DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO – Modding Tutorial: Custom Engine (and Asset Extraction)

Custom Engine Guide

By NovaTedd.

Requirements

• Custom Unreal Engine (follow step 1 for the link to work).

https://github.com/narknon/UnrealEngine-CEEnd/releases/tag/dbszv1

• Custom UE Project (Download Branch MLReleaseCandidate).
• ZenTools.

Disclaimer: The engine, unreal project and ZenTools extractions will add up to 60+ GB!! Make sure you have space, and be ready to commit to large file sizes from now on! When modding, make sure to have a backup save file. There’s been occurrences in which mod data is stored in the save files, making mod testing unreliable.

Step 1: Custom UE Install

• To download the custom Unreal Engine project, you’ll need to link your Epic Games account to your Github account.
  • To do that, sign in here, then select Github and link your account (If you don’t have one, make one).
• After linking your account, you’ll be invited through your email linked to your Epic Games account to a Github team, accept the invitation.
• You should now be able to open the link in the requirements section, and download the engine! Here’s what you need to download.

Don’t download SparkingZero.zip!

• After downloading all of these files, you want to place in one folder:
  • SBSZEngine.z01-05
  • and
  • SBSZEngine.zip
• After placing down all of these files, select them all and click “Extract to (Folder Name)”.

• I strongly recommend using Winrar, but the picture is just an example, as long as you add all of these into one folder you’re doing it right!
• This might take a while, and if throughout the process you get an error for any of the .z0 files, it’s okay as long as it’s not too severe.
• You’ll know if it’s extracted correctly on the next step!
• Now, extract the custom UE project you downloaded anywhere (Preferably near the engine folder to keep things close to each other! Located at the top of the guide).
• After extracting the project, right click on the .uproject file inside the folder, select “Switch Unreal Engine Version” then click the three (…) dots, and finally go to your engine folder and click “Select Folder”.

• If it asks you to rebuild any files or anything of that sort, click yes and wait. Don’t close anything related to this on task manager.
• If you’re asked to install Visual Studio, make sure to tick “C++ Game Development Package” when installing it.
• Once this is done, you’ve successfully installed both the modloader project and the custom SZ engine!
• Before you begin the next step, if you’re going to extract the game files with an update downloaded, follow this guide. Until a fix is made, you can only use the project with the old ZenTools files.

Step 2: ZENTools

• Now you’re gonna want to extract your ZenTools .zip you downloaded, open the folder it contained, and run the .exe inside it.
• In the interface that should have opened, you’ll want to replace both paths accordingly:
  • Replace the 1st path highlighted with the following path: DRAGON BALL Sparking! ZERO > SparkingZERO > Content > Paks.
  • Replace the 2nd path highlighted with your extraction folder (make one on a drive with a lot of space!)

Once you’re done setting the paths, click “Run”. If done correctly, you should see the cmd start to extract all of Sparking Zero’s files into your extraction folder. You need these files.

• Once these files are downloaded, navigate to the “Content” folder, and copy all the files in there all the way to your project’s “Content” folder. Do note, if you don’t want to mod maps / levels, you don’t need the “Bg” folder.
• Copy and paste the files, and don’t overwrite stuff already in the project!

• After this, MAKE SURE to delete all the “Chameleon” files inside your project after pasting them in, which you can find in “SS > Blueprints > PostProcess”:

Step 3: Project Setup

• With this, you’re now ready to do advanced SZ modding! The first thing you’ll want to do is add chunk exclusions. 
• Head over to the top left of UE, and select “Edit > Project Settings”:

• Then go into “Packaging > Advanced > Directories to never cook”. Here, you’ll be able to exclude folders from being packaged. MAKE SURE to exclude the ModLib from cooking!

• Put in all the directories you want to exclude from packaging before starting anything! (I recommend putting it in the SS folder).
• Keep in mind, if you exclude, as an example “SS/Characters”, ALL subfolders of “Characters” will also get excluded.
• Finally, to start modding, select the “Alpakit” icon in the top of your screen:

• Then, make sure all the Config options are set correctly (use the following image as reference) and press “Create Mod”.

• Finally, select “Blueprint Only” and set everything else however you want!

