UP YOUR GAME FILES BEFORE EVERY MOD!!

Files to backup:
By default these files can be found in the subfolders in:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Fable - The Lost Chapters\Data\

back to top

Using the Freeroam App.

To use the Freeroam App., first download this program and save it to your My Documents folder. Then make sure that you have this installed to your computer. Next, follow these steps:

  1. Double-click this icon:

    Figure 1:

    Freeroam.exe
  2. If you want to be able to walk anywhere, then make sure both TNG [blue in fig. 2] and lev (patched) [red in fig. 2] is checked, otherwise make sure TNG[blue in fig. 2] and LEV (unpatched) [Purple in fig. 2] are selected to make the program extract the levels like normal.

    Figure 2:

  3. Click File>>open. [see fig. 3]

    Figure 3:

  4. Go to your Levels folder, usually located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Fable - The Lost Chapters\data\Levels and click on FinalAlbion.wad, then click open. [see fig. 4]

    Figure 4:

  5. Click RIP! [see fig. 5]

    6. Figure 5:


  6. Go to your Data folder, usually C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Fable - The Lost Chapters\data and click Save. [see fig. 6]

    7. Figure 6:


  7. Wait about 5 minutes for it to finish extracting the files.

  8. Close the Freeroam App.

  9. Go to your Levels folder, usually located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Fable - The Lost Chapters\data\Levels and rename FinalAlbion.wad to FinalAlbion_.wad, or anything else. [fig. 7]

    Figure 7:

  10. Next, go to your Fable - The Lost Chapters root folder, usually at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Fable - The Lost Chapters, and open the file userst.ini [fig. 8]

    Figure 8:

  11. Scroll down to UseLevelWAD TRUE; and change it to UseLevelWAD FALSE;
  12. Save and exit, then you're done! Now you can do map modding.
back to top

Setting up Fable Explorer

  1. First, download FableExplorer.zip from here and choose to open it.

  2. Extract all of the files to C:\Program Files\FableTLCMod\FableExplorer.

  3. Go back to here and download def.xml and this time save it to C:\Program Files\FableTLCMod\FableExplorer. When it asks to overwrite, click yes. If it doesn't ask to overwrite, you did something wrong, and you need to start over.

  4. Make sure you have the latest DirectX installed and Microsoft .NET framework 2.0

  5. Enjoy!
back to top

Setting up Albion Explorer

  1. Go here and download AlbionEcplorerSetup.exe and run it.

  2. Go here and download templates.zip

  3. Extract the files to C:\Program Files\FableTLCMod\AlbionExplorer

  4. Done!
back to top

Section 2: Big & Bin Modding

Fable Explorer in a Nutshell

Fable Explorer will edit the .big and .bin files. It will also allow for .wad exporting, but I'll get into that later.

FE uses a linking system so that if two objects link to the same CDef (a property of an object) they will have the same properties. For example:

  If you make five weapons with the same text enty, then they will all be called the same thing. Therefore if you change the name of one weapon, all the other weapons using that text entry will be re-named too, so always make new text entries. This brings me to my next point...

back to top

Creating New Game Entries

This is fairly simple. Edit already existing entries, rename the "Symbol Name", then save them in an fmp. Close FE, then re-open, and load the fmp. There you go! New game entries. There are other ways to do it, but this is by far the least time-consuming when you do several.

back to top

Section 3: Using FE

Removing Old Age Effects

  1. Open Fable Explorer [figure 9]

    Figure 9:

  2. Scroll down untill you find CREATURES and click the box to expand it. [figure 10]

    Figure 10:

  3. Now scroll down until you find the entry for CREATURE_HERO. Double click CREATURE_HERO to open a new Window. [figure 11]

    Figure 11:

  4. Expand CREATURE in your new window and click CDefs. Then scroll down until you find CHereoMorphDef. Look for blue text that says Links to (GameBINEntryID). Click that. [figure 12]

    5. Figure 12:


  5. A New Window Will open and there will be a large list of links click DEL to get rid of them but BE CAREFUL. You can get rid of any of them but to get rid of Ageing affects on delete ones with OLD in them. This is the table controls hero morphs I.E.light or dark changes, will tattoos and getting buffed up. [figure 13]

