How Mabinogi Mods Work

[Rydian]

- Intro
This is a basic guide to the concepts of mobbing Mabinogi.  This guide is not meant to show you the ins and
outs of file editing or code editing or tweaking performance or anything like this.  This is a basic guide that contains
the information you need to know in order to understand how modding works in general.  Once you how how it
works, you should have a much easier time installing, troubleshooting, and even making your own mods.

Mabinogi, like all games, is built out of two things.
1 - The game code.  The exe, dlls, things like that.
2 - The assets.  For Mabinogi, these are in the pack files.

The game code is things like actual skill functionality, the graphics, sound controls, "physics", the logical and mechanical
parts of the game.  On the other hand the assets are resources or media... things like the textures, models, the sound
effects, databases, game text, things like that.

So since there's two categories of things that make up "Mabinogi", there's two main categories of mods too.


- Patch/dll Mods
These mods are generally created to change the behavior of the game client.
These are things like Abyss, Solar, and other (now defunct) mods.

They're generally distributed as dlls or renamed files of some sort.  They work by tricking Mabinogi into loading them
and then patching/changing parts of the client's game code.  They generally come with an .ini or other sort of config
file, and they generally make mechanical or settings changes to the game.

These mods are easy enough to deal with.  Updating them is simply replacing the files in your game folder, while
toggling things on or off is done by editing the .ini file with a raw text editor (like Notepad, not Word).  Which
settings are available in them vary at any given time, but are usually toggled on by setting something = 1, and you
turn them off by setting it to = 0 in the file (of course).

Some examples of changes patch/dll mods contain are...
- Making CP show up on players and monsters.
- Enabling the FSAA option in video settings.
- Letting you attack closed mimics.

(Generally you won't be making your own patch/dll mods, if you had the skillset you wouldn't need this guide.)


- Data Folder Mods
These mods change the game's resources around, to change the visual or feel of the game.
Tiara, Poison, and Frontend are "packs" of these mods, for example.

These mods work as an override.  Each "mod" is really an edited/replacement file for an existing resource in the game.
Mabinogi's resources are kept in the pack files, which are in the /package/ folder in the game folder. You can think of
these sort of like custom zip files, they contain files and folders.  Using one of the many package managing tools out
there (MabiPackageTool, MabiPacker, MabiUnpack, etc.) it's easy enough to open a package file and rummage around
through it, or extract/view the files within it to check them out (or for editing).

It's important to know that there's multiple packs and they're "applied" in order.  If you have a 200_full pack file, it's
the first one read, but if you also have a 200_to_201 pack file, then any files in that will override the ones in 200_full.
So if you're looking to grab files to look at changes or edit them yourself, always grab from the latest/highest package.

Anyways the main way of using data folder mods is by... well... placing them into the data folder.  This doesn't exist by
default, but if there's a /data/ folder in your Mabinogi install folder, you can sort your mods in there according to where
they'd normally be located in the package files.  Then they get loaded as overrides in one way or another.

Generally if you have a patch/dll mod it'll have an option to load data folder mods automatically.  Otherwise you can use
tools like Data Packer to mod your existing packs, or other tools to create your own custom packs.  In general letting
the patch/dll mod turn on the auto-load is quicker, easier, and less prone to human error so it's recommended.

Anyways... let's say, for example, that you wanted a different font in-game.  In the packs you can find the font file...



So it's in the package data, then it's in a "gfx" folder, then it's in a "font" folder, and it's named "nanumgothicbold.ttf"
So that means that "/data/gfx/font/nanumgothicbold.ttf" is the location of the original file, right?  Let's pretend that you
checked and asked around and determined that "nanumgothicbold.ttf" is the Mabinogi font (at the time of writing).

Well, what you need to do is to make that same folder structure in the /data/ folder of your Mabi install folder, and then
stick your replacement font in there with the right filename so it'll be loaded instead of the actual game's font.



I took a font named Liberation Sans and I renamed the file and stuck it in there.  So now that it's in there, the patch/dll
mod or some sort of data packer should pick up on it.  I've got Abyss installed, so I start up the game and we can see...



So that's the basic idea of data folder modding.  If you need to update a mod, you can find how it works and then take
updated files (from the latest pack!) and edit them again and put them back in your data folder, for example.  If you want
to make your own mods you can look at the original files and edit them with the right tools, and all sorts of things.

This short intro to modding just did the font as an example, but there's item databases, UI images, textures, models, and
all sorts of things you can mess with.  You can make model replacements (to stick some weapon from your favorite anime in),
sound replacements (shut the sheep up or make them fart instead), or whatever else you want.

[Lady Playtime]

Amazing work, as usual Rydian.