• Once you press Create Mod, you can now successfully start modding.
• Keep in Mind: To tweak materials, you have to download Knola’s Material Recreation, and put it either inside “Content” or “SS”. Once you’ve done this, changing the material’s parent to the recreation will allow editing, just make sure to revert the parent once you’re done editing.

Step 4: Mod Setup

• The first thing you want to do with the mod you created is to favorite it’s content folder by right clicking on it, then pressing “Add To Favorites”:

I’ll quickly explain just how the modding process works in here:

• All content from your mod revolves around your Dynamic DA.
• The only thing you need to do in this content folder is put files in. You don’t need to recreate any file paths. That’s actually not even an option by default.
• On that note, it’s possible to make your mod using path recreation (Ex: Putting goku’s hair material inside a recreation of “SS > Characters > 0000 > 1p > Materials”). But it’s a bit convoluted and honestly not worth it.
• If you want to change a character’s hair material (as an example) with this workflow, you’d want to make a “BPCHR” child, change their material inside the child, then link that child to the character’s “CharacterData” file. (All of this will be explained later!)
• With that out of the way, find your character’s “CharacterData” (or map) file, and get it on your mod’s content folder by either:
  • Moving it (Highly recommended)
  • Advanced copying it (Not recommended)
  • The CharacterData files are stored in “SS > MasterDataAsset > CharacterData”
• Once the CharacterData file(s) is in your mod’s content folder, you’ll have to revolve your content around that file. Here’s a few examples:
  • Material mods require you to use BPCHR children, replacing them in your CharacterData’s “Costume” category.
  • Mods that replace models will also, in turn, use BPCHR children.
  • UIData mods require you to move or add said UIData into the CD “UIData” category.
  • Mods that edit a character’s stats or moves will use the “Common Assets” category of the CD.

These are just a few examples of how everything should revolve around CharacterData now.

With the basics covered, the next few categories will go over different type of content edits you can make, those being:

• Step 5: Basic Character Data Editing
• Step 6: Aura Editing
• Step 7: BPCHR Child Creation
• Step 8: Custom Characters
• Step 9: Custom Models
• Step 10: Custom Moves
• Step 11:  Packaging

I strongly recommend following steps 5 and 11 before anything else!

Step 5: Basic Character Data Editing

This step will cover the fundamentals of your character data file, so open it up!

Unlock Type:

• This setting changes how you unlock your character. If set to “Default”, you’ll have your character unlocked on startup!

Costumes:

• Costume Index [0] controls your character’s BPCHR. If you made a BPCHR child (step 6), you’ll want to replace the original parent with your child.
  • Throughout testing, the “Key” text boxes haven’t had a major impact on my custom character, but if you’re basing yours heavily off of another character and want to be safe, put their key in place of the original!

Character Animations:

• These 2 files control most if not all of your animations!
  • “Character MLS” contains most of your animations, including transform, win, special blast and ultimate animations!
  • “Character Combination” SEEMS to hold only attacks that have cutscenes attached to them (Ex: Ultimates). With more information I’ll get a more concrete reading on this data!

Effect Color Data:

• “Effect Color Data Type Map” controls your character’s general Aura.
  • I recommend, if you’re starting out, to just copy another character’s aura before you make your own!
• Inside each element is a “Key”, which looks like this:
  • “EKoratCharacterEffectColorSetDataEnum::NewEnumerator(Number)”.
  • Each key’s only difference is its last part “NewEnumerator”, which can be changed to color different parts of your character’s aura. This color can be assigned in the “Value”.
• More on this in step 6!

Battle Always Aura:

• This parameter controls certain character’s aura conditions. As an example, Super Vegito has electricity surrounding his body even when standing, that’s because of this parameter.

Common Assets:

This is the real meat of your character data file. Most of your character is managed through these files. The important files you want to keep an eye out for, and what they do, are:

