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Modding Tt LEGO Games: Beginner's Preparation/Setup


McJobless
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Hey guys! If you've come to this tutorial, I assume you're probably new to the world of LEGO Video Game modding! If you've already gone ahead and extracted your files, this tutorial isn't going to be much use to you. However, if you're new to the modding process, this is a great place to start!

 

This tutorial will work on any Traveller's Tales game starting with the original LEGO Star Wars. This also includes their non-LEGO games such as Transformers.

 

NOTE: I am not responsible for any game updates which break your files. If you want to be completely safe, make sure you turn off "Automatic Updates" in Steam, or simply don't install game updates for retail games, and always keep backups of your game saves and data files.

 

If you have any problems with tutorial, please let me know in the replies below.

 

Modding TT Games - The Basic Setup

 

Step 0: Finding Your Game Files
In order to mod the game, we need to be able to access its files. If you've never dived into a program's folder before, here's the quick method to doing so.

 

Head to your game's directory. If you bought the game through Steam, you can;

 

  1. Right-Click the game in the list of games.
  2. Press "Properties".
  3. Press the "Local Files" tab.
  4. Press the "Browse Local Files..." button.

 

kGtwYxc.png

 

What if you bought the game at retail and it's an older title that doesn't unlock on Steam? That's all groovy too.

 

  1. Click on the Start menu, and go to the "All Programs" button.
  2. Find the shortcut for your LEGO game that you'd like to mod. If you can't see it, use the search bar.
  3. Right-Click on the program's shortcut, and press the "Properties" button.
  4. Under the Shortcut Tab (which should be automatically open), press the "Open File Location" button.

 

AXHQp3P.png

 

Either way, these should both take you to the game's folder.

 

Step 1: Backing Up Files
This step isn't strictly necessary, but it's good practice that will save you having to reinstall the game if you accidentally break something.

 

To backup, simply select the files you want to keep a safe copy of, right-click, select "copy" and paste them into a new folder somewhere else on your hard-drive. If you've got lots of space, you may want to backup the entire game folder, leaving a clean one you can use to compare your modded copy with. However, most of us aren't overflowing with space, so if you want to only backup specific files, you need to look for any file that has the name "GAME.DAT" or "GAME<number>.DAT", where <number> is replaced with a number between 0 and 9. These .dat files are specially packed archives that hold the game's data that we want to modify. The number of .dat files will vary between game, but they will always start with "GAME".

 

Note: Just pointed out by Kirk?by; if for any reason you need to get your .dat files back and you are running a Steam copy of the game, you can simply press the "Verify Integrity Of Game Cache" button you can see in the same window as the "Browse Local Files..." button above. This will re-download any missing files (including the .dat files), but may overwrite any files you've changed.

 

Step 2: Creating a Working Directory
If you're a confident modder, you could go ahead and extract all the files directly to the game's directory, but we're going to use a Working Directory; an intermediary folder that holds our files so we can comb through them and make sure there isn't any problems before we put them in our game folder.

 

On your Desktop, create a new folder called "LEGOFUN" or something similar. The name doesn't matter, just so long as it's recognisable. We will delete this folder when we're done. Inside your LEGOFUN folder, create two new folders. Call the first one "QuickBMS", and the second one "GAME".

 

Step 3: Downloading The Tools
In order to open up those .dat files, we need some special tools.

 

Firstly, head into this link and download the file in the first link at the top that says "QuickBMS generic files extractor and reimporter". QuickBMS is a little tool that allows people to create scripts that tell it how to extract different kinds of files. When the file downloads, it should be a RAR file. Open this up with WinRAR or any similar archive program, and drag the contents of this archive into your Desktop/LEGOFUN/QuickBMS folder.

 

We're not done yet! Open up this link, and in your Web Browser go to the "File" meny and press "Save As...". Make sure you select "All Files" in the "Save as type" dropdown box! Save the file as "ttgames.bms" in your Desktop/LEGOFUN/QuickBMS folder.

 

Note: If for whatever reason the file doesn't exist, simply go to that first link (the same page that has the QuickBMS program) and scroll down until you find the "Ttgames . Traveller's Tales games DAT files extractor" script. Click on the blue link and save this as "ttgames.bms" as I suggest above.

 

Step 4: Using QuickBMS To Extract The Game Files
It's finally time. Are you ready?!

