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nornities · 1 year ago

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How to use DXVK with The Sims 3

Have you seen this post about using DXVK by Criisolate? But felt intimidated by the sheer mass of facts and information?

@desiree-uk and I compiled a guide and the configuration file to make your life easier. It focuses on players not using the EA App, but it might work for those just the same. It’s definitely worth a try.

Adding this to your game installation will result in a better RAM usage. So your game is less likely to give you Error 12 or crash due to RAM issues. It does NOT give a huge performance boost, but more stability and allows for higher graphics settings in game.

The full guide behind the cut. Let me know if you also would like it as PDF.

Happy simming!

Disclaimer and Credits

Desiree and I are no tech experts and just wrote down how we did this. Our ability to help if you run into trouble is limited. So use at your own risk and back up your files!

We both are on Windows 10 and start the game via TS3W.exe, not the EA App. So your experience may differ.

This guide is based on our own experiments and of course criisolate’s post on tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/criisolate/749374223346286592/ill-explain-what-i-did-below-before-making-any

This guide is brought to you by Desiree-UK and Norn.

Compatibility

Note: This will conflict with other programs that “inject” functionality into your game so they may stop working. Notably

Reshade

GShade

Nvidia Experience/Nvidia Inspector/Nvidia Shaders

RivaTuner Statistics Server

It does work seamlessly with LazyDuchess’ Smooth Patch.

LazyDuchess’ Launcher: unknown

Alder Lake patch: does conflict. One user got it working by starting the game by launching TS3.exe (also with admin rights) instead of TS3W.exe. This seemed to create the cache file for DXVK. After that, the game could be started from TS3W.exe again. That might not work for everyone though.

A word on FPS and V-Sync

With such an old game it’s crucial to cap framerate (FPS). This is done in the DXVK.conf file. Same with V-Sync.

You need

a text editor (easiest to use is Windows Notepad)

to download DXVK, version 2.3.1 from here: https://github.com/doitsujin/DXVK/releases/tag/v2.3.1 Extract the archive, you are going to need the file d3d9.dll from the x32 folder

the configuration file DXVK.conf from here: https://github.com/doitsujin/DXVK/blob/master/DXVK.conf. Optional: download the edited version with the required changes here.

administrator rights on your PC

to know your game’s installation path (bin folder) and where to find the user folder

a tiny bit of patience :)

First Step: Backup

Backup your original Bin folder in your Sims 3 installation path! The DXVK file may overwrite some files! The path should be something like this (for retail): \Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin (This is the folder where also GraphicsRule.sgr and the TS3W.exe and TS3.exe are located.)

Backup your options.ini in your game’s user folder! Making the game use the DXVK file will count as a change in GPU driver, so the options.ini will reset once you start your game after installation. The path should be something like this: \Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 (This is the folder where your Mods folder is located).

Preparations

Make sure you run the game as administrator. You can check that by right-clicking on the icon that starts your game. Go to Properties > Advanced and check the box “Run as administrator”. Note: This will result in a prompt each time you start your game, if you want to allow this application to make modifications to your system. Click “Yes” and the game will load.

2. Make sure you have the DEP settings from Windows applied to your game.

Open the Windows Control Panel.

Click System and Security > System > Advanced System Settings.

On the Advanced tab, next to the Performance heading, click Settings.

Click the Data Execution Prevention tab.

Select 'Turn on DEP for all programs and services except these”:

Click the Add button, a window to the file explorer opens. Navigate to your Sims 3 installation folder (the bin folder once again) and add TS3W.exe and TS3.exe.

Click OK. Then you can close all those dialog windows again.

Setting up the DXVK.conf file

Open the file with a text editor and delete everything in it. Then add these values:

d3d9.textureMemory = 1

d3d9.presentInterval = 1

d3d9.maxFrameRate = 60

d3d9.presentInterval enables V-Sync,d3d9.maxFrameRate sets the FrameRate. You can edit those values, but never change the first line (d3d9.textureMemory)!

The original DXVK.conf contains many more options in case you would like to add more settings.

A. no Reshade/GShade

Setting up DXVK

Copy the two files d3d9.dll and DXVK.conf into the Bin folder in your Sims 3 installation path. This is the folder where also GraphicsRule.sgr and the TS3W.exe and TS3.exe are located. If you are prompted to overwrite files, please choose yes (you DID backup your folder, right?)

And that’s basically all that is required to install.

Start your game now and let it run for a short while. Click around, open Buy mode or CAS, move the camera.

Now quit without saving. Once the game is closed fully, open your bin folder again and double check if a file “TS3W.DXVK-cache” was generated. If so – congrats! All done!

Things to note

Heads up, the game options will reset! So it will give you a “vanilla” start screen and options.

Don’t worry if the game seems to be frozen during loading. It may take a few minutes longer to load but it will load eventually.

The TS3W.DXVK-cache file is the actual cache DXVK is using. So don’t delete this! Just ignore it and leave it alone. When someone tells to clear cache files – this is not one of them!

Update Options.ini

Go to your user folder and open the options.ini file with a text editor like Notepad.

Find the line “lastdevice = “. It will have several values, separated by semicolons. Copy the last one, after the last semicolon, the digits only. Close the file.

Now go to your backup version of the Options.ini file, open it and find that line “lastdevice” again. Replace the last value with the one you just copied. Make sure to only replace those digits!

Save and close the file.

Copy this version of the file into your user folder, replacing the one that is there.

Things to note:

If your GPU driver is updated, you might have to do these steps again as it might reset your device ID again. Though it seems that the DXVK ID overrides the GPU ID, so it might not happen.

How do I know it’s working?

Open the task manager and look at RAM usage. Remember the game can only use 4 GB of RAM at maximum and starts crashing when usage goes up to somewhere between 3.2 – 3.8 GB (it’s a bit different for everybody).

So if you see values like 2.1456 for RAM usage in a large world and an ongoing save, it’s working. Generally the lower the value, the better for stability.

Also, DXVK will have generated its cache file called TS3W.DXVK-cache in the bin folder. The file size will grow with time as DXVK is adding stuff to it, e.g. from different worlds or savegames. Initially it might be something like 46 KB or 58 KB, so it’s really small.

Optional: changing MemCacheBudgetValue

MemCacheBudgetValue determines the size of the game's VRAM Cache. You can edit those values but the difference might not be noticeable in game. It also depends on your computer’s hardware how much you can allow here.

The two lines of seti MemCacheBudgetValue correspond to the high RAM level and low RAM level situations. Therefore, theoretically, the first line MemCacheBudgetValue should be set to a larger value, while the second line should be set to a value less than or equal to the first line.

The original values represent 200MB (209715200) and 160MB (167772160) respectively. They are calculated as 200x1024x1024=209175200 and 160x1024x1024=167772160.

Back up your GraphicsRules.sgr file! If you make a mistake here, your game won’t work anymore.

Go to your bin folder and open your GraphicsRules.sgr with a text editor.

Search and find two lines that set the variables for MemCacheBudgetValue.

Modify these two values to larger numbers. Make sure the value in the first line is higher or equals the value in the second line. Examples for values: 1073741824, which means 1GB 2147483648 which means 2 GB. -1 (minus 1) means no limit (but is highly experimental, use at own risk)

Save and close the file. It might prompt you to save the file to a different place and not allow you to save in the Bin folder. Just save it someplace else in this case and copy/paste it to the Bin folder afterwards. If asked to overwrite the existing file, click yes.

Now start your game and see if it makes a difference in smoothness or texture loading. Make sure to check RAM and VRAM usage to see how it works.

You might need to change the values back and forth to find the “sweet spot” for your game. Mine seems to work best with setting the first value to 2147483648 and the second to 1073741824.

Uninstallation

Delete these files from your bin folder (installation path):

d3d9.dll

DXVK.conf

TS3W.DXVK-cache

And if you have it, also TS3W_d3d9.log

if you changed the values in your GraphicsRule.sgr file, too, don’t forget to change them back or to replace the file with your backed up version.

delete the bin folder and add it from your backup again.

B. with Reshade/GShade

Follow the steps from part A. no Reshade/Gshade to set up DXVK.

If you are already using Reshade (RS) or GShade (GS), you will be prompted to overwrite files, so choose YES. RS and GS may stop working, so you will need to reinstall them.

Whatever version you are using, the interface shows similar options of which API you can choose from (these screenshots are from the latest versions of RS and GS).

Please note:

Each time you install and uninstall DXVK, switching the game between Vulkan and d3d9, is essentially changing the graphics card ID again, which results in the settings in your options.ini file being repeatedly reset.

ReShade interface

Choose – Vulcan

Click next and choose your preferred shaders.

Hopefully this install method works and it won't install its own d3d9.dll file.

If it doesn't work, then choose DirectX9 in RS, but you must make sure to replace the d3d9.dll file with DXVK's d3d9.dll (the one from its 32bit folder, checking its size is 3.86mb.)

GShade interface

Choose –

Executable Architecture: 32bit

Graphics API: DXVK

Hooking: Normal Mode

GShade is very problematic, it won't work straight out of the box and the overlay doesn't show up, which defeats the purpose of using it if you can't add or edit the shaders you want to use.

Check the game's bin folder, making sure the d3d9.dll is still there and its size is 3.86mb - that is DXVK's dll file.

If installing using the DXVK method doesn't work, you can choose the DirectX method, but there is no guarantee it works either.

The game will not run with these files in the folder:

d3d10core.dll

d3d11.dll

dxgi.dll

If you delete them, the game will start but you can't access GShade! It might be better to use ReShade.

Some Vulcan and DirectX information, if you’re interested:

Vulcan is for rather high end graphic cards but is backward compatible with some older cards. Try this method with ReShade or GShade first.

DirectX is more stable and works best with older cards and systems. Try this method if Vulcan doesn't work with ReShade/GShade in your game – remember to replace the d3d9.dll with DXVK's d3d9.dll.