• Numeric Data: Controls your character’s health, damage, blast stock amount, aura type (normal or god) and much more!
  • In here, you can control how much ki your character drains when using UI (Selfishness SP Cost).
• Movement Data: Controls your character’s movement’s speed and everything related to movement. I recommend keeping this one intact.
• Blast Forte 1/2: Controls your character’s buff actions (Ex: Instant Transmission, God Bind, Power up to the very limit, etc).
• Keep in Mind: If you’re changing a character’s Blast Forte, you’re going to want to change all data relating to those BFs too! (More on this on step 9!)
• Blast Skill 1/2: Controls your character’s special moves, Blast Forte’s disclaimer applies with these skills too.
• Blast Ultimate: Controls your character’s ultimate. Once again, Blast Forte’s disclaimer applies here too.
• Bullet Setting Data: Controls all your projectile’s setting data (Ex: Kamehameha’s, Blast Ultimates that can be dodged, etc)
• Bullet Visual Data: Controls how most of the visuals in your projectiles look (Ex: Changing a Kamehameha beam with the Prominence Flash beam)
• Buff: Manages what each Blast Forte buff does, they go hand in hand.
• Subtitles Data: Pretty self explanatory.

UI Assets:

• Inside this file is all the UI Data for a character, so their character portraits, shop thumbnails, transformation icons, etc.

Battle Assets:

This is your character data’s second chunk of meat. Inside battle assets, you control all of your transformations, fusions / potara fusions and more! Here’s a run down of everything:

• Form Change indexes: Each Index is one of your transformations, and they’re ordered by number. Inside these indexes, you’ll want to look out for these settings:
  1. Consume Blast Stock and Hp recovery: How many blast stocks it takes to transform, and Hp recovered from the transformation.
  2. Cool Time: How many seconds until you can transform again.
  3. Change Character Acting Data: These IMPORTANT parameters control your character’s transform animation. Each parameter controls the following:
     • 1, 2 and 2R: Taken from your own character’s MLS file. First part of the transformation. Type “FRM” in MLS to find the references.
     • 3 and 4: Taken from the character you’re transforming into’s MLS file. Second part of the transformation. Type “FRM” in MLS to find the references.
• Fusion / Potara: The same concepts from the Form Change indexes can be applied with Fusion / Potara.
• During Invincibility Play Level Sequence: Controls your character’s invincibility pose.
• When adding indexes, make sure to put the character you’re transforming into’s key number, and ALSO MAKE SURE to disable “Keep Costume Flg” and “Costume Damage Flg” if you’re experiencing crashes with these transformations!

Story Setting Parameter:

• Here, you can control most of your character’s background and their overall power and sorting. Here’s a quick explanation of each important setting:
  • Sort Id: Controls where your character appears in the select screen.
  • Destroyed Power: Your character’s DP.
  • Character Type: Self-explanatory.
  • Character Attribute Tag Data: The categories (Ex: Z-Warriors) your characters have
  • Same Persons: Lets you mention which characters are a part of your union if your character is one.

Sound Data:

• This is your character’s sound file. More research needs to be done on this, but matching it with your character is probably the best idea.

Name Info:

• These parameters affect all of your character’s names. These are:
  • Full Name: The name displayed in the Encyclopedia.
  • Short Name: The name displayed in the select screen.
  • Title Name: The form / title your character has on the select screen.
  • Event Name: Your character’s event name.

Fate Data:

• This data manages your character’s morality and dialogue related things like your unique character interactions and your rivals!

This is just about all the basics from the CharacterData files, the rest you can just mess around with and find out!

Step 6: Aura Editing

• To find your auras, head over to your CharacterData file, and find the “Effect Color Data Type Map” section, and open it.
• Now start replacing! You can use another character’s data file as reference if you want to copy their aura.

All effects are labeled, here’s a few examples:

• AUR: Aura
• RSB: Normal Ki Blast
• SMB: Charged Ki Blast
• BST: Blast (Attack)

Inside each element is a “Key”, which looks like this:

• “EKoratCharacterEffectColorSetDataEnum::NewEnumerator(Number)”.

Each key’s only difference is its last part “NewEnumerator”, which can be changed to color different parts of your character’s aura. This color can be assigned in the “Value”.

Here’s a list of all the currently known elements and what they control:

• NewEnumerator0 = Charge surrounding wind + attack particles
• NewEnumerator1 = Outline glow
• NewEnumerator5 = Attack particles
• NewEnumerator6 = Normal Ki Blast
• NewEnumerator7 = Charged Ki Blast + Ki Blast Explosion
• NewEnumerator8 = Aura + Outline
• NewEnumerator9 = De-transform aura (?)
• NewEnumerator10 = Post-super particles
• NewEnumerator19 = Super Move 1 explosion color
• NewEnumerator20 = Charge surrounding wind + attack particles
• NewEnumerator21 = Super Move 2 explosion color
• NewEnumerator30 = Transform aura
• NewEnumerator32 = Kaioken charge + outline
• NewEnumerator33 = Unknown
• NewEnumerator34 = Charged ki attack (?)