 

  1. In your Desktop/LEGOFUN/QuickBMS folder, run the program called "quickbms_4gb_files.exe". The name hints at the fact that this version of QuickBMS should be used for larger files, such as what you'll find in any TT Game.
  2. The first prompt will ask for a script or plugin, which we have already downloaded. Double click ttgames.bms in your Desktop/LEGOFUN/QuickBMS folder.
  3. The second prompt will ask you for the files you wish to extract from. Go to your LEGO game directory that we found in Step 0, and select all of the .dat files. You can select multiple files by dragging over all the files, or holding either Ctrl or Shift as you click on them individually!
  4. The third and final prompt will ask you to select a folder to save the files to. Open up your Desktop/LEGOFUN/GAME folder and press the "Save" button.
  5. Let the program extract the files. Get a drink and sit back!

 

If you encounter any errors, don't be afraid to post here and ask.

 

Step 5: Cleaning Up
We're almost ready now. Before we can put our extracted files ready for modding into the game directory, we need to delete/backup a few files first.

 

In your Desktop/LEGOFUN/GAME directory...

 

  • You want to look for any file that says ".pak" or ".fpk", and put these files into the same directory as your backed up .DAT files. QuickBMS (should) automatically extract the contents of these packages as well, making them redundant. If for some reason the game crashes or things don't appear to load normally, restore them to where you found them.

 

In your LEGO game directory...

 

  • You need to delete all of the .dat files that you've backed up/extracted.
  • You should make a backup and then delete all of your save files, as your mods may change the data that they store and could make them incompatible if you ever want to return your game to a normal state.

 

Note: Be aware that you will need Administrator privileges to overwrite/create/delete files in your Program Files/Program Files(x86) folder in versions of Windows beyond Windows XP. There are a number of ways to disable this security feature for your LEGO Game's data folder permanently, but they are beyond the scope of this tutorial. Google searching for "Windows Folder Ownership" should give you plenty of results.

 

Step 6: Moving The Files
We're finally there. Carefully follow the next set of steps, and then you can start modding your TT game;

 

  1. Go to your Desktop/LEGOFUN/GAME folder and press "Ctrl" and "A" to select all. If this doesn't work, simply drag and highlight everything in the folder.
  2. Either press "Ctrl" and "C" or right-click and press "Copy".
  3. Go to your LEGO game directory. Make sure you are in the same folder as the .exe file that you use to run the game!
  4. Press "Ctrl" and "V" or right-click and press "Paste". All of the extracted files and folders should now be inside your LEGO game directory.
  5. Celebrate because you made it!

 

Step 7: Your First Mod
In order to show-off that we made it this far, let's make a quick change to the game.

 

  1. In your LEGO Game directory, go into the stuff/text folder and open up "english_credits.txt" in Notepad, Notepad++ or any plain text editor.
  2. Change the following text:
     
    heading    "DEVELOPED BY"
    credit    "Tt Fusion"
    to
    heading    "MODDED BY"
    credit    "<enter your name here>"
  3. Save the file and run the game.
  4. Enter the Options menu, and press Credits.
  5. Congratulations, you've just entered the world of modding!

 

Note: If you find that you cannot save the files and that you get an error about "Read-Only" access or  similar, this is because of the problem mention above regarding Administrator access. You will either need to run your text editing program as an Administrator (right-click and select "Run as administrator") or save the file to another location and then manually copy it over to the game directory.

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  • lol username pinned this topic
  • 3 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...

quickbms says me 0 files found in 1 seconds i tried it thousand times but its not working.

I probably should have mentioned this much earlier; the two recent big updates for LEGO Worlds have changed the file format (either through encryption or compression or something) and so we currently don't have access to the files again. This will still work with all previous LEGO Tt games.

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  • 6 months later...

Here's a doozy for ya.

I was extracting GAME.DAT in Lego Batman 3 using QuickBMS 0.7.4, and this comes up.

FcgMZT2.png

Anyone know of a work around? Every file after this seems to get a recursive error where the same file requires renaming, even AFTER I manually or auto-rename it.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Nagaramsraeloco
On 5/9/2016 at 2:54 PM, Mariner said:

Here's a doozy for ya.

I was extracting GAME.DAT in Lego Batman 3 using QuickBMS 0.7.4, and this comes up.

