Outlast Trials Modding Guide

 

I'll be going over the progress and guide to modding in Outlast Trials. This is a work in progress and I was helped by a few great people. 

kboykboy and hypermetric

Tools that you must have:

1. Packing (paking) 

 Outlast Trials uses a specific version for paking "V11", and that using Unrealpak or regular Repak doesn't work and will not appear in-game when you use these tools to package your mod.

That is why you should use "Repak" by Truman: https://github.com/trumank/repak/compare/master...patch-outlast-trials, which is an edited Repak exe specifically for Outlast Trials. DOWNLOAD

OR easily download here in NexusMods: https://www.nexusmods.com/theoutlasttrials/mods/31

2. Fmodel

You need Fmodel to access the game files https://fmodel.app/

Once downloaded you have to set your settings, your game path, like this when you open up Fmodel.

Here you get to access the files. 

3. UNREAL ENGINE - 

More info down somewhere in the guide.

Simple Retexture

In this, I'll be doing a retexture over the player's face with an edited (custom) diffuse texture and normal map texture as well.

In this image, I replaced "P_F_Cau_Head_01_A" which is the first Caucasian Female Head. You can find the heads in 

 OPP > Content > Characters > Player > Female > Head

 ❗Note: This folder also contains the physics asset, materials, and face poses, which will be something you have the pin point later on.

What you want to do is open up the heads you want to edit, which are usually named "P_F_Bl_Head_08,  P_F_Cau_Head_01, P_F_As_Head_01 " -- Bl is the African American face types, Cau is the caucasian face types, and As is the Asian face types. Remember to know the race and number of the head YOU pick.

I picked "P_F_Cau_Head_01_A" SO -- the textures I'd like to edit and replace are in the Head > Textures folder.

P_F_Cau_Head_01_A     - Base Color

P_F_Cau_Head_01_C    - ORM (Controls the shininess, ambient occulsion) 

P_F_Cau_Head_01_N    - Normal Map

I intend to change and edit the Base color map and Normal Map. It's not really important to change the normal map; it's up to you, but I want the face texture to be smoother and not ugly and old-looking. 😣

SO - in the texture folder, you will export the textures you want to edit. 

Right click >  Save Texture

 

Now, this is the fun part. You, as the artist, get to edit the face textures however you want, whether it's to be more wrinkly, smoother, darker, tattoos, freckles, darker lips, dark eyebrows, WHATEVER. I don't know. But keep in mind, I don't know if changing the skin color will do anything messy, that is why you have to pick your race according to the face types earlier. -- Just make something different over the textures.

This is what my edited skin textures look like (Base Color and Normal Map). Honestly, it did turn out differently in-game than in Blender... But I don't really care because it made the player prettier and not wrinkly.

    2. UNREAL ENGINE

Once you're done editing your textures. You must load up Unreal Engine Editor.

NOW - I don't really know if using Epic Games' regular UE editor affects the output of your mod, but I advise you to download the specific UE Build created by:kboykboy

https://github.com/kboykboy2/UnrealEngine/releases/tag/4.27-TheOutlastTrials_V2

Download these two files, which are a zip file cut in half, basically. It needs both in order to unzip properly. 

Now that you downloaded them and unzipped them somewhere GOOD and it isn't part of your OneDrive, BECAUSE it can cause errors when you pack your mods out of UE.

When unzipped, go to this path file to open up UE4Editor, which is the main Editor; you should totally make a shortcut so you can open it quickly whenever.

❗ Clicking Type IN your folder is so easy to find UE4Editor.exe because there's a crap ton of files in that folder. ❗

When you open up the UE4Editor, you will encounter lots of compiling shaders, which isn't too much, let it load and compile everything first!!!

At this point, you are going to have to recreate the path files just like in the game's file path. (Fmodel) in Unreal Engine. All those folders you gotta recreate exactly like in the game.

❗ In Unreal Engine, you already have that CONTENT folder, so you begin creating the folders that contain the mods and files you WANT. In this case, it's characters - so you'd make the characters folder in Content

When you are done copying the folders, you can now IMPORT your custom textures!! (Into Textures folder just like in fmodel.)

Your textures may be named something differently - if so, please, please, please make sure you copy the exact name as the ones you are replacing. 

 (If you don't give a crap about Normal Maps or have none to replace ignore this.)

❗ If you are replacing Normal Maps you gotta make sure you set these options correctly. ❗

Double click your Normal Map texture, and on your right, set the Compression Settings to "BC7 (DX11, optional A)"

❗ Not doing this will make your player's face like this : 

 

            And also scroll down and make sure Texture Group is set to "CharacterNormalMap"

This is referenced by one of the Normal Maps in-game. You can see it uses "Texture Group_CharacterNormalMap" and the compression settings are the PixelFormat "PF_BC7" 

Now, you're good to go. The base color texture doesn't really need any settings done.

❗ Time to export your files out of Unreal Editor.

Go to File and press "Cook Content for Windows"

            It'll show a "Cooking Contents" on the bottom right. Wait for a short bit, and you're done once you hear a sound effect.

When you're done cooking, you must locate your Unreal Engine folder, which contains your project file. Go to this file path and copy the UAsset files you modded.

        These are the edited textures that were cooked and are the ones I gotta copy and paste 

ONCE YOU HAVE PUT IN your edited files/custom files into your own folder that follows the exact file path like the game. You can Pak it now with the repak

Open up your command prompt 

Drag your "repak.exe" file into the command prompt first, then press the spacebar. Copy and paste this line:

" pack --version V11 --compression Zlib "

and then drag in your mod folder with all your edited files right after. Hit Enter and it should now have compressed and packed your mod file into a pak file that is ready to be used!!

WARNING:

If you do end up leaving in or leaving out a crucial file that you didn't pak in, your game might crash your entire computer. no joke