Additionally, here’s a link to a list to all the auras you can assign in the “Battle Always Aura” and “Always Aura” slots.

• Do note! If you want to tweak or customize an existing particle asset, you have to extract it through ZenTools to your mod’s “Content” folder, otherwise it’ll appear blank.

Step 7: BPCHR Child Creation + Usage

Creating a BPCHR child is essential to making new characters and editing existing ones. Here’s how to easily create one:

• Navigate over to your character’s 1p folder:
  • “SS > Characters > (Character ID) > 1p”

Find the character you want to edit’s BPCHR file:

• Right click, it and select “Create Child Blueprint Class”.

• Name it however you want, I recommend just keeping the default child name to make things easy to remember. And finally, move this child to your mod’s content folder. You’re now done creating your BPCHR child!
• If you want to replace a character’s materials or meshes, simply make / import the assets into your mod’s content folder, select the part of your character you want to edit, and replace those assets!

• Most parameters here can be tweaked in CharacterData, so ignore them.
• If your character has black hair and you want to change that, you’ll need to enable their outline in “BP_ToonComponent > Toon Mesh Settings”
• IMPORTANT WARNING ABOUT EYE MATERIALS: When applying your custom eye textures. MAKE SURE TO CHANGE THE MATERIAL’S PARENTS. With this BPCHR method, eye000 can’t be parented to MI_EYE000, and eye001 can’t be parented to eye000. Instead, parent them like this:
  • Eye000 = MI_Eyes_L
  • Eye001 = MI_Eyes_R

Do note that you might have to switch the materials around when doing this, but it should fix any lazy eyes related problem.

• To apply a BPCHR child to a character: Go into your CharacterData file, and go through “Costumes > Index [0] > Fine Model > Character Asset”. Finally, replace said character asset with your BPCHR child (You might want to use the arrow next to the selection box if it doesn’t show up by default).

Step 8: Custom Characters

• To make a custom character, first you’ll first want to follow step 7 of this guide.
• Once you’ve got your BPCHR child set-up, rename your CharacterData and make sure it’s as unique as possible (In this example, I changed SSJ Gogeta from 0100_01 to 0100_05).

• Keep in mind, if you set your character unlock type to “Shop”, you won’t be able to test or play them easily! Make sure to set them to “Default”.
• You don’t need to replace your CharacterData’s AI key.
• To proceed, head over to step 11.

Costumes:

• If you want to add costumes to your character, you need to add a new index to both “Forms and Costumes” and “ItemDataPtrs”.
• If you’re making a new character ID, all the costumes for the character will be gone, so make sure to add the default outfit to your list too!

• Inside the “Forms and Costumes” index, select the CharacterData you want those outfits to be added to.
• Inside the “ItemDataPtrs” index, add an ItemData file, which you can copy / transfer over from “SS > MasterDataAsset > CharacterItem”.
• Make sure to have the ItemData key (proper key usage explained in step 11) written in the text box too!

• Once your ItemData and CharacterData are setup, go down through the Forms and Costumes section, ignoring Battle Assets, and add as many indexes as costumes you want (including the default outfit).

• In each index, you want to add the key to your costumes (or your character’s normal key for the default costume), the BPCHR of each costume, and the trail for each costume. Additionally, you can add damaged models.

• Now, back to the ItemData, you should set the ID to your character’s key, set the costume UI to whatever you want, and then customize everything else however you want!
  • Do note before missing with it, the “Info Text” section doesn’t seem to do anything.

• Finally, make sure to grab the “ItemEffect” asset at the bottom of the ItemData page, and write down your character’s costume key in it!

• In the ItemData, I recommend keeping these 2 options to their defaults, as changing them seems to get rid of the costume slot at times:

• After this, you can finish setting up your CharacterData on Step 11!

Step 9: Custom Models

• When extracting custom models into this engine, make sure, if they’re using or are based off of existing characters, to import those assets inside the “1p” folder of said characters! (Ex: Importing an edit of Goku (Early)’s face would require you to import it in “Characters > 0000 > 1p”).
• Also make sure to have all of these settings ticked:
  • If you imported the file correctly, the skeleton should be automatically assigned to your character’s skeleton without any intervention, as seen in the following image.