For more information on the difference between Vulcan and DirectX, see this article:

https://www.howtogeek.com/884042/vulkan-vs-DirectX-12/

#Sims 3 #Sims 3 Tutorial #TS3 Tutorial #DXVK #nornities #desiree uk #mydownloads

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demonslayerunhinged · 2 months ago

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So like, does anyone need KnY material?

I have a bunch of books I got from amazon. They're all in japanese so if you're okay with that I'll give you the PDFs. I plan to buy more so I'll be posting updates.

I also have a bunch of images, mixtures of mostly high and some low res. They come in png, webp and jpg formats.

I use them for basic, self-indulgent designs like this one below and the poster I used for my banner

If you do stuff like this too, and are looking for some images let me know.

A lot of them have those cursed watermark patterns because I extract them directly from the Ufotable/Aniplex/KnY websites. I just paint them over using software like Ibis Paint or Clip Studio(when I have the time and energy ಥ⁠_⁠ಥ).

If you want material for your analysis I can also share some academic texts and books I found about japanese queer culture, homosexuality among the samurai etc.

I also have like 5 of the official soundtrack albums and a bunch of other stuff. If you want to get them directly I can provide the links.

I don't want to just put them out there so I'm trying to decide if I should create a discord server or a patreon(free unless you want to gimmie money lol) because I also want to try scanlating some GiyuuSane doujins.

I dunno, I just thought I'd put the message out there because I know how hard it is to get KnY shit.

What you guys think?

*please don't just like the post, leave comments too!

#unhinged yap #unhinged frens

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some-stars · 9 months ago

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Did y'all know it's bizarrely and inexplicably difficult to find the full text of Dylan Thomas's "Altarwise by owl-light" online? A bunch of places have what they claim is that poem but it's only the first few stanzas. I eventually found one (1) PDF of his complete poems, and then I had to extract it from the PDF except I didn't have all the tools I use at work to make that take about three minutes total. FYI if you ever need to process a PDF thru your browser, the IT guys at my work (a very large, very risk-averse corporation) have us use ilovepdf for some tasks that acrobat can't do (but it can also replicate various adobe functions), so I'd recommend that as the least-likely-to-damage-your-computer free option.

ANYWAY the point is, this poem is SO good and SO important and SO cool, and it shouldn't be so incredibly hard to find, so here it is. It's long. I strongly suggest reading it aloud, and don't try to understand anything the first time through, just let it happen to you and really experience the words.

Altarwise by owl-light

I. Altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house The gentleman lay graveward with his furies; Abaddon in the hangnail cracked from Adam, And, from his fork, a dog among the fairies, The atlas-eater with a jaw for news, Bit out the mandrake with to-morrow’s scream. Then, penny-eyed, that gentleman of wounds, Old cock from nowheres and the heaven’s egg, With bones unbuttoned to the half-way winds, Hatched from the windy salvage on one leg, Scraped at my cradle in a walking word That night of time under the Christward shelter: I am the long world’s gentleman, he said, And share my bed with Capricorn and Cancer.

II. Death is all metaphors, shape in one history; The child that sucketh long is shooting up, The planet-ducted pelican of circles Weans on an artery the gender’s strip; Child of the short spark in a shapeless country Soon sets alight a long stick from the cradle; The horizontal cross-bones of Abaddon, You by the cavern over the black stairs, Rung bone and blade, the verticals of Adam, And, manned by midnight, Jacob to the stars. Hairs of your head, then said the hollow agent, Are but the roots of nettles and of feathers Over these groundworks thrusting through a pavement And hemlock-headed in the wood of weathers.

III. First there was the lamb on knocking knees And three dead seasons on a climbing grave That Adam’s wether in the flock of horns, Butt of the tree-tailed worm that mounted Eve, Horned down with skullfoot and the skull of toes On thunderous pavements in the garden time; Rip of the vaults, I took my marrow-ladle Out of the wrinkled undertaker’s van, And, Rip Van Winkle from a timeless cradle, Dipped me breast-deep in the descended bone; The black ram, shuffling of the year, old winter, Alone alive among his mutton fold, We rung our weathering changes on the ladder, Said the antipodes, and twice spring chimed,

IV. What is the metre of the dictionary? The size of genesis? the short spark’s gender? Shade without shape? the shape of Pharaoh’s echo? (My shape of age nagging the wounded whisper). Which sixth of wind blew out the burning gentry? (Questions are hunchbacks to the poker marrow). What of a bamboo man among your acres? Corset the boneyards for a crooked boy? Button your bodice on a hump of splinters, My camel’s eyes will needle through the shroud. Love’s reflection of the mushroom features, stills snapped by night in the bread-sided field, Once close-up smiling in the wall of pictures, Arc-lamped thrown back upon the cutting flood.

V. And from the windy West came two-gunned Gabriel, From Jesu’s sleeve trumped up the king of spots, The sheath-decked jacks, queen with a shuffled heart; Said the fake gentleman in suit of spades, Black-tongued and tipsy from salvation’s bottle. Rose my Byzantine Adam in the night. For loss of blood I fell on Ishmael’s plain, Under the milky mushroos slew my hunger, A climbing sea from Asia had me down And Jonah’s Moby snatched me by the hair, Cross-stroked salt Adam to the frozen angel Pin-legged on pole-hills with a black medusa By waste seas where the white bear quoted Virgil And sirens singing from our lady’s sea-straw.

VI. Cartoon of slashes on the tide-traced crater, He in a book of water tallow-eyed By lava’s light split through the oyster vowels And burned sea silence on a wick of words. Pluck, cock, my sea eye, said medusa’s scripture, Lop, love, my fork tongue, said the pin-hilled nettle; And love plucked out the stinging siren’s eye, Old cock from nowheres lopped the minstrel tongue Till tallow I blew from the wax’s tower The fats of midnight when the salt was singing; Adam, time’s joker, on a witch of cardboard Spelt out the seven seas, an evil index, The bagpipe-breasted ladies in the deadweed Blew out the blood gauze through the wound of manwax.

VII. Now stamp the Lord’s Prayer on a grain of rice, A Bible-leaved of all the written woods Strip to this tree: a rocking alphabet, Genesis in the root, the scarecrow word, And one light’s language in the book of trees. Doom on deniers at the wind-turned statement. Time’s tune my ladies with the teats of music, The scaled sea-sawers, fix in a naked sponge Who sucks the bell-voiced Adam out of magic, Time, milk, and magic, from the world beginning. Time is the tune my ladies lend their heartbreak, From bald pavilions and the house of bread Time tracks the sound of shape on man and cloud, On rose and icicle the ringing handprint.

VIII. This was the crucifixion on the mountain, Time’s nerve in vinegar, the gallow grave As tarred with blood as the bright thorns I wept; The world’s my wound, God’s Mary in her grief, Bent like three trees and bird-papped through her shift, With pins for teardrops is the long wound’s woman. This was the sky, Jack Christ, each minstrel angle Drove in the heaven-driven of the nails Till the three-coloured rainbow from my nipples From pole to pole leapt round the snail-waked world I by the tree of thieves, all glory’s sawbones, Unsex the skeleton this mountain minute, And by this blowclock witness of the sun Suffer the heaven’s children through my heartbeat.

IX. From the oracular archives and the parchment, Prophets and fibre kings in oil and letter, The lamped calligrapher, the queen in splints, Buckle to lint and cloth their natron footsteps, Draw on the glove of prints, dead Cairo’s henna Pour like a halo on the caps and serpents. This was the resurrection in the desert, Death from a bandage, rants the mask of scholars Gold on such features, and the linen spirit Weds my long gentleman to dusts and furies; With priest and pharaoh bed my gentle wound, World in the sand, on the triangle landscape, With stones of odyssey for ash and garland And rivers of the dead around my neck.

X. Let the tale’s sailor from a Christian voyage Atlaswise hold half-way off the dummy bay Time’s ship-racked gospel on the globe I balance: So shall winged harbours through the rockbirds’ eyes Spot the blown word, and on the seas I image December’s thorn screwed in a brow of holly. Let the first Peter from a rainbow’s quayrail Ask the tall fish swept from the bible east, What rhubarb man peeled in her foam-blue channel Has sown a flying garden round that sea-ghost? Green as beginning, let the garden diving Soar, with its two bark towers, to that Day When the worm builds with the gold straws of venom My nest of mercies in the rude, red tree.

-Dylan Thomas

#poetry #it is definitely about jesus but beyond that. couldn't tell you. one of my top ten poems of all time nevertheless.#there is one particular line that is going to make you stop short with a squealing tire sound effect #i do not apologize for this line but it is going to be disruptive to your poetry trance #it would also make for an AMAZING interpretation in tattoo form

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reddest-flower · 11 months ago

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Welcome! Since I tend to post a lot of excerpts when I read, I decided to make this sideblog both for organization's sake and for the sake of the followers on my main blog, so they don't get 10 back-to-back excerpts if they don't want to. If you are into that, maybe you'll enjoy this blog ^^. Extracts are generally copied as-is from the source, meaning that strange spellings and typos will remain. Tag system and text sources under the cut.

Tag system:

I'll tag with the author (abbreviated if I post them enough) and geographical location of the excerpt's content if applicable. These are some of them, but not all.

Anna Louise Strong

Vladimir Lenin

Joseph Stalin

U.S.S.R.

Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Text sources:

To make posting these quotes easier, I'll compile links to the PDFs/places for download here instead of linking them under each post, like I used to do. I won't put the sources here for the texts that have already been posted on my main blog, unless I post more of those here.

Red Star Over the Third World

7 Ensayos de Interpretación de la Realidad Peruana

Orientalism

The Makhno Movement and Bolshevism

Who are the National Socialists?

What is to be Done?