    6. Figure 13:


  6. Go to Actions and Save mods and run Fable. This may take a minute or two so go get a cup of coffee or something.

    7. Figure 14:
back to top

Changing Weapon Damage

  1. Open Fable Explorer


  2. Expand OBJECTS, and find a weapon in the list. Open it. (The weapons are near the bottom of the object listing)




  3. Expand Object, by clicking either Object, or by clicking the + sign (clicking the + sign expands the tree, making things easier to find, while clicking Object opens everything at once, making things harder to find). If you clicked the + click on CDefs, and scroll down to the last few CDef boxes


  4. In one of the boxes, it should say Links to (NamesBINEnum) : CWeaponDef, and there is a blue link under it. Click it.




  5. Click on CWeaponDef in the white box in the new window, and it should show you all of the properties. Scroll down to Weapon Damage, and change it to whatever you want. Be warned that this number will be multiplied by ten in the game, so if you put in 50 it will actually come out as 500, and if you put in .1 it will come out as 1 damage.




Now you're done, and you can play the game with your new rediculously powerful (or properly balanced) weapon.

back to top

Changing Your Hero

Otherwise known as character swapping, this will let you change your hero to be somebody like Theresa, or Whisper, or Thunder or whoever you happen to feel like being.

  1. Open FE and go to CREATURE>>CREATURE_HERO, then open the creature you want to swap with also. First, copy the id of the model under graphic and paste it over your hero's. Next, copy and paste the model scale over your hero's. Do this for the eye also.


  2. Go to CCreatureDef of the hero, and delete the facial expressions, or set them to 0. If the creature you swap with has a title, go ahead and put it in your inventory. Do this by going to OBJECT>>HERO_TITLE_(insert title here), and pasting the id into weapon1 or weapon2 on your hero, or spawn it and get it.


  3. Copy the id for the CEntitySoundDef of the creature and paste it over your hero's.


  4. If the creature you swap with has a torso texture (found next to the graphic box) then copy and paste that too. Now you are ready for the CAppearanceDef. [See Picture]




  5. Go to CREATURE>>CREATURE_HERO>>CAppearanceDef and click export, then save it as HERO. Then do the same thing, except with the creature of your choice. The example I will use is CREATURE_WITCH, and name it WITCH.


  6. After you have two files, one named HERO, one named WITCH, open two copies of the CAppearanceDef App. Put one in the upper right-hand corner of your screen, one in the bottom right. Then click "open" on one window and choose HERO, then open your names.bin. Remember which window you opened HERO with, then do the same for the other window except open WITCH.


  7. If you already have an error it's because you either opened the wrong kind of file, or you clicked "cancel". Doing either crashes the program, just make sure you click "quit" if that happens.




  8. Start patching your hero's CAppearanceDef. To do this, just open the first entry on the left in the WITCH appearanceDef by double-clicking it. Look where it says "animation id" and copy it. Note the two Names.bin offset names. Next find that same entry on your hero, and if there are multiple of them, open them one at a time until you find one with the same names.bin offsets. Once you find it, paste the animation id from the WITCH into the box you just found. Click apply, then click close. Continue this pattern with every entry from the WITCH. MAKE SURE YOU ARE CLICKING APPLY!




  9. Now the tricky part. If you find an animation entry that does not exist that you need there are two things you can do.


A. Create a new entry by opening any entry and clicking "extract", save it as something, then click "create", then open the one that you just created and click "import" and choose the file you just saved. Later you will have to change your attack style to that of the creature you are using.



B. Preferred way, because it is less bug-prone. Find an already existing animation in the hero that you are willing to compensate for, such as blocking, and just replace that animation. Simple as that.

When all is said and done, just close the program. It is highly recommended that you create a new CAppearanceDef entry in FE, just in case, but if you don't just import your new CAppearanceDef over the Hero's already existing one.

