Help needed - Blade & Soul NA/EU costume modding (2 Viewers)

[PrincessNicky]

We need someone with programming skills to update uMod so that it works with the release client for BnS in Europe and NA, or someone who can create an application similar to UtHelper which can unpack upk files to get access to the dds files inside and then repack them for use in the game.

The problem faced at the moment is that neither uMod 1.44 nor uMod 2.0 are working with the new release client, both crash the client at the character loading screen or just after you choose your character, so actually displaying mods in game with uMod is currently impossible (as is capturing textures to work on).

During the early CBTs it seems the Hacker Shield was not enabled, and it was possible to capture hi-res tectures with uMod 2.0 for modding and then injecting them back into the game. It crashed a lot when you made changes, but once you had some mods in place you could play without problems. During this time medium-res textures could also be captured with uMod 1.44 and swapped in and out without problems.
In the later CBTs the Hacker Shield was enabled and uMod 2.0 would crash the client as soon as you selected your character and entered the game, but uMod 1.44 carried on working without problems although restricted to medium-res textures.

Now that the game is in full release in EU and NA, it appears that the Hacker Shield has been updated further, and neither version of Umod will work without crashing the game.

Help would be greatly appreciated as requested at the start of this post, as I've been looking forward to sharing my work on hi-res costumes with the community and continuing to work on more of them, but I cannot do anything at the moment due to lack of applications compatible with the new client.

 

[stricq]

Is there a specification for the UPK format out there somewhere? I did a quick search but didn't find anything useful. If I have the specs, it should be easy to come up with a packer/unpacker.

Hah, I did another search and got the specs for the format. Let me see what I can come up with. Anything I come up with will be .Net.

 

[stricq]

Well, getting started.

 

[PrincessNicky]

Well, getting started.

I'm really excited to see you're working on this.
The image link you provided dosn't seem to work though, so not sure what you were showing us.

 

[stricq]

I'm really excited to see you're working on this.
The image link you provided dosn't seem to work though, so not sure what you were showing us.

Whoops, I turned off a service on my server and it was preventing any of the websites from receiving traffic from outside the local network. It should be working now.

 

[GZdestinyx]

I found this application on CN forum wayyy back than that allows to unpack upk i think , ill attach it in the link. Its a program from a CN forum called 希望之地(Land of Hope) and all credits goes to 八云垶. I personally but I;ll post a english tranlation of its interface in english


EDIT by moderator fleet: I downloaded the attachment and ran a virus scan on it. The scan confirmed that the compressed files contained a trojan and malware. Attachment deleted.

 

[PrincessNicky]

I found this application on CN forum wayyy back than that allows to unpack upk i think , ill attach it in the link. Its a program from a CN forum called 希望之地(Land of Hope) and all credits goes to 八云垶. I personally but I;ll post a english tranlation of its interface in english

Link contains malware, i won't be trusting it sorry

 

[lolilove]

I found this application on CN forum wayyy back than that allows to unpack upk i think , ill attach it in the link. Its a program from a CN forum called 希望之地(Land of Hope) and all credits goes to 八云垶. I personally but I;ll post a english tranlation of its interface in english


EDIT by moderator fleet: I downloaded the attachment and ran a virus scan on it. The scan confirmed that the compressed files contained a trojan and malware. Attachment deleted.

Those type of programs almost always come up as virus/trojans to virus scanners, even if they legit don't have any virus or trojans in them.

 

[stricq]

All header data is now being read and parsed. This includes the export table, which is the most important table.

 

[PrincessNicky]

All header data is now being read and parsed. This includes the export table, which is the most important table.

It looks like you're making great progress, although as a non-programmer I don't understand too much of what you're showing us.
For costume modding, the key files we want to look at are .dds, will it be possible to have a feature in your application which allows these file types to be sorted/filtered?

 

[stricq]

It looks like you're making great progress, although as a non-programmer I don't understand too much of what you're showing us.
For costume modding, the key files we want to look at are .dds, will it be possible to have a feature in your application which allows these file types to be sorted/filtered?

It's a lot more complicated than that. You have to know what it is you are looking at/for. You would need to know what a dds file looks like when looking at the hex view of the data. Then, once I get that figured out I can make it a lot easier. I already have it displaying a hex dump of each individual item in a file, but no further. Those individual items have their own format. Once I identify what a dds file looks like then I can hunt for them quickly.

If Gildor's umodel app supported BnS NA upk file formats it would be perfect for this but the format has changed slightly from the asian release. I could probably take some time and modify Gildor's code (it is on github) but I need a better understanding of the format before I can do that.

 

[Average Tumblrina]

All header data is now being read and parsed. This includes the export table, which is the most important table.

Nice. Look like we may finally be on our way to fixing torpedo tits, and having nicer nude model and texture

 

[lolilove]

If Gildor's umodel app supported BnS NA upk file formats it would be perfect for this but the format has changed slightly from the asian release. I could probably take some time and modify Gildor's code (it is on github) but I need a better understanding of the format before I can do that.

It can still open and view NA upk, you just have to manually set it to unreal3 + Blade&Soul instead of auto detecting, in which case it errors.

 

[PrincessNicky]

It's a lot more complicated than that. You have to know what it is you are looking at/for. You would need to know what a dds file looks like when looking at the hex view of the data. Then, once I get that figured out I can make it a lot easier. I already have it displaying a hex dump of each individual item in a file, but no further. Those individual items have their own format. Once I identify what a dds file looks like then I can hunt for them quickly.

If Gildor's umodel app supported BnS NA upk file formats it would be perfect for this but the format has changed slightly from the asian release. I could probably take some time and modify Gildor's code (it is on github) but I need a better understanding of the format before I can do that.

I don't know if it's going to be helpful to you or not, I captured some hi-res costume textures during the early CBTs when the Hackshield was off and uMod 2 was useable (with quite a lot of crashing). They have filenames like Client_W1024_H1024_F894720068_T_0X646EE4EB6774A22E.dds
That's gibberish to me, but maybe important to you?
I can also upload some examples here if that's useful?

 

[stricq]

It can still open and view NA upk, you just have to manually set it to unreal3 + Blade&Soul instead of auto detecting, in which case it errors.

Thanks, it does work.

 

[lolilove]

Thanks, it does work.

No problem. Anything else I can do to help, I will try. Although I can't program, I am pretty determined suddenly to crack this vault that is preventing so many people from being able to mod Blade and Soul.

And you are going to make a lot of people happy with your work! Thanks, wish there was more I could do.

 

[PrincessNicky]

And you are going to make a lot of people happy with your work! Thanks, wish there was more I could do.

^^ what she said :)
Really excited to see what your work will create stricq.

 

[stricq]

File compression gave me a bit of a fit until I found Gildor's explanation of how it worked. So decompression of compressed files now works. I also included decryption but I have not seen any files that are encrypted.

 

[lolilove]

looking good
although from what i can gather, the biggest and toughest issue has been a way to REpack items back into .upks

 

[stricq]

looking good
although from what i can gather, the biggest and toughest issue has been a way to REpack items back into .upks

Yes, it s a biggie but at this point I don't think it will be particularly difficult. What I'm most worried about at this point is what kinds of translation will be needed for the internal objects when they are exported to make them useful to the people doing the real hard work of changing the skins.

I have seen OGG files, TGA files, and even fonts and those should export fine, but the animations and meshes and all the 3D stuff may be a pain from what I've read.