Grundrisse

The German Ideology

The Voice of the Soviet Village

Stalin's Library

The Working Class and NeoMalthusianism

Spain in Arms, 1937

Critique of the Gotha Programme

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bestiarium · 2 years ago

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Hi. I actually have two questions, so I’ll send them in separate asks so you don’t have to answer all in one.

I’m trying to do some research about lithuanian folklore, particularly shadow/malicious creatures like the Baubas. I found your post about the baubas, but it didn’t have very much information about it. I’m just wondering if you might ever go back and try to find more, or if you exhausted all your resources with the one post.

Basically, am I going to hit a brick wall in my search?

I remember writing that post several years ago, I indeed had trouble finding sources about the Baubas. At the time, I didn't really take this blog very seriously and often used crappy sources (I go back to fix those old posts every now and then).

According to this article, the Baubas are classical bogeymen figures: stories about them are told to children to frighten them and to dissuade them from bad behaviour (as in, don't play near the river or the Baubas will drag you into the water! or, don't eat this or that because the Baubas will take you if you do!). Baubas are supposed to be aquatic monsters and usually make their lair underwater. As such, there are a lot of stories about them dragging children under the water.

The article I linked also admits that there isn't much information available on these monsters, though one consistent characteristic is that they catch and eat kids (presumably, they focus on misbehaving children rather than good ones). The only things the text mentions about their appearance is that Baubas are horribly hideous and that they have iron horns on their heads and their hands end in strange wooden claws.

Interestingly, the text speculates that the Baubas might have been derived from a much older mythical figure, a local deity of shepherds. He was respected and benevolent rather than malicious, but has since degraded into a monstrous bogeyman character. This theory is unproven, though.

Lithuanian folklore has a lot of regional variants of common stories and monsters, though. This is part of the reason why relatively little information about the Baubas survives: many villages and regions have their own regional variant of the Baubas, and those often have different names and characteristics.

I also found the article 'Intimidating, Cruel and Violent Motives of the Traditional Lithuanian Lullabies' by Vita Dzekcioriute (original title: 'Bauginantys, žiaurūs ir smurtiniai motyvai tradicinėse lietuvių lopšinėse') which gives some examples of old nursery rhymes:

"Be silent, be silent! The Baubas is crouching in the corner. With wooden claws, with iron horns. If you do not sleep, he will catch you."

"Be silent, be silent! The Baubas is coming. If you fall asleep, he will not find you. If you wake up, he will put you in his bag with which he carries children away."

Obviously the original Lithuanian versions sound better than my crude translations, but the point of these nursery rhymes is that if the kid stays up past his bedtime, the monster will come for him.

Finally, according to the article 'Scaring of Children in the Traditional Lithuanian Worldview' that you can find here as a pdf file, the Baubas also punish children for lying and for not listening to their parents.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help, I hope these three articles and the information I extracted from them can be somewhat helpful!

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llyfrenfys · 2 years ago

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New Diss Just Dropped- (an announcement!)

Prynhawn da pawb!

After a long four years, I can say that I finally have an undergraduate degree in Celtic Studies!!

As a result, I can now share extracts from my undergraduate dissertation. I will be converting some of my chapters into pdfs and releasing them monthly on my Patreon for members (which, if you aren't a member yet please check out the link in my bio). I will also release them all publicly eventually, with the previous month's extract being made available for free. However, the first month's chapter will be made available for free to everyone! My dissertation has such chapters as:

Rise of the post-Wolfenden Vernacular

Of Miners and Mark: LGSM and the Miner’s Strikes

Reaction to Section 28 via the medium of Welsh

Y Pwynt Tipio Trawsryweddol: Transgender Visibility and Invisibility in Wales

And many more not included in this list.

Once I have the first extract ready in a pdf, I will make a new post with the link!

[Image Description: The front cover of an undergraduate dissertation- it is comprised of a photograph of pride flags with Welsh dictionaries stacked on top of them. In the foreground there is a trans flag pin from The Queer Emporium, a bisexual flag shoelace, a pride flag pin, an Aberystwyth University 'ze/zir' pronoun pin and a @queerlittleshop 'ef/he' pin. There is a navy blue banner across the middle of the image with text on it, which reads: What drove the development of Welsh-language LGBTQIA+ terminology 1972-2022?]

As well as this, July's Update is now public on Patreon if you would like to read previous updates I have shared there.

Diolch yn fawr iawn pawb for your continued support- I hope you enjoy this news!

Please consider sharing this post with anyone you think might be interested so they can be ready for when the first extract will drop. Diolch!

#cymraeg #cwiar #welsh #lhdt #hoyw #trawsryweddol #lesbiaidd #deurywiol #dissertation #academic pdf #prosiect llyfr enfys

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crystalromana · 11 months ago

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Apocryphia Bipedium- Ian Potter

[FIXED THE WONKY MOBILE EDITING. >.< IT LOOKED FINE ON DESKTOP]

[I am obsessed with this short trip so I had to bring it to Tumblr. Yes I did just copy and paste this page by page out of the pdf and formatted it. I think about it all the time. Anyway.

Apocrypha Bipedium takes place in the gap between Time of the Daleks and Neverland. Enjoy]

A Suggestive Correlation of The Cressida Manuscripts with other Anomalous Texts of the Pre-Animarian Era as proposed for Collective Consideration by Historiographic Speculator Anctloddoton.

In my selection and placement of the following extracts from the literature of the extinct worlds, I have attempted to draw suggestive parallels between some of the Problem Texts of the humanoid cultures. Obviously, the records of those times are now so fragmentary that any conclusions we draw from the surviving evidence must remain speculative. We cannot know what evidence we are missing, thus the linking of events posited by the presentation of these documents must remain a tentative hypothesis at best.

HS A From The Primary Cressida Document – Suppressed Texts of the Vatican Library, A Mysteria Press Original, 2973 CE.

The past is another country, the Doctor used to say. By which I suppose he meant it’s a nice place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there, and you can have real problems with customs when you arrive.

I grew up in the future myself, which makes living in the past tricky at times. Liverpool was a great place to grow up if you were into the past though. It was full of it; the Campus Manor theme park, the castle, the Beatles Memorial Theatre, The Saint Francis of Fazakerley Museum, the Carl Jung Dream Tour, Post-Industrial Land and all those cathedrals, you were tripping over history everywhere. Mummy’s parents came from there too, so it was practically like we knew reallife olden days people.

It was much better than Liddell Towers where we lived in New London – most of the history near there seemed to be about some silly girl who’d let a professor of sums take photos of her and fell down a rabbit hole, or about those awful Daleks wiping out Southern England with mines and things. Much duller and hardly any variety in the rides at all.

Here in the actual olden days there’s not much past anywhere, just loads of future, and the rides are even less fun, all carts and donkeys and hardly any roads. We’re moving again, you see, dear diary. Even though the conquering Greeks don’t really seem to want to colonise any of Asia Minor themselves they don’t seem to want any Trojans settling back down anywhere round here either. They’ve occupied what’s left of the city, I suspect mainly so Menelaus can find all the expensive bits of Helen’s jewellery she seems to have mislaid, and seem keen we don’t hang about too nearby. Mymiddon Hoplites apologetically move us on now and again, clearly wondering when they can decently be allowed back home to start fighting amongst themselves again, and so we pack up and move. Some of their chaps are still feeling rather tetchy for no good reason apparently. Troilus says there’s a silly rumour going around that some terrible woman, probably a goddess, went around whipping up aggression amongst the Greeks a few years ago by magic, leaving marks on their necks that mean they can’t calm down!

It doesn’t make any sense to me. I think I might just be getting the cleaned up version of a soldier’s tale actually. I think that happens with me a lot. People treat me like a silly little girl sometimes, which isn’t really fair when I come from the future and know all sorts of things they don’t. I’m an adult now, even if not being born yet does make me about minus four thousand officially.

I don’t think Agamemnon’s Greeks really know what to do now to be honest, and after a decade’s anticipation I don’t think the trade routes or the princess they were sacking Troy to get are quite as good as they were hoping. I think they’re just hanging around stopping us settling down and looking for lost costume jewellery until they can think of something better to do. Some of the Ithacans are moaning it’ll be another decade before any of them get home at this rate. Bless them.

Running out of room, dear diary. Will write more when I have some new goats’ hides.

From Not Necessarily the Way I Do It! The True Confessions of a Ka Faraq Gatri not just written for the money when trapped on a primitive planet and needing cash to buy parts by ‘Snail’, Boxwood Books, 300 AGB.

Of course the hairy kangaroo had been at the mind rubbers and didn’t even realise the sword was there! How we laughed. Terrible namedropper, Zodin, but worth her weight in soufflé all the same

Naturally enough, mention of name-dropping reminds me of another anecdote, this one relating to dear old Bill Shakespeare, one of the finest writers and most atrocious spellers of any age. I’ve met him several times now and hope to again if I ever get off this pre-warp- engineering dustball. The last time was during that sticky business with poor Kitty Marlowe and those Psionovores from Neddy Kelley’s old scrying glass that I related in Chapter 9, but perhaps our most awkward misadventure together was the time I introduced him to some of his own characters, who included, as it happened, a dear, dear friend of mine.

From The Dairy of an Edwardian Adventuress by Charlotte Elspeth Bollard, Library of Kar-Charrat. The work, having suffered some worm damage in the Great 2107 AD Cock Up, is presented here in the Elgin decorruption.

Travelling with Wilf and the Doctor was a curious experienced already felt somewhat out of sorts with time, having discovered my very existence was making history split in two, but sharing a home with a boy from the 16th Century and a man who seemed to come from nowhere so much as his own imagination, merely heightened my feeling that I no longer belonged to any era.

We three fellow time travellers had so very little in common beyond having all read the plays the boy had not yet written that the small talk had been small indeed, and, after a few days of the Doctor failing to get Wilf home, the atmosphere had become a little tense.