You may want to also use my no sheaths mod to get rid of sheathing problems.

back to top

Section 3: Packaging your mod

A fable mod package (fmp) is the file saved and loaded from FE, and is used for most mods, but sometimes you shouldn't use one. In this section you will learn how to use fmp's, when to use them, and when not to.

In most cases, you'll want to use an fmp, but there are rules:

1. Do not use an fmp for a CShopDef entry, that won't work right.

2. Do not use an fmp for a texture pack, use a big file.

   Directions for using FMP's:

Saving: In FE go to File>>Create Fable Mod Package and drag any modified entries into the box that appears.

Loading: In FE got to File>>Load Fable Mod Package and choose your file.

   Directions for using BIG files:

To ‘Save changes as BIG’ right click on the name of the archive in the list box in the upper left of the Fable Explorer window and click on ‘Save changes as BIG’. Fable Explorer will then open up a dialog asking you for the name of the new BIG archive. Once you press the ‘Save’ button Fable Explorer will go through all of the MODIFIED entries in that archive and ONLY save them into a new BIG archive. (Note: Any entry that has had its ‘Apply changes’ button pressed will be considered modified, even if no data was actually changed.) This method is not useful for modifying fable itself, however it is ideal for exporting your modifications for distribution. Once this BIG archive has been created if anyone wishes to apply the changes to their exisiting original archive they can use the ‘Merge BIG’ functionality with the created new BIG archive.

back to top

Section 4: Modeling

Modeling for Fable in General

alright, it seems that more and more people want to model, so here is a full blown, cover-it-all tutorial for those that do not know anything about how to do it for fable.

  1. Pick your favorite modeling program. I personally prefer Blender, not because it is free, but because I just like the UI a whole lot more. Some people like to use Maya, but that is really, really, expensive, I don't have an exact number, but I think it's somewhere around 8,000 us dollars. Other people I've seen use ac3d, some people use 3ds max, that's a popular one, and is necessarry, but I'll get into that later. You could also use google's SketchUp program, but I don't think you'll get anywhere with that becuase it's a different style of modeling, and I don't really know how to use it. I recommend Blender, 3ds Max 9, or Maya.


  2. Decide what you want to model, if it's a weapon, then you are in for an easy tutorial. If it's clothing, be prepared for hours of painstaking frustration and beating your computer to death.


  3. Modeling for fable in general (excluding clothing) involves three main steps:

Weapons in Particular

  1. Export a weapon from FE by going into FE, go to the top left corner and double-click Graphics.big, scroll down to near the very bottom until you find the mesh entry of a weapon similar to yours, if you made an double-bladed axe, choose a double-bladed axe. If you made a regular axe, just pick a sword. If you made a double-sided hammer, pick a double-sided hammer, regular hammer then get a sword. Basically, get a sword if it's single-sided, a double-sided if it's double-sided.

  2. For this part, you need 3ds Max, Panda Exporter (get the panda exporter version that DOES need the November 2007 Direct SDK to be installed before they will operate!!), and Xporter.

  3. Open 3ds max, and go to File>>Import>> and choose to import X-FILE, and find the mesh you exported from fable. Next, import the weapon you made.

  4. Go into vertice select mode (over in the right, find the button with the blue dots while in the editing tab), and select all of the vertices. Move, rotate, and scale your weapon so it is in proportion with the fable weapon (however much bigger or smaller you want it compared to that weapon, and make sure the rotation is correct and that it is in the right spot).

  5. Exit vertice select mode (re-click the button that activated it)
  6. Go to list view, and select all but one of the sub-meshes of the fable weapon, and delete it (unless it is the only one, if it's the only one skip this step)

  7. Go to list view, and select the remaining fable mesh, then go into vertice select mode.

  8. Select all of the vertices, and delete them all.

  9. Leave vertice select mode and select the mesh of your weapon, then over in the editing column look for a button that says "Attach List" and click it. Select the mesh of the fable weapon, and click attach. If a box appears, then click ok.