• Once extracted, the asset’s name shouldn’t really matter. But if it was exported using BetterFBX, and after applying it to your character it’s too small, change the export scaling from centimeters to meters, or vice versa.
• If you’re modifying the SKN mesh, DO NOT import it as it is. You need to make additional changes to make this mesh function properly. You should attempt to import both the SKN mesh and another mesh from the character WITHOUT PHYSICS, preferably (Ex: Editing Goku’s SKN, I grabbed his “Gloves” asset (AKA his hands) and imported it along with that SKN mesh).
• After importing both of these assets, delete the non-SKN skeleton, then, select the non-SKN mesh first, followed by the skeleton, and then in the viewport hit the shortcut “CTRL + P” and select “Object”.

• Once this is done, select both meshes inside the skeleton, and use the shortcut “CTRL + J” to merge them.

You should now be able to import this mesh without any issues, but we’re not done yet.

• Now, in your BPCHR child, select your skin, scroll down on the parameters, and tick “Hidden In Game”, then un-tick “Visible” for clarity’s sake.

• You can now finally add your custom mesh into whichever asset you decided to combine with your SKN! In this example, I replaced Goku’s “Gloves” with the new mesh that has both his hands and his SKN combined:
  • Make sure to replace the shadow of your asset too!

• As a warning, after I personally tested using the Gi as a replacement, it caused issues with the physics, so I do NOT recommend using any character’s gi or any physics asset in general as the replacement. Boots, gloves and hands should work.

• If you’re having issues with the model after all this, you can try adding an ABP on the new mesh (Usually FCE should work for the face, and SKN for everything else).

• If you’re having issues with your custom models shading, like it looking off or grainy, there’s 3 different problems that could be the cause of your issues:
  • High Precision Tangent Basis: Make sure you have this ticked inside your model’s settings in Unreal, you can just search for “Tangent” or “Use” and it’ll show up easily.

• Face Light Masks: Make sure, if your FCE mesh is having issues, to have all the masks enabled in the material parameters, and also make sure they’re set correctly!

• Broken Mesh Normals: If you’ve modified your mesh in any shape or form, your normals have most likely broken. If the previous 2 solutions didn’t solve your problem, then add the “Data Transfer” modifier to your mesh, import the original mesh (deleting it’s skeleton), select that as the Source, tick “Face Corner Data” and “Custom Normals” inside it, and finally set the Mapping type to “Topology”.

Step 10: Custom Moves

• Generally, when working with custom moves, you want to replace existing moves with others. You can also, in a more complex manner, mix and match move animations and data to create your own unique moves.
• Changing a moves animation and damage is also possible, but still being tested and experimented, so there’s no definitive way to do these things at the moment.
• Custom moves are split into multiple different files that each determine different factors of said moves. All of these files are located in your character’s CharacterData.

Those files are:

MLS and Character Combination:

• Inside the “MLS” data are all of the animations that determine how your move actually plays out in-game.

Depending on if you’re changing a Blast Forte, a Blast Skill or an Ultimate, you’ll need to replace / add different indexes. Here’s a few examples:

• Blast Fortes: Their animations are determined by “actEXA” and, occasionally, “actEXASD”.

• Blast Skills: Their animations are determined by “SPM#SD”, “SPM#SI” and “SPM#HI” (The # being a number, 1 being for skill 1 and 2 for skill 2).
• What all of these assets mean is pretty simple:
  • SD = Before attack.
  • SI = During attack.
  • HI = After attack.

(From my own research, both SI and HI SEEM to be required to change the blast outline cutscene).

As far as I’ve seen, the following files don’t make much of an impact but do play a part in super attack:

• Blast Ultimate: An ultimate’s animation is mostly determined by “actULTSD”, “actULTSI” and “actULTHI”. These files share the same attributes mentioned in Blast Skills.

• Inside the “Combinations” asset, “essential” data such as damage notifiers and important montages + level sequences can be found. Chances are, your moves will not be fully replaced when editing them if you don’t change these files too.
• The “Action Opponent” key handles what the opponent (in theory) sees during the animation, so setting that key to have “2P” is very important if making a new Element.