Wilf, it further transpired, had difficulty reading anything written in more modern Anglish than his own, which meant there had been little of a literary nature to distract him during his sojourn with us once he had read and re-read the Doctor’s picture books about Frinchs, Sneetches, Ooblecks and Cats in Hams.

Thankfully, towards the end of Wilf’s stay with us the Doctor had discovered a futuristic version of Lido called Peter Pan Pop-O-Matic Frustration that we could enjoy playing together and those last long hibiscus-scented afternoons in his music room passed pleasantly enough, without young Wilf having to constantly relate the escapades of besocked foxes to us.

The Doctor always won our games, usually coming from behind implausibly late in the day, and nearly always using some devious subterfuge to gain victory. Indeed, it was observing the childlike joy on the Doctor’s face at his underhand triumphs on the Peter Pan Pop-O-Matic Frustration board that I first realised just how much of Peter there was in his nature. Naturally, we loved him enough to pretend not to notice his cheating (I sometimes think the whole universe did) and at times towards the end we three had so much fun that I almost forgot I was a paradox, unpicking creation like Penelope at her tapestry in the heroic age we had just left.

From The Pseudo-Shackspur – works attributed to William Shakespeare collated by Heinrich Von Berlitz and Leopold Kettlecamp, Ampersand and Ampersand, 85 AH.

This passage from The Noble Troyan Woman of Troy – fragmentary foul papers of a naive work once attributed to the very young Shackspur, is worth quoting in full.

Act 2, Scene 1. A room within the box. Enter Mistress Charley, Doctor Shallow and Young Will.

Doct. Here at last! Our journey finally through. In fifteen hundred and seventy two. Young Will, regard the ceiling viewing dome – Stratford on Avon, the Hathaway home.

Will. But sir, on those bare hills, no swarths do roll. And no houses nestle ’twixt those craggy knolls – The sun burns with a fierce un-English light And that beach there is not a Warwick sight! That’s not Stratford displayed above us

Char. – Lest the Avon’s turn’d to sea, ’Od love us!

Many scholars have disputed the authenticity of this piece of alleged Shackspurian juvenilia, pointing out, fairly, that it does appear to be the only one of his extant works that the Bard biroed in a twentieth-century school jotter otherwise festooned in swirly ink blots and doodled hexagons. However, if Shackspur did travel in Time, as several scholars suggest, this objection falls away. A more compelling argument for its inauthenticity is the verse style, experimenting uniquely within the Shackspurian canon with strict iambic pentameter composed entirely in rhyming couplets. Whilst dreadful, it is nothing like as appalling as that in Shackspur’s earliest known adult writing

***

From Tales from the Matrix – True Stories from TARDIS Logs Retold for Time Tots by Loom Auntie Flavia, Panopticon Press, 6833.8 Rassilon Era. Part of the Wigner Heisenberg Collection, The Mobile Library, Talking Books Section. Location currently uncertain.

The Doctor flicked the temporal stabiliser off and pulled down the transitional element control rod taking him out of the Vortex. Quite the wrong way to actualise and quadro-anchor even a Type 40 Time Capsule, isn’t it? Exiting the interstitial continuum at the perihelion of a temporal ellipse can cause serious buffering in your harmonic wave packet transference and sever your main fluid links, can’t it?

‘Here we are, Stratford on Avon, 1572!’ announced the Doctor proudly and wrongly. If he’d ever bothered to use his Absolute Tesseractulator to pinpoint his dimensional locations he wouldn’t have made these kind of mistakes, of course, but the Tesseractulator had never come out of its box, had it?

Charlotte Pollard, the Doctor’s friend, came over to him and flicked on the ceiling scanner.

A friend’s an Earth thing. It’s a bit like having a colleague or fellow student you co-operate with, but without any exams or project targets at the end to make the co-operation meaningful. There was a fashion for having them on Gallifrey at one time, ask some of your older cousins about it, they might remember.

Charlotte squinted at the view outside. It didn’t look like the Stratford she’d visited, with neither alien enslavers nor half timbered tea shops anywhere in sight. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

‘Positive. Ish,’ replied the Doctor. William Shaxsberd, a young man they’d promised to drop off in 1572, put down his coloured crayons and came to join them.

‘It does not look much as it once did, Doctor,’ said William, looking at the ceiling and cricking his neck.

The Doctor followed suit. The dustbowl outside was certainly not Warwickshire in any era he’d visited, ‘No. Indeed not,’ he admitted. ‘I think the rift in the Vortex is introducing a random element into my calculations.’

Do you remember the rift in the Vortex, from last time? That’s right, the Doctor made that too! It was due to the paradoxical interaction of two paravertical chronostreams further complicated by three retro- temporal augmented causal feedback loops, wasn’t it?

‘Another random element?’ asked Charlotte, ‘More random than the way you play “eeny meeny miney mo” with the buttons?’

‘Ha, Charley,’ said the Doctor. ‘Tres amusent.’

Charlotte turned to William to explain, ‘That’s French, Will, for “I’ve been banged to rights, Miss Pollard”,’ she said.

‘I somehow knew,’ William replied.

‘Really?’ asked Charlotte. ‘How?’

‘It’s a Time Lord gift, Charley,’ said the Doctor, ‘and yes it would be awfully de trop to ask how it works.’ Or at least that’s whatCharlotte thought he said. William heard something quite different of course.

Well, let’s get out there then,’ said the Doctor, opening the doorswithout taking any proper readings.

‘Er, why?’ asked Charlotte.

‘Because until we know how far out the rift has shunted us in spaceand time we won’t know how to get to Stratford, 15 diddlydiddly...’explained the Doctor, waving his hand vaguely as he searched hismemory for the end of the four digit number he’d lost interest in.

‘Seventy-two,’ prompted William.

‘The very same.’ The Doctor beamed, ruffling the young man’s hair in a way that, thanks to the TARDIS telepathic circuits alone, seemed endearing rather than insufferable and over familiar.

William and the Doctor headed for the doors. Charlotte was troubled though.

‘Won’t my temporal instability cause untold problems to wherever we are?’ she asked, quite sensibly, all things considered.

‘Oh, very probably, I expect,’ replied the Doctor airily, ‘but if you spent your whole life worrying about the consequences of your actions you’d never get anything done and the consequences of that would be unthinkable, wouldn’t they? Faint heart never bowled a maiden over,you know.’

Charlotte scowled. ‘Mind,’ added the Doctor as he stepped out of the control room, ‘neither did Katie “the Beast” Davies, if I remember my22nd-century Wisden correctly.’

That was an allusion to the Earth game Cricket, wasn’t it? It was the Earth’s planetary sport, despite the fact that humans were the worst players of it in the galaxy if you remember.‘

Doctor, I find your words confusing,’ said William as he followed him out.‘It’s a Time Lord gift, Will,’ Charlotte whispered. ’You’ll get used to it.’

* * *

From The Primary Cressida document

New hides! This keeping a journal business is awfully tricky when you’ve no paper around, but before mummy died, she did make me promise I’d write one when I eventually settled down. It’s a family tradition that’s been handed down for generations apparently, not that I ever saw mummy’s.

Anyhow, Troilus is still very eager to settle soon, but where? I’ve ruled out going east to the Holy Land because from what I remember from history and my travels we’ll get no peace there and the rest of the Med and Adriatic has already been bagsied. Troilus reckons Aeneas will have already have set up somewhere by now and we should have gone off on his boat when we had the chance. I just nod, and try to explain wave particle duality to the little ones.

I have a vague feeling I learned something about Aeneas from the UK-201’s didactomat box way back in the future. I think he ended up with Dido in Carthage for a bit, which confuses me because I thought Dido’s music was Late Classical, which must be after this period, surely. I’m sketchy on the details to be honest. I only remember it was Dido and not Sister Bliss because the planet we crashed into on the way to Astra was named after her.

Funny thinking about Dido, that was the place I’ve called home longest in recent years. I’ve been a nomad a while really – split between London and Liverpool as a girl, never knowing whether to talk posh and southern or not, emigrating to off-Earth with daddy, hopping about through Time with the Doctor, and now traipsing around Turkey with Troilus and his mates before its even called that or has any tourist facilities to speak of. I think I must have ‘space travel in my blood’ as one of those Baroque composers put it!

I’ve been wondering when I should discover electricity and plumbing a bit recently, these fleeces don’t clean themselves like proper clothes, so the sooner we can invent the twin tub the better. Are we before or after that Monk who invented things too early here, I wonder? I don’t want to mess things up like he did, but I’m shocking on dates. I just paid attention to the stories in the history books really, not the order they happened in. If I’d known the way round history went was going to be important I would have had the machine teach me it. Of course, as a child you never expect all that history around you is going to run away into the future like it has, do you? I’ve decided I’ll probably start with a steam engine and see if that messes up my memory of the future. The way I see it, it’ll be impossible for me to invent anything that’ll stop me being born so I can’t do too much harm.

I casually suggested making things out of iron the other day, which I know is a big step forward but everyone just laughed. Too brittle and hard to work compared to bronze or tin, they said. I suppose they’re right. You have to do something to it to make it strong, I remember that. I just don’t remember what that something is. For all I know my quad physics equations and could still compose a cogent analygraphfor the fall of the Mallatratt Protectorate, I’m a bit rusty on a few of the basics. Going to take us years to get garlic bread and sound radio at this rate.

Of course, I had a bit of training for life without the mod cons on Dido, so I can cope, but what makes things really fiddly at the moment is that my future’s past is catching up with my present, which is complicated enough to write down, let alone experience.

We’ve just bumped into the Doctor as a young man, and I’m sure it’s really bad form for me to let on I recognise him when as far as he’s concerned he’s not met me yet.

From Not Necessarily the Way I Do It!

My plan was pretty much the usual one, to go out and see if we could find out the year and our whereabouts in a way that wouldn’t arouse any suspicions, and then hang around until nightfall to get a better fix from the position of the stars. It may sound dull but I’ve found if I do that I usually find something or other to get embroiled in before sunset.

