Modding Darkstone

To mod darkstone you will likely want to change some of its files. To do this, you need to first unpack the existing MTF files (The *.MTF files in the Darkstone directory).

Once you've found the file to modify, you copy it out, modify it, and create a new MTF file with only your modified files. Please make sure you keep the same directory structure as the file was in (e.g. when modifying WCLASS.TXT, which is located in DATA/PCLASS/WCLASS.TXT, make sure it ends up under the same path in the new MTF file. You can check this with the new "list" option in the mtf tool.

the new mtf file should be called DSPxxxyyy.MTF, where xxxyyy is a number like 006, with an optional suffix, normally the name of the mod. Numbers 001 and 004 are in use by Darkstone, so I'd suggest to pick something higher. Darkstone reads these in alphabetical sequence, DSP*.MTF, and the last archive containing a specific file (like the WCLASS.TXT in the above example) will be the one used.

Breaking news!

If you unpack an MTF file in the Darkstone directory (where the Darkstone.exe is), and remove the MTF file itself, the game will use the unpacked files instead, saving you the repack step on every change! This should make it much easier to experiment with modding.

The above section is still relevant if you want to distribute your changes to other users, that are not mod-savvy.