• If you’re swapping out a move for another one, make sure to check what the original character’s MLS and Combinations data looks like, for your new character might not have the data the original has to make the move work.

Combatives:

• Combatives data can be found inside your CharacterData’s “Common Assets” drop-down.

• The data in here is in charge of quite a few things, the most notable of which being general move data. In simple terms, inside this file you can set if a move is a rush or a blast, and this is very important if you’re switching a rush move into a blast move or vice versa.
  • There’s data in here that also controls some aspects of a Blast Forte move, so it’s a good idea to change these assets too.
  • The same naming scheme from the MLS data applies here.

Blast Data:

• Right under the combatives data you can locate all of the move data, also labeled as Blast moves.

These files each represent a move your character has, those being:

• Blast Fortes 1/2: Blast Stock moves.

• Blast Skills 1/2: Super Attacks.

• Blast Ultimate: Ultimate Attack.

• Inside each piece of data, you can determine the move name, help screen descriptions and more.
• To change a move’s name, you have to navigate over to “Blast Skill Name” , click the flag and then un-link the string through the trash can button. After this is done you can now name your move whatever you want!

Bullet Data:

• If a character has any projectile based moves, all of it’s visual and setting data will be located in these 2 files: “Bullet Setting Data”, “Bullet Visual Data”.

• In here, the keys to each action are written in japanese, so here’s some translations of some of the more important Elements you want to edit.

Keep in mind, these japanese keys have their own numbers, so you can’t use your standard numbers to look these up in the data assets, you need to copy them from this list!

• 得意技１: Blast Forte 1.
• 得意技２: Blast Forte 2.
• 必殺技１: Blast Skill 1.
• 必殺技２: Blast Skill 2.
• アルティメットブラスト: Blast Ultimate.

Do note, that blast skills 1,2 and the ultimate usually have transitional elements too (Ex: 必殺技２－３段目), so if there’s something you’re looking to replace inside here and don’t find it on the standard elements, checking the transitional ones might give you what you need!

Buff Data:

• Buff data contains most of the stat changes you get when performing moves, and more often than not, Blast Fortes.

• Inside these files you can have elements that each have their own key and buff list. You can add any buffs you want to this list (but they might have to cooperate with the Combatives data if they’re giving issues).

• If a key has “SD” in their name, that means it’s a stat-based forte. If you try to give stats when using a forte or a move without “SD” applied to the name, they will not work.
• Inside these Buff_Common files, you can actually tweak what each of the buffs do, and create your own buff data.

• Your average damage based buff uses these 2 parameters:

• And your average Ki based buff uses these parameters:

• You can mess around and make your own buffs with this, so have fun!

Sound / Subtitle Issues:

• If you’ve tweaked with all of the data mentioned up until now, chances are, when testing, you’ll come across issues such as subtitles incorrectly displaying text (TR_####_####), sound effects not working, or voice lines not working.
• While some of these issues are still being figured out, an easy solution for some of these problems is to change your Sound Data to that of the character that has the missing lines / moves:

• This won’t completely solve the problem, and if you’re using moves from multiple different characters, you can’t have SFX and voice lines for ALL of your moves, but until a more reliable solution is found, this is the easiest solution to that problem.
• Do not mess with the data inside the CharacterSound files!! It will crash your game and generally will just not work.

Step 11: Packaging

• Once you’ve got your mod fully setup, make sure to have all of your CharacterData assets easily accessible.

• Now, right click inside your mod’s content folder, and head over to “Miscellaneous > Data Asset”

• After pressing on Data Asset, search for “PDA_DynamicDA” and select it.

• You’re going to want to put all the CharacterDatas, ItemDatas and MapData you have inside this Data Asset:

• MAKE SURE to set any new character’s PtrRecords key to “S_Original character ID_Random text/numbers”, this should mostly prevent subtitle and audio issues from occurring.
• If you’re setting up any costumes on the CostumeData section, make sure to have the keys follow the S_Key format (or just the regular key format if adding costumes to an existing character), like this:

• Lastly, if you’re setting up ItemDatas (for your costumes or accessories), also make sure both the file names and the keys follow the S_Key format:

• Once this is done, you can now open Alpakit, select your mod, click “Alpakit!” (or tick multiple mods and select Alpakit Selected) and it’ll start packaging!