We stepped circumspectly out of the Ship and set off in search of the nearest habitation, ready as ever to improvise any number of cover stories to explain our presence and strange garb. As luck would have it we soon ran into one of the locals, and were able to subtly winkle out the info we needed on route to his encampment.

From The Dairy of an Edwardian Adventuress

People say you should never look back of course, advice we’ve been ignoring since Orpheus and EuroDisney, but I can’t help thinking that if the Doctor hadn’t landed us in the aftermath of the Trajan War a lot of that beastly business with the Time Lords might have been avoided later.

As usual the Doctor rejoiced in dropping straight into the middle of things without a moment’s forethought. Impossible, exasperating man,I tried to protest but somehow he just brushed my complaints away with a smiled shouldn’t have let him, but he did have such a lovely smile.

* * *

From The Pseudo-Shackspur

The Noble Troyan Woman of Troy

Act 3, Scene 2. Another part of the hillside. Enter Mistress Charley, Doctor Shallow and Young Will.

Doct. Yoohoo! Mister Goatboy, excuse me please, Could you tell me what time and place is this? Char. Discreet as ever.

Enter a Goatherd.

Doct. Yes, but awfully brave. Young man, there is information we crave. What land is this and what year are we in? We’ve lost track of both in our travelling.

Char. Oh I give up, you’re so inconsistent.

Doct. Just smile prettily, act like an assistant.

Char. But I never know what trick you’ll pull next!

Doct. Just grit your teeth, smile and stick out your chest; Magic’s best tricks work by misdirection.

Char. So I’m just here to stir his –

Will. Affection?

Doct. Quite so Will, a pretty face inspires trust. True, I’m afraid, if not awfully just. This chap will tell us the time and the place And Presto well head straight back into Space!

Goat. Eleven eight three BC is the year This is Hisarlik in Anatolia. I expect you’re traders from Phoenicia To be garbed and garbling here so queer. You’ve been ship wreck’d and concuss’d I’ll be bound. Which’ll be why you have no goods around. We must offer you shelter at the least Pop back home with me and well have a feast.

Char. How can he know he lives before Our Lord?

Doct. It’s just a translation device that’s flaw’d. It’s an awfully clever mechanism But it causes the odd anachronism. Kind goatherd, we would love to share a meal And watch the evening stars above us wheel. For by such means we will precisely know Our station now and where we next must go. Exeunt Omnes.

From Tales from the Matrix

‘Do we really need to do this?’ asked Charlotte as the band trudged wearily after the herdsman in their impractical shoes, ‘Surely the date and location he’s given you is enough?’

‘Perhaps,’ the Doctor replied, ‘but studying the stars will allow me to be more accurate. Besides, I’m famished. We haven’t eaten for minus three thousand years, bear in mind.’

So the Doctor and his companions blithely headed off into further temporal confusion, unaware that the goatherd had seen the TARDIS arrive and knew full well who the Doctor was already.

There’s a lesson there for anyone who thinks it’s clever to keep their TARDIS in one form, don’t you think? The Ionic Column factory preset might look nice, for example, but when using it means every Grun, Za and Caius in the Cosmos knows who you are immediately, it rather defeats the point of a chameleon circuit.

From The Primary Cressida document

One of our herdsmen saw the TARDIS arrive in the next valley this afternoon and instantly recognised it as the mobile temple that had prefigured the city’s fall, and the Doctor as a younger version of the old man from my tales.

He sent his mate back to tell us so we all had time to prepare ourselves and could all pretend we believed the Doctor’s implausible story about being a trader from Phoenicia when he turned up an hour or so later.

It’s definitely him, probably about 40 years before we met. He dresses similarly, his hair is curlier and darker and his face looks a bit different, but the years are never kind, are they? Amazingly, he’s almost as vague as a young man as he was when old, if not quite so ummy and erry. I’d always assumed that was because he was getting on a bit.

Thankfully, no one here’s too thrown by the idea of time travellers after me relating all my adventures to them, though one of the boys did ask me why the Doctor didn’t walk and talk backwards when his past was in the future. I was very clear why not when I started explaining it, but I must admit I got a bit confused as I went along. He hasn’t recognised me of course, dear diary, and we’ve invited him and his friends to have tea tonight.

From Not Necessarily the Way I Do It!

Well, imagine my embarrassment when we arrived at the fellow’s encampment and who was in charge but my old friend Vicki (now calling herself Cressida of course) and her new husband Troilus, who I’d never actually met, due to quite heavy escaping commitments around the time they got together.

I realised with a start that young Bill Shakespeare was due to write a play about this couple in a few years, and that unless I was careful thismeeting would almost certainly be what inspired it, thus complicating Bill’s already tortuous history further and bringing yet another new paradox to mine. I’d only let Vicki go away with Troilus at Troy’s fall because once I heard she was calling herself Cressida I’d assumed it was predestined (well, I was young, I believed in that kind of thing), I knew there was a play about the couple by Shakespeare and thought I was helping history take its course by hitching them up. Now, if I’d only done that because my future actions would one day bring that play about, I’d accidentally made a big chunk of my past dependent on my future, which, as you know, isn’t really the accepted way of going about things.

I reasoned it was vital for the tidiness of the time line that I kept Bill from learning the background of Troilus and Cressida in any detail, ideally forgetting as much of their present as he could too.

To complicate matters further, Vicki had actually seen Bill as an adult on my time telly, the Time Space Visualiser. She was never the most historically careful of girls, and I feared that if she found out who he was, she’d probably tell him all about his future at the court of Elizabeth and getting the commission to write The Merry Wives of Windsor and the inspiration for Hamlet on the same day and how he’d sprained his wrist in his rush to write both.

All it might take, I thought, would be one slip from any one of us, accidentally mentioning the words TARDIS or Zeus Plug over dessert, say, and causality would be tangled up like President Pandak’s kittens in twine, quicker than you could explain what you pop in a Ganymede socket.

Luckily, it seemed Vicki hadn’t spotted how anachronistic our garb was and hadn’t realised I was her old friend, seeming to completely swallow my inventive tales of sea faring, despite Charley’s rather fanciful insertions about hook-handed pirates.

I had, of course, underestimated her, as a quick and entirely accidental glance at her diary before dinner proved. Not knowing I could regenerate, she had taken me for my young self in my first form and thought she was protecting me from foreknowledge!

This, of course, suited my purpose. All I reckoned I had to do now to save Time from chewing itself to bits was keep Will busy and make sure Vicki didn’t relate her history to any of us over dinner.

Oh what tangled webs we weave, when tidy temporal strands we try to leave.

From The Dairy of an Edwardian Adventuress

Mr and Mrs Troilus seemed a sweet couple, he a lanky chap with a curly beard and a well-meaning expression and she a rather enthusiastic young thing with big eyes, yet the Doctor had become rather shifty from the moment we met them. I knew he was preoccupied by something, but I had, at that time, no idea what. After some fun, improvising tales of derring-do on the high seas to prove our credentials as traders, he took me to one side and explained that I had to get Wilf as squiffy as possible at the feast that night for reasons it was simpler at that moment not to explain. He said history depended on me getting the boy so drunk he could neither speak nor remember his behaviour the next morning. I’m normally quite good at that kind of thing, it was hardly my fault the Bawd was a functioning alcoholic at the age of eight.

From The Pseudo-Shackspur

The Noble Troyan Woman of Troy

Act 4, Scene 1. An encampment in the mountains. Enter Mistress Charley, Doctor Shallow, Young Will, a goatherd, Troilus, Cressida, divers villagers and guards severally.

Doct. Hello. (Aside) Her! ’Tis Vicki, I should have guess’d. I never with good geography was bless’d Hisarlik is the modern name for Troy. Quite a temporal tangle, boy oh boy! (To Cress.) Ha ha, my hearties! We here are sailors three. (Aside) I can but hope she does not see ‘tis me.

Cress. (Aside) Deceit upon deception! Can this be The Doctor who I first took it to be? Is this him when young as I assumed? Or must deeper deceit be presumed? I’ll play along until the truth I know. (To Doct.) Good mariners, welcome and hello.

Will. (To Char.) What’s this strange accented charade about?

Char. (To Will) Who knows, we’ll be, I bet, last to find out.

From Tales from the Matrix

Yes Time Tots, exactly! The first thing any of us would have done would have been to get out of there quickly before we compromised the causal nexus. Staying for tea and imbibing too much ethanol, which you’ll recall the Doctor had a particular weakness for on his mother’s side, doesn’t strike any of us as sensible!

From The Secondary Cressida document (a transcribed fragment allegedly found at a Church of Rome jumble sale) – Even More Suppressed Texts of the Vatican Library, A Hatper-Mysteria- Ellerycorp Press Original, 2977 CE

My ruse worked, the robot’s read my carefully exposed diary and thinks I suspect nothing! He’s so obviously not really the Doctor it’s not true, but he doesn’t know I know that yet, so we have the advantage. He’s definitely a Dalek robot double like that other one they sent after us.

They’ve probably made him the young Doctor this time to make it less obvious. He does look a bit like he could be him sometimes if you’re not paying attention, but if you look closely his face is all wrong and his voice goes a bit funny sometimes like that other robot’s did, almost doing my accent at times! I think he’s probably feeding on my jumbled memories or something.

We’ll overpower him and his companions at dinner tonight and destroy them, they won’t expect me to know how to deactivate them.

From Not Necessarily the Way I Do It!

I’ve always been keen on wine, particularly the heavier oaky reds, though I find there is a rather tiresome tendency for them to be drugged by villainous blackguards sometimes, rather impairing the subtleties of the flavour, but wine in the Homeric era was quite a different proposition. What can I tell you about it except that it tasted awful but did the job?

It wasn’t the heavily resinated stuff the Greeks later went in for, thankfully, nor indeed that watered-down muck the ancient Romans used to dish out at parties, but I think it’s telling that the most flattering thing Homer had to say about it in the whole of The Iliad was how like the sea it was in hue. When you bear in mind he was blind, you can tell he’d had to ask around a bit to find anyone with something positive to say about it.

The food wasn’t much better either. It can be terribly hard eating out when you travel like I do. These days at home, I generally try to eat only things that don’t have a central nervous system, or that I’ve knocked up in the food machine, but sometimes, when you’re a guest, qualms like that have to go out of the window, particularly on worlds ruled by intelligent plants, where you’re best advised not to ask for a celery stick and to just stick your toes in damp soil like everyone else at the table.

Even then I try to stick to my principles and not eat anything with a sense of self, parliamentary democracy or sultanas in it.

This dinner was a particularly awkward affair; Charley acting like a slightly sloshed pirate queen, Vicki acting like she didn’t know me, Bill acting up, singing lewd madrigals that officially weren’t due for invention yet in his rather reedy girlish voice, and all the while me worrying about causality falling apart around me rather too much to fully enjoy the dolmades.

Suddenly, half way through the proceedings, the impossible happened: it took a turn for the worse. Vicki shouted out ‘Now!’, and lunged at my chest and started tearing at my waistcoat.

From The Dairy of an Edwardian Adventuress

My recollections of the ensuing events are somewhat hazy; I had been struggling to match young Wilt measure for measure, you might say, when I saw the Doctor being attacked. I launched myself at his assailant and missed, I’m told, briefly losing my dignity and consciousness in the process.

A shocking melee ensued by all accounts, with Trajans tearing at our clothes with cutlery and all the usual business with tables being turned and the like breaking out; I’m only glad I can’t remember the full details, because what little I do makes me blush quite enough.

It’s quite possible I told someone I loved them, and was sick later too. I’ve never been brave enough to ask. The next thing I remember clearly was being in the main tent with the Doctor explaining a lot and me apologising a bit, just in case.

From The Pseudo-Shackspur

The Noble Troyan Woman of Troy

Act 5, Scene 2. At dinner beneath the stars.

Cress. Take that, false Doctor! But where are your wires? In sparks and puffs of smoke you should expire. Could it be that you are the Doctor true?

Char. Get your claws off him, he’s mine, you wild shrew!

Will. Oh, Pillicock sat on pillicock

Char. Will you stop that terrible singing, Will? The Doctor and I are under attack From this Troyan host, while you’re supping sack. Join in the scrap and cease your carousel Lewd songs, anyhow, douse all arousal.

Doct. Vicki, Will, Charley, all, put down those knives! You’re all making the mistakes of your lives.

Cress. Vicki, you say? You should not know that yet. If you’re the young Doctor, we’ve not yet met.

Doct. Vicki, the reason that I know your name Is that inwardly I am still the same Man who left you at Troy some years ago, I can change my looks, if you didn’t know. Char. Doctor, do you mean that you know this wench?

Doct. We travelled together many years hence. I think it’s time I explain’d the full truth Of why I’ve deceived you all, forsooth.

Will. If she’s an old friend then tell me why You did keep that fact from Charley and I?

Doct. This is an old friend, Will, but, what is worse, She features, in decasyllabic verse, In a drama that you shall one day pen That means I shall leave her with this Troyan, If you only write it because you’re here Chronological conundra appear. Effects and causes whirl and spin about, Go through the wringer and turn inside out. The egg that hatches out your chicken Does in that self same chicken thicken.

From Tales from the Matrix

Then in direct contravention of fifteen universal laws of Time and two local statutes, the Doctor sat down and explained everything that had happened, and, in explaining it, he brought all the things he was worried about happening that hadn’t into the open, didn’t he?

Of course, it turned out that some of the things he was worried about were of no concern at all, but as a result of relating them he brought worse problems about.

I expect most of you have read stories about the Doctor in other books, and I expect some of you think he’s quite clever, even though he breaks a lot of rules, don’t you? Well, you’re right! In a crisis, he’s just the kind of person you need around, he can come up with ideas almost no one else could. The only problem is, when you’re not having a crisis, he’s just the kind of person to cause one.

From The Primary Cressida document

How embarrassing. It turns out the Doctor was the Doctor after all, only older and with a new face for some strange reason. The girl who drinks too much is his latest companion and the little boy with the dirty songs and the voice like a girl is William Shakespeare! Nice enough lad, no wonder he ends up in the theatre with that voice though, perfect for all those drag roles they gave boys. We had a lovely chat about Dido and Aeneas and told each other about our scrapes with the Daleks, and I let slip the odd thing I knew about his future.

He’s told me we should go and settle in England. Apparently there’s an old book he’s read by a chap called Geoffrey that says relatives of Aeneas were the first Britons I think it’s a super idea, ’ I know Troilus will like it in England, and I think we’ve persuaded the Doctor too! Just think! could be one of my own ancestors passing on my secret diaries for years and years, a bit like mummy’s family did! How smashing would that be?

From Not Necessarily the Way I Do It!

Of course I decided in the end that honesty would be the best policy and that as long as everyone knew the full facts, and swore not to be influenced by them, we could probably darn the hole in causality in such a way that it wouldn’t show. I sat everyone down in the central tent and explained. Well, what a Charlie I looked!

*** From The Dairy of an Edwardian Adventuress

Ridiculously, the Doctor had been worried about Wilf getting inspiration for the play Troilus and Cressida from meeting the real Troilus and Cressida! I protested that Wilf had already read his own plays in the future anyhow, but the Doctor countered that they’d have been corrupted playing texts and in a court of law it would be hard to prove that was down to him, whereas if Will had got any of the plot or characterisation directly through his adventures with us that was a bit more serious.

That was when Will started laughing.

From The Pseudo-Shackspur

The Noble Troyan Woman of Tray Act 5, Scene 4. A tent in the camp.

Will. But Doctor, I did not invent the tale Of Troilus and Cressida’s love that fail’d. Why, Geoffrey Chaucer told it years ago! I cannot believe that you did not know. Have you read even half of what you claim Or do you just like dropping well-known names? Cressida’s tale is part of tradition Not the result of my precognition Of future perfect past present events, If you will forgive me my mangled tense, And my quondumque futures version Should have put you off this girl’s desertion.

Char. You should have read your Brodie’s Notes on Will. The phantom threat you feared from his quill Was nothing but an insubstantial shade, And there’s a real spectre here I’m afraid. I’m half a ghost of Christmas yet to come, Remember, I’ve made history come undone. You’ve got paradoxes enough to be Getting on with, as far as I can see, So why do you search for new ones instead That only exist inside of your head?

Doct. If I had known the work of me laddo Would I have found menace in my shadow? I here resolve to watch much less TV And be the reader I do claim to be. For half my erudite orations Come straight from books of quotations.

From Tales from the Matrix

‘What was Helen of Troy actually like then?’ asked William Shaxberd as he helped himself to more wine.

‘Is,’ corrected the Doctor, prissily.

‘She’s a good egg by all accounts,’ said Vicki, politely not mentioning the fact she thought her looks had gone, ‘and Menelaus was happy enough to have her back, even after all the bother, so she must be quite nice when you get to know her, I suppose.’

‘Well, she would have to be a good egg really,’ said William, ‘Her father was a swan supposedly.’ Like most young human men of his generation, he knew the salacious bits of Greek Mythology surprisingly well.

‘Half human on his mother’s side?’ smiled the Doctor, thinking himself clever. ‘Aren’t we all?’

‘No, just men,’ said Charlotte through a falafel.

‘She has two birthdays they say, one when the egg came out of her mother and another when it hatched,’ Troilus revealed, leaning forward over the table and whispering in that conspiratorial manner people sometimes do when divulging well known but dubious trivia.

‘It would have been an easy birth if she was born an egg,’ said Vicki ruefully, one hand on her stomach.

‘An easy lay, you mean,’ William corrected.

‘So Paris said –’Troilus began, his eyes a twinkle.

He was shouted down by his wife seconds later, barrack room tale untold, and one of those awkward silences ensued that dinner party guests in all cultures and times know only too well.

‘Have you actually read Troilus and Cressida, Doctor?’ asked Charlotte a little later.

‘You ask me, who had a hand in some of Shakespeare’s finest work – who put the mixed metaphor in the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, who hired the bear for The Winter’s Tale, and who really shouldn’t have passed on the story of A Midsummer’s Night Dream, if I’ve read Troilus and Cressida?’ replied the Doctor, rather over-egging it in that way he usually did when he was on the defensive.

‘Yes!’ they cried as one.

‘Well, no,’ admitted the Doctor. ‘It’s supposed to be one of the better ones, and well, you know, I’ve been busy. I’ve still not managed to tune the Time Space Visualiser in to catch all of The Golden Girls and I’ve been trying for decades.’

‘She doesn’t end up with Troilus in it, she ends up with Diomede, andit’s set during the war not after it!’ said Charlotte patiently.

‘Diomede! That was Steven!’ Vicki laughed.The Doctor looked confused. ‘Vicki and Steven were just friends,weren’t you? Just the odd haircut and getting locked up together, Ithought.’

‘Yes, that’s right, how many times do we have to go through that?’Vicki explained, giving a petulant Troilus a peck on the cheek.

‘Well the legend must have got a bit confused by the time it gotwritten down I think Chaucer got it from a foreign book,’ said William,draining his goblet.

The Doctor beamed, thinking he’d got away with his tinkering again.‘So Troilus and Cressida weren’t predestined after all!’ he said

‘Well, only because of your lack of reading,’ snorted Charlotte.

‘Oh that is a relief,’ said the Doctor taking the wine jug from William and helping himself without asking.

‘Now what about this business of giving us charts to help us reach this Britain young Will spoke of?’ asked Troilus, passing the Doctor a goat’s cheese nibble.

‘I really shouldn’t,’ explained the Doctor. ‘If you go there, on the basis of the frankly dubious history of Geoffrey of Monmouth then Vicki is in danger of becoming one of her own descendants, which is at least as badas the things I’ve been trying to prevent all day.’

‘Oh go on Doctor, please!’ begged Vicki. ‘We could mine tin in Cornwall and I’d promise not to invent anything I shouldn’t as long as I lived, not even roller skates!’

‘I don’t think I should. I’ve made enough of a mess looking after young Charley here, the repercussions of me sending you to Britain because the unborn Shakespeare suggested it could be horrendous,’ said the Doctor, finally being responsible for once in his lives.

‘Oh go on Doctor, I’m unborn too, remember, so that shouldn’t matte rmuch,’ said Vicki.

‘And I’m only half here,’ said Charlotte grimly ‘Why stop messing about now? You should have stayed at home watching these Golden Girls of yours if you weren’t prepared to get involved in real people’s lives. They’re messy and not always in the order you’d like and sometimes too short, and they’re not always better for having you in them, but you either face that or hide away somewhere, don’t you?

’The Doctor kissed her.

‘What was that for?’ asked Charlotte.

‘To shut you up,’ he said. He tapped Vicki on the nose and smiled,’Come on, let’s carry on the party, and in the morning, when rosy-fingered Dawn has done her bit, we’ll sort out a good map of Europe for the Trojans and get them started on their boats. Any consequences which haven’t happened yet we can worry about later!’

Some of you will be shocked at just how naughty the Doctor was in this story: jeopardising the stability of all those will-have-might-have-been futures out there depending on him by interweaving all those strands of destiny connected to the Dalek race and all on the basis of a whim.

The Doctor already knew Dalek causality was partially snagged in a loop in Time and his friend was the focus of a temporal anomaly, but of course he had spent a jolly long time in the Vortex, hadn’t he? That meant his causal connections to events future, past and maybe- somehow were a great deal more jumbled up than most people’s and he was quite good at judging just how likely to snaggle the Web of Time his whims might be.

Or so he thought.

The Doctor believed in two very wrong things you see; firstly, in something he called personal morality that he thought was more important than doing the things simply everyone knows are right, and secondly, that he was cleverer than everyone else and could always sort things out.

He deserved what happened to him next, didn’t he?

Document from the Braxiatel Collection Shakespearean Ephemera wing, a note found in the effects of William Shakespeare by literary assessor Porlock. It is not believed to be in Shakespeare’s hand though it bears some graphological similarities to the disputed Scarlioni Hamlet manuscript.

List of things not to mention

The Daleks,

That you’ve met me before when we meet next (because you didn’t mention it last time, you know),

That you’ve read half your plays already

That I wrote all the good bits in Hamlet, [‘good bits’ later amended to ‘rubbish bits’ in a different hand]

The idea of cigars (until Raleigh gets back from abroad),

That cigars will end up named after some of your characters,

That someone called Raleigh will go abroad,

That Troilus and Cressida had a lovely marriage and lived happily ever after in Mousehole, no matter how the story goes in Chaucer,

Oh, the places you’ve gone and the things that you’ve seen

#Charley Pollard #Eighth Doctor #Vicki Pallister #Apocrypha Bipedium #time of the daleks #z

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liljplibrary · 1 year ago

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Cat Food (Tomoki Morikawa)

Looking to create the finest cat food, the bakeneko Pluto embarks on an operation to manufacture minced human flesh! In order to do this, she invites (lures) four young humans to a human cannery disguised as a cottage... However, the black-cat bakeneko Willy has hidden himself amongst them. Of course, it's illegal to kill one's fellow bakeneko. Just who the hell could Willy be?! Rack your brains if you don't want to be eaten.

Tomoki Morikawa's debut work and the first entry in his Great Detective Sanzunokawa series! For a long time, Cat Food was THE book I most wanted to see translated. So, I guess you can consider this a case of "fine, I'll do it myself."

Unlike Alice, I didn't have an editor on hand to double-check my translation so the quality may be a little weaker than Alice. However, Life (props to Life, as always) did go through the trouble of reading it over anyway and letting me know if anything stood out as odd. All that aside, hopefully it's still readable and enjoyable! If you enjoy mental battles -- ala Liar Game or Death Note -- or incredibly evil detectives, you'll definitely love this series.

How To Extract The PDF/Epub

Use winzip, winrar, etc. to open the zip file. When it asks for a password, flip through a legally-acquired copy of Cat Food until you see an image of a can. These appear very frequently throughout the book and are used to separate sections of the text so it should be easy to find. The password is the English letters printed on the cans. NOTE! It is case-sensitive.

How To Acquire Cat Food

Same as Alice, this translation requires you to have your own copy of the book. You can purchase Cat Food from any of these: Amazon JP CDJapan

You might also have some luck with second-hand Japanese bookstores -- like I did -- or if you're REALLY lucky, some retailers like Kinokuniya, though I should note that I THINK Cat Food might not currently be in print so I really don't know?? Certainly, it's trickier to get your hands on than Alice. I'm sorry.

Content Warnings

Unlike other TLs I've posted, Cat Food is NOT a horror novel. It's mostly a dark-comedy novel, and a pretty funny one at that! That said, I've listed the content warnings I noticed below to be safe. Note that there will be spoilers among them.

WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!

CW: Violence, Blood, Frequent Animal Death, Human Death, Cannibalism

#cat food #english translation #Tomoki Morikawa #Great Detective Sanzunokawa #fantasy #dark comedy #mystery #translation #キャットフード

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shanamahtopoeia · 1 year ago

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Porting from Dragon Age: Inquisition to Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2

Part 2a - Into DA2

The process for converting a DAI armors & clothing model for DA2 is a bit different (and easier) than for DAO, so I'm going to start there. DAO ports and static models for either game will be coming later. :)

Tools needed: Blender 2.79a Blender 2.49b Blender to DA2 Mesh Export script. Also make sure to grab the v1 folder for the PDF tutorial. DAI to DA2 bone rename script The DAO Toolset, or at least its MMH & MSH processors pyGFF ERFV3 Packer GDApp TlkEdit (optional) DA2 Blender import script (do a 'find in page' for "import_dragon_age_2.zip")

Open up Blender 2.79a, with your imported model from DAI (see part 1 if you haven't yet extracted your model from DAI)

Blender has a lot of shortcut keys, and it may be worth it to you to run through a Blender tutorial. The default view for Blender 2.79 is a large 3D view window on the left, with an Outliner window on the upper right and Properties window in the lower right. Personally, I like to keep the 3D view and outliner windows open, and switch out the properties window as required.

First things first, you'll want to get rid of the armature and make sure the model is rotated to the correct DA2 orientation.

You can do this by selecting the armature (right-click) and hitting X or Delete. The model should rotate like it's fallen flat on the ground. Look near the bottom of the window, and find the pivot point selection. Change it to "3D Cursor". Your cursor defaults to 0,0,0, but if it got moved, you can put it back with Shift+s, "Cursor to Center".

Then hit A to select all the meshes. Rotate on the Y-axis by 180 degress (R, Y, 180 - literally, type the number "180", Enter) and on the X-axis by 90 (R, X, 90, Enter). Then apply the rotation with Ctrl+A, "Rotation". (changes made in 'Object Mode' always need to be applied to stick; changes made in 'Edit Mode' will stay unless you undo them)

Next, you're going to want to join all the armor/clothing bits together, leaving any skin or accessories separate (they'll likely use different textures).

You can select multiple sub-meshes by holding Shift and right-clicking on each, and then combine them with Ctrl+J. Be warned that DAI isn't always intuitive on what it considers "accessories" - if there are lightly-armored and heavier-armored variants of the same base model, any extra plating, pauldrons, etc, are likely "accessories". If there are multiple skin sub-meshes (unlikely), also join them to each other. An easy way to tell if you've accidently joined parts together that you shouldn't have (at least not yet) is to open up the UV editor window, select your mesh, and hit Tab to change to 'Edit Mode'. Submeshes from different texture maps will often overlap in weird ways. If this has happened, simply undo that joining (Blender uses the usual Ctrl+Z to undo).

Now, you'll want to fix the skeleton.

DA2 uses almost the same skeleton as DAI, which is pretty darned handy. If you expand a submesh in the outliner menu, you should see 'Modifiers' and 'Vertex Groups'. Expand 'Vertex Groups' so you can see all the bone groups. Even though DAI & DA2 use nearly identical skeletal structures, the bone names are different. In the lower window, open up the Text Editor. Then click 'open', navigate to wherever you put the bone rename script, and open it.

With the mesh group selected in either the 3D window or the outliner, right click anywhere in the text window, and hit 'Run Script'. If everything was done correctly, you should see all the bones get renamed. Repeat for any other submeshes.

Unfortunately, the DAI skeleton is a bit more complex than the DA2, and so there are some bones that don't match up nicely. It's probably not a complete list, but so far the extra bones I've found are: Left & RightUpperLegTwist_GS Left & RightFrontCloth3 HairFrontMid1, 2, & 3 Left & RightBrow3

Sometimes you can get away with deleting the extra bones, but you'll most likely need to combine them with others. Luckily, there's a nice modifier to do that for you. If you're porting an outfit, you're likely to run into the UpperLegTwist_GS bones, so I'll show you how I handle those. Switch the 3D window from 'Object Mode' to 'Weight Paint', and the Text Editor back to the Properties. Find and click the 'Modifiers' button (it looks like a wrench). Go ahead and delete the Skeleton modifier. Select RightUpperLeg in the outliner window, so you can see what's happening. Click 'Add Modifier' in the Properties window, and then 'Vertex Weight Mix'. Set group A (the one we plan on keeping) to RightUpperLeg and group B to RightUpperLegTwist_GS. Set the Mix Mode to 'Add' and the Mix Set to 'VGroupB'. This adds group B vertices to group A, retaining their weight. Hit 'Apply' to confirm. Then do the same for LeftUpperLeg and LeftUpperLegTwist_GS.