FcgMZT2.png

Anyone know of a work around? Every file after this seems to get a recursive error where the same file requires renaming, even AFTER I manually or auto-rename it.

 

I e-mailed the aluigi about this error. It means you don't have permission to write files into the output folder. Choose somewhere else on the disc as the output folder.

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40 minutes ago, Fragrant said:

How to on MAC?

  1. On your Mac, go to the Windows Store.
  2. Purchase any Windows-based computer; I personally recommend the new line of Surface 3s.
  3. Await for your new machine to arrive.
  4. Install the LEGO game of choice on your new Windows machine.
  5. Follow the tutorial on the new machine.
  6. Transfer the files to your MacOS computer.
  7. Realise that you can't change the files of the MacOS version and cry a little bit.
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Just now, McJobless said:
  1. On your Mac, go to the Windows Store.
  2. Purchase any Windows-based computer; I personally recommend the new line of Surface 3s.
  3. Await for your new machine to arrive.
  4. Install the LEGO game of choice on your new Windows machine.
  5. Follow the tutorial on the new machine.
  6. Transfer the files to your MacOS computer.
  7. Realise that you can't change the files of the MacOS version and cry a little bit.

THANKS FOR THE TUTORIAL!

It was about as useful as the Softonic tutorial.

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  • 1 month later...

Great tutorial! Thank you, now i got a question. I did this but i want to find 3d models specific for Blender or 3dsmax but there are different files etc.. Do you have an idea?

 

SmB5ZMC.png

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You won't find any files in standard 3D model formats like that, sorry - they're all custom/proprietary formats, the details of which often change between games.

 

There's some programs that might be able to convert some of the models to more standard formats (take a look through here: http://www.rockraidersunited.com/forum/306-modern-lego-games/) but it depends on which game you're working with (I haven't seen anybody rip/convert Worlds models, specifically). 

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On 12.10.2016 at 8:34 PM, Terrev said:

I haven't seen anybody rip/convert Worlds models, specifically. 

I have only access to files from the LEGO Worlds Early Access Update 5. I do not know if the format has changed again. I was able to extract mesh information from some ghg and gsc files. This was some time ago. If you are interested, I can look for the extraction tool.

bhn3AqS.png

uZ2kvYd.png

n87Ep9S.png

 

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  • 2 years later...
  • 8 months later...

Aaaaaaaand nothing happens. I followed every step exactly but the game just goes to the splash screen from the movie, goes to the legal Mumbo-jumbo then crashes to the desktop. Oh and it made my computer completely freeze for 10 solid minutes, I had to wait for it to run out of battery before I could restart it. Thanks for this wonderful journey everyone, it sucked ass and now I’m miserable.

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3 hours ago, ErnestOdad said:

Aaaaaaaand nothing happens. I followed every step exactly but the game just goes to the splash screen from the movie, goes to the legal Mumbo-jumbo then crashes to the desktop. Oh and it made my computer completely freeze for 10 solid minutes, I had to wait for it to run out of battery before I could restart it. Thanks for this wonderful journey everyone, it sucked ass and now I’m miserable.

Which game were you modding? Newer games may not work if the script hasn't been updated to support them. I don't know how often Luigi updates the script for the latest games, if at all.

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KGamer555

Hello. I have modded Lego Batman 2 but it doesnt work. The Credits does work but i want to mod the Batman and it does not work. I gave him 6 hitpoints but he still have 4 hitpoints. PLS HELP . Thanks :)

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi I am new to this whole thing and kinda know my way around it now but I don't think you can change characters that you play as hitpoints. I have tried on lego star wars TCS and it doesn't work either (yes I know that it is an older game but still)

Oh an I have a question, How do I edit my stud amounts

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  • 2 weeks later...

Is want to mod "Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga" to have the dynamic splitscreen from newer Lego games. I never modded any game, how could i start on this, or is this even possible?

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  • 2 months later...

hello I extract the text.cvs file in the LEGO® The Incredibles GAME6.DAT file, but I want to make a Turkish patch, but when reimport it says 0 files so I can't put it in it I don't have too much English so I'm sorry 

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  • 7 months later...
CarlJohnson7892

Been trying to find the english_credits.txt file in Transformers: The Game but seems I can't find it. Any help? Thank you in advance

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