How to make costume mods via DLC method

Disclaimer: This method requires you to modify game files with crack files. This can be applied onto legit copy, which is legal but most likely against TOS as it could be treated as DRM bypassing

I've decided to compile a simple tutorial for making DLC costume mods. This method is superior in many ways to Umod.

You will need:

• 3DM crack (steam_api.dll + 3DMGAME.ini) <- Google this one.

• Archivarius - Use this to decompile costumes from chara_initial/chara_common

• DLC tool - Use this to package completed mod into DLC package (Now updated, supports all indexes from 0 to 255).

• Texture tool - Use this to repackage textures within TMC file

• Or you can use This tool To edit existing costumes/stages.

Optionally you can get Noesis and This plugin Which will allow you to preview your modded TMC.

Workflow goes as follows:

• Use archivarius to decompile costume you want (TMC + TMCL need to be extracted) (also you need to extract one --C and --P file, though ANY will do as long as it comes from same character as you wish to edit)
• Use texture tool to extract textures from given TMC
• Edit textures using photoshop
• Important - TMC seems to have a limited space for textures, if any texture file within TMC takes more than ~6MB, the game will crash when loading a stage while using given costume. This now can be worked around by switching the costume to use TMCL for textures, so if any of your textures goes above the limit, use TMCL.
• Swap edited textures using Texture tool and save the TMC file
• Use DLC Tool to create a new DLC in DLC folder, select character, costume slot and hair, then add TMC/TMCL/C/P files
• Edit 3DMGAME.ini and find DLC section, then add new DLC line. If my DLC was named 1234567 then i need to add new line "DLC008=123456" (without quotation marks).

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Here are sample images of a costume made by this method 1 2

And Here is the example DLC costume mod.

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Other important notes:

• it's important to set costume slot in DLC tool to highest available number. If you have 31 costumes for given character, then your DLC mod has to use slot 32 or higher, otherwise the game will crash when selecting overlapping costume

• Also, There is limited amount of costume slