Help changing player def properties in ROE

[Raheem]

I'm trying to play Resurrection of Evil without having any armor equipped, and also making it so that I am unable to pickup any of the armor items in a level. 
I did this successfully with the base Doom3 by simply changing the armor properties in the player def file to 0. I've not been able to replicate this in ROE however.

I've tried editing the file d3xp-player.def (pak000.pk4\def\d3xp-player.def), changing armor and max armor, under //stats, both to "0" respectively. In game however, no change takes effect. I'm able to spawn in with armor and also pick up other pieces of armor.
Going back to the def files, the numbers remain at 0, so nothing i'm doing in the def file is having any effect in game it appears... 

Edited September 4, 2021 by Raheem

[Tetzlaff]

How did you set up your modified files? Do you use our own mod .pk4 file?

[Raheem]

 

2 hours ago, Tetzlaff said:

How did you set up your modified files? Do you use our own mod .pk4 file?

No I just edit the files in PAK000.pk4, the one in the d3xp folder by default after you install ROE. 
I actually don't know how to make a custom .pk4.

 

[Lippeth]

One of the addons you have in the d3xp folder is overriding the change you made to the player definition (likely the weapon fix pack), causing your edit to be ignored. Doom 3 reads each pk4 in alphabetical order, and in the case of duplicate definition names, the pk4 that starts with a letter closest to the end of the alphabet will be what the game ends up sticking with. This is why many addons prefix their file name with the letter z, to ensure that it has more priority than all other files.

 

A pk4 is just a zip folder. You can create a new zip folder and rename the extension from .zip to .pk4. Before doing anything I recommend reinstalling Doom 3 to restore the files that have been modified, and refraining from editing them directly.

 

To make a .pk4 that will remove armor, create a new zip file in the d3xp folder (right click, new > Compressed (zipped) Folder), rename it from "New Compressed (zipped) Folder.zip" to something like "z_noarmor.pk4" (ctrl A while editing text will also select the extension). Open the file with 7Zip, press F7 to create a new folder and call it "def", then you can open the def folder from "pak000.pk4" and drag "d3xp-player.def" into the empty def folder you created and edit from there.

 

If you don't want to edit from a zipped folder, you can copy "d3xp-player.def" from "pak000.pk4" to some place like your desktop, open with a text editor to make your changes, and then either drag that file into your new .pk4 folder, or create a directory with regular folders and zip them all into a .pk4. Keep in mind that it's important to mimic the folder hierarchy when making simple patches like this to avoid any errors.

 

I tested it out to see if it works, and it works. RoE guy won't pick up armor. There may be better/safer/smarter methods to do this, but this is how I taught myself to do it.

Edited September 8, 2021 by Lippeth

[Raheem]

On 9/7/2021 at 8:55 PM, Lippeth said:

One of the addons you have in the d3xp folder is overriding the change you made to the player definition (likely the weapon fix pack), causing your edit to be ignored. Doom 3 reads each pk4 in alphabetical order, and in the case of duplicate definition names, the pk4 that starts with a letter closest to the end of the alphabet will be what the game ends up sticking with. This is why many addons prefix their file name with the letter z, to ensure that it has more priority than all other files.

 

A pk4 is just a zip folder. You can create a new zip folder and rename the extension from .zip to .pk4. Before doing anything I recommend reinstalling Doom 3 to restore the files that have been modified, and refraining from editing them directly.

 

To make a .pk4 that will remove armor, create a new zip file in the d3xp folder (right click, new > Compressed (zipped) Folder), rename it from "New Compressed (zipped) Folder.zip" to something like "z_noarmor.pk4" (ctrl A while editing text will also select the extension). Open the file with 7Zip, press F7 to create a new folder and call it "def", then you can open the def folder from "pak000.pk4" and drag "d3xp-player.def" into the empty def folder you created and edit from there.

 

If you don't want to edit from a zipped folder, you can copy "d3xp-player.def" from "pak000.pk4" to some place like your desktop, open with a text editor to make your changes, and then either drag that file into your new .pk4 folder, or create a directory with regular folders and zip them all into a .pk4. Keep in mind that it's important to mimic the folder hierarchy when making simple patches like this to avoid any errors.

 

I tested it out to see if it works, and it works. RoE guy won't pick up armor. There may be better/safer/smarter methods to do this, but this is how I taught myself to do it.

Thanks for solving this issue for me, as well as providing such a detailed explanation for it!