In the Properties window, now hit the 'Data' button (it's just right of 'Modifiers'). Under 'Vertex Groups', find and delete Left and RightUpperLegTwist_GS by selecting each and clicking the subtract symbol.

If you deleted any bones without combining, you should check to make sure there aren't now any unweighted vertices. You can do that by switching the 3D window back to 'Edit Mode', then hitting 'Select', 'Select All By Trait', 'Ungrouped Verts'.

If you found any, you can open up the Sidebar menu by hitting N. Find a weighted vertex near the unweighted one. Select the unweighted vertex first, then the weighted one. Under 'Vertex Weights' in the Sidebar, click 'Copy'. This will copy the weights from the weighted vertex to the unweighted. If you have a lot of unweighted vertices in an area, it's probably better to undo deleting the relevant bone.

Now your mesh should be ready for export. But, since we can't export directly from Blender 2.79a, so you'll need to 'Save As' and then make sure to check 'Legacy Mesh Format'. If you're familiar with the DA2 Exportation script, it's pretty simple from here. If not, I highly recommend reading that tutorial first. The first half deals with importing DA2 files, and the second with exporting them.

Open Blender 2.49b. If you want or need to compare your DAI mesh to DA2 meshes, open the DA2 import blend file.

If you're keeping the same race/gender combo, the DAI version should match up almost perfectly with the DA2 body parts already. If you want to convert to a different race/gender, or are importing a hairstyle, you will need to import in a DA2 mesh to make sure you adjust the proportions correctly. You should see the import script open in the left window. You can then click Text, Save in the bottom left of the window to save it as a python script that can be opened in any .blend file. Close Blender.

(re)Start Blender 2.49b, and open your 2.79 .blend file. It may have a popup warning about animation loss, but you can ignore it.

Find 'Open New' in the Text window and open the Export script. You can also open the Import script this way if you want. You'll be able to easily swap between them as required now.

If you need to adjust your mesh, now is the time. If you need to bring in a DA2 model for comparison, be aware that the import script will import it rotated: you'll need to fix that by selecting the DA2 mesh, then hitting R, Z, 90, Enter.

Before we export, we need to rename the Datablock (ME) and Object (OB) for each mesh/submesh. If you don't have a Buttons Window open, change one of the windows to that, and hit F9 to change to Editing.

Gloves should be named 'glovesm1' Boots should be 'bootsm1' Chestpieces should be 'armorm1' Full bodies should be 'bodym1', 'robem1', or 'clothesm1' Headgear should be 'helmetm1' This is necessary because the engine looks for these keywords when applying tinting, even for skin tints.

If you're exporting a female mesh, you have to do one extra step: under 'Vertex Groups' in the Buttons window, select 'spine3' and then double-click it to rename it to 'Spine3'.

To export your model, right-click on the export script, and click 'execute script'.

Select the mesh parts to export (hold Shift to select multiple parts), and click the appropriate Export msh button.

You'll get a pop-up prompting you to name the msh: this names the mesh inside the .msh file. Technically you can name it whatever, but the conventions DA2 uses are: glv_**** for gloves boo_**** for boots arm_**** for chestpiece rob_**** for robes (usually full-body) cth_**** for clothing (usually full-body) bdy_**** for any other full-body models hlm_**** for helmets of any kind hlh_**** for half-helms (faces showing) hlf_**** for full-helms (no face showing) hoo_*** for hoods Then it'll direct you to export the msh. Pick the same name as you picked above, but with 'msh.xml' appended. (so, if you're porting a nice chestpiece, name it "arm_mine" at the pop-up prompt and export it as "arm_mine.msh.xml")

Do the same for the mmh export. Using the same example: "arm_mine" at the pop-up prompt, and export as "arm_mine.mmh.xml".

Minimize Blender, and navigate to wherever you exported your xmls.

Then, open a couple new Windows Explorer windows, and navigate to your DAO processors folder (for me, it's C:\Program Files (x86)\Dragon Age\tools\ResourceBuild\Processors). Open the MMH folder in one window and the MSH in the other, and move your .xmls to the matching folder.

To process the MMH, you can simply click and drag it over to GraphicsProcessorMMH.exe, and you should get an .mmh and a .phy.

To process the MSH, you need to open a PowerShell or command line in the MSH folder.

(if you're on Windows 10 or 11, hold Shift, right-click, and select 'Open PowerShell window here') Then input "GraphicsProcessorMSH.exe -platform pc mmdtogff arm_mine.msh.xml". Hopefully, it gives you a .msh.

If either fails, the most likely cause is that you didn't have the mesh selected when you tried to export.

For some reason, the processor may also fail if you duplicated or extruded any vertices while changing the mesh, so you'll need to avoid doing either when making more complex mesh edits. -_-

Now, you hopefully have your converted .msh, mmh, and .phy files.

The readme for the export script says that the .phy generated may be unreliable, so you may want to extract a vanilla .phy to use instead. Look for one of the same race/gender combo and same type (gloves, robes, etc).

Open up your msh with pyGFF, and type 'output/' before the mesh name on the second line. Hit 'Save' in the bottom left corner, and then save the entire file.

Open up your mmh with pyGFF, and put the filepath in front of the mmh, msh, & maos (more on the .mao file further down).

Look at a vanilla .mmh to see what it should look like. The filepath should be art/characters/playercharacter/racegender/. If your model has multiple submeshes, you'll need to input the filepath for each part's mao. Make sure to hit 'Save' in the bottom left after editing each line. Save the .mmh.

Open up your phy with pyGFF, and either enter the filepath (if you've kept the generated one) or change the mmh name to yours (if you're using a vanilla one). Save the phy, making sure to change the name to match the msh & mmh if necessary.

If your model has multiple parts, you'll need to make sure the mmh has its nodes ordered correctly. The 'Root' node should be above the mesh chunks, and the [filename] node after the chunks. Use the box in the bottom left to re-order them. Similarly, the phy should have the 'Root' node above the [filename] node. (not all vanilla multipart models have the [filename] node, and I'm not sure why. But, if the mmh has one, the matching phy will as well.) See the pics below, or pop open some vanilla files to compare.

You now have a model, but testing will be difficult without textures.

My tutorial for converting DAI textures to DA2 can be found here. If you use GIMP or Photoshop, I recommend these tutorials: magpie's for GIMP sapphim's for Photoshop If all you need is quick placeholder textures for testing, simply export the textures from DAI with FrostyEditor as .dds files.

Use pyGFF to open a vanilla .mao from a model similar to the one you're exporting (race and gender don't matter for this one, just general color and whether it's mostly cloth, leather, or metal), and change the texture names to the ones from DAI. Then save the mao, naming it to match your msh & mmh.

Now, you've got to pack everything so that DA2 can read it. DA2 uses a weird nested folder system for organization, and we're going to copy it.

Make a new folder for your files, and create a nested series of folders inside matching the filepath ('MyMod/art/characters/playercharacter/racegender') and put your msh, mmh, phy, and mao in the racegender folder. Make a 'textures' folder next to them, and put the textures in it.

Navigate all the way back up, and open another window to wherever you put the ERF Packer. Drag and drop your 'MyMod' folder over the ERF Packer. It'll open an ERF Packer window; choose 'Create PAK'.

Yay! Now you have a DAI model, in DA2 format, packed so that DA2 can access it. Put your shiny new .erf into your DA2 override.

If it's a hair model, testing is as simple as adding a new line to your chargenmorph.xml and starting a new character. If it's an armor or clothing model, you'll need to put it on an item or a companion.

I often use my poor siblings for testing with a quick APR_base edit.

Open up APR_base.gda with GDApp, then delete all the lines except the follower(s) you'll be using for testing. Look over at the 5th column, 'MODELTYPE', and if it's a P ("parts"), change it to H ("head"). Then put your new model with filepath in the 4th column, 'ModelName'. Save the edited GDA with a name like "apr_base_testing.gda" (the game will read this as an override for your edited lines). Open up DA2 and find your guinea pig of a follower!

If you'd rather test with an item, the easiest way is to extract the UTI for an item you already have, then open up item_variations.gda with GDApp.

Delete all the lines except one of the same type as your chosen item (so for a ported robe, find a line with a robe or clothing). Change the 'ID' field to something unique (there's no limit on length, so a random 7+ digits is fine), and the 'model' field to your mmh. Save the edited GDA with a name like "item_variations_test.gda". Then open your item's UTI, and put the ID number for your model in the 'ModelVariation' field. Save.

Put both the item_variations gda and your edited UTI into your DA2 override folder. Open up DA2 and see if it worked.

If your model doesn't quite look right, you'll have to go back into Blender and make adjustments. But, you'll generally only have to re-export the msh. If you remove/add/rename any bones, though, or split/combine meshes, you'll have to re-export the mmh as well.

Common problems: -- Some parts extend into infinity: either unweighted vertices, or misnamed/unrecognized bones -- Noodle limbs: exported wrong MMH type, or re-exported mesh with changed bones without also re-exporting mmh. -- Game crashes: too many bones in a single mesh (the limit is somewhere around 68-70). Split the mesh into multiple submeshes, and then use Scripts, Clean Meshes to remove Vgroups. Re-export everything. -- T-posing and flashing red: can't find the mao -- Grayscale and shiny: can't find texture(s) -- No model / invisible item or body: either can't find the mesh, or the mesh was oriented wrong (in my experience, this only happens the model is rotated on the Z axis) -- Flat on the ground w/distorted limbs: rotated wrong on the X and/or Y axis

Part 2b covers converting DAI models and getting them into DAO.

#dragon age 2 #modding #tutorial #dai to da2 #dragon age

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