  10. If you already have a texture, then skip to the next part, otherwise...

    Texturing Your Weapon


  11. Go to File>>Export and choose to export with Panda Direct X, then save it as something.

  12. Open Graphics.big in FE, and find a weapon mesh entry (near the bottom) to use, and click the materials tab.

  13. Find the button that says "Load" next to the "Save LOD" button. Click it (duh).

  14. Find the mesh you exported.

  15. After clicking ok, without closing the mesh window, go to textures.big.

  16. Scroll down to the very bottom, and find one of the UI entries. Open one of them. Change the name to TEXTURE_OBJECT_(name of object)_TEXTURE.

  17. Click on "open new", and load the texture for your weapon, setting the box to DXT3 if it uses transparency. If it doesn't use transparency keep it at DXT1.

  18. If you used DXT1 then find "alpha" with a little box next to it that has a 1 in it, and change it to 0, but if you used DXT3, then leave it at 1.

  19. Click "Apply Changes" (do this every time you change an entry before closing the window, otherwise changes will not be saved, this is the only time I will remind you).

  20. Copy the id up near the title, then close the window.

  21. Go back to the mesh window, and if you see text in the white box in the materials tab, then click it, otherwise click the top-left corner of the white box (inside the white, don't click the gray), and make sure that a small space becomes highlighted.

  22. Erase anything from the "texture" box, and paste the id that you copied earlier in there.

  23. Change max texture layers to 1, and use alpha to (0 if no transparency, 1 if transparency)

  24. Click apply changes at the bottom, then apply changes at the top.

  25. Where it says "lod" at a little box that has a 0, and click the arrow and go to 1.

  26. If text appears in the materials box, then repeat steps 12-15, and 20-25, except go from lod 1-2 if it is there, and continue until the lod does not have a mesh.

  27. When you get to the lod without a mesh, do not load a mesh there. Instead, just make sure you applied changes and go back to the preview tab.

  28. Look at all of the lod's, and make sure they look pretty close to how they should. If the textures look weird, you did something wrong in the materials tab. If the mesh looks weird, then you did something wrong in 3ds.

  29. Make sure that you do not change anything I haven't said to change! This is important, because I will tell you to change them later if neccesary, and if you are reading this you probably don't know what you are doing yet.

Once you know how to make weapons, you can probably make just about anything else, except unless you can make a collision mesh (you can't yet) then you can walk through it (this doesn't matter for weapons and other things like that because you wouldn't walk through it anyway :p ).

Advanced Material Settings

In this part, I am only going to tell you what things do, not exactly baby steps here. You should have a good idea about how this works by now.

If you want shiny parts of your weapon, then seperate the shiny parts in 3ds by selecting the shiny vertices and clicking detach in the right column. Exit vertice select, select the new detached mesh, go into scale mode, [MAKE SURE YOU ARE NOT IN ANY OF THE EDIT MODES] and look down at the 3 boxes on the bottom of the screen. Turn the numbers to 1's. Go into move mode, and change the numbers to 0's. Go into rotate mode, change the numbers to 0's.

You may have noticed that it looks pretty messed up, so now go into vertice select mode and fix it, all in vertice select mode.

Now you should have two sub-meshes, one of the shiny parts and one of the not-shiny parts.

After you have it looking right, just export with panda.

In the mesh entry in FE, on the shiny sub-mesh, put 27 for the specular id, or some other texture to act as one, and make the max texture layers be 5. Supposedly you can use a specualar map and a normal map for the same submesh by changing max texture layers to 7, but that never seems to work for me. I'll explain normal maps here:

To make a normal map, get the normal map filter for either Gimp or Photoshop, and run your texture through it. In gimp, go to Dialogs>>Channels or something like that, and select the blue channel, then go to colors>>invert. If in photoshop, find the box with the color channels (probably lower-right side of the window), select blue channel, and go to edit>>modify>>invert or something like that. If it looks green now, then you did it right. If it doesn't look somewhat green, then you did it wrong. Save it as a .png, then import into FE as DXT3. This will be your normal map texture, so enter it into the normal map id of your mesh.

Hopefully that will work for you.

Making clothing is much more complicated, and will not be covered here, but here is a link to a good tutorial

If there is anything I missed let me know.

back to top
morerunes

© morerunes 2008-2009