I kept googling this from time to time but I couldn't find anything on this, or I am just plain blind.
Has there ever been a sprite (Is that the right word for it in daggerfall?) pack made that changes the player vampire faces into somethign more civil looking? As much as I enjoy the brutality some vampire bloodlines in elder scrolls have as traits, the 'head-recently-pulled-out-of-the-mud-look' paired with blood smeared from one ear to the other we get in daggerfall after becoming a vampire is not exactly something I'm fond of.
I'd be happy already if it were the normal faces but with red eyes.
On that note also; How would one go about editing those actually in DF? Never tried to mod the game before on that level.
I've considered that a while ago already, but ultimately this isn't really what I am looking for. It should look like a vampire after all, just not with the messy eater blood smear and hurricane haircut some the faces have.
A long time ago in Classic Daggerfall there was a series of portraits with lightly altered faces in a way you describe for vampires. I haven't seen the altered faces in years though, and haven't been able to find them stored anywhere again.
I lost the interest in altering images myself once the aforementioned mod was created [thank you lonegamedev,] but you might consider altering the images yourself.
Aleryn wrote: ↑Tue Jul 28, 2020 7:10 pm
A long time ago in Classic Daggerfall there was a series of portraits with lightly altered faces in a way you describe for vampires. I haven't seen the altered faces in years though, and haven't been able to find them stored anywhere again.
I lost the interest in altering images myself once the aforementioned mod was created [thank you lonegamedev,] but you might consider altering the images yourself.
Ooooooooooookay. I just tried that and I holy cow I had no idea just HOW tiny resolution the face portrait files are.
I don't think I can do this myself. I mean sure, I could probably upscale it and try a million photoshop filters or something but I doubt it's going to be great considering I lack the knowledge to use that program to begin with.
Here was thinking I could edit the blood away, make the eyes red and just try to smooth it. Boy I could'nt have been more wrong.
Using a pixel art program will be best here I believe. I'm going to give this a look at least, with the help of this Daggerfall Imaging program the possibilities seem endless! If I do end up messing with the vampire faces along the way, and it doesn't turn out to be garbage, I'll post them here so that someone can use them in a mod.
Andypic is the only way I've found to go (Daggerfall Imaging only allows one to export images, as far as I can tell), and it's pretty fiddly. It can only run through a DOS emulator, so you'll need to create a new directory to mount DOSbox to and probably best to have a copy of your "arena2" file in it to work from. You'll also need an image editor capable of working with the archaic .pcx format (I use an antiquated suite called MGI Photosuite). To put it step-by-step...
1. Download Andypic (for free).
2. Create a new folder on your C: for DOSbox to work with. Make a copy of "arena2" here, and another folder to hold your exported and edited pictures.
3. Read Andypic's instruction text file pretty thoroughly, then examine its config file. Change the addresses in its config file so it knows to look in the copy you've made of arena2, and in the new folder for your edited pics.
4. Open DOSbox (there ought to be a copy of it with Daggerfall's install, assuming it's the GOG version). Type "mount intro" and it should instruct you how to set it up so it treats your new folder as its c: (annoyingly, you have to redo this step every time you use DOSbox).
5. Now you can use Andypic to find your character's non-vampire face and its proper screen coordinates (for the paperdoll). In my case, I was a female Altmer, all of whose faces are compressed into arena2 file "face14i0.cif". Mine was the fifth one in order. I noted down the coordinates, and exported the face.
6. Open the exported face file (a .pcx file) in your image editor. Make whatever changes you want, but try only to use colours already present in the image (select with pipette tool or equivalent) so you don't confuse the palette.
7. Go back to Andypic. Check the file vamp00i0.cif and find out the slot order / order of appearance of your current, no doubt horrible, vampire face.
8. Use Andypic to copy your new .pcx file into vamp00i0.cif, using the screen coordinates of your previous non-vampire face, and the slot number of your current vampire face.
9. Check vamp00i0.cif to see if it copied correctly (though come to think of it, do save a backup of the file beforehand).
10. Finally, copy your new and improved vamp00i0.cif file into Daggerfall's original arena2 folder, replacing the one there. That should, divines willing, have fixed the issue.
But as I said, very fiddly. Happy to have a stab at it for you, though I wouldn't dare offer more than light edits to a default face (I basically just reddened the eyes and put single-pixel fangs on my old Altmer face).
No doubt, but some people (like myself) may only have played Daggerfall at all because they got it free with GOG's download of Morrowind, and only heard of Unity later, when they'd already played far enough that building a new character from scratch, even in a superior engine, was an unappealing prospect.
If I do end up messing with the vampire faces along the way, and it doesn't turn out to be garbage, I'll post them here so that someone can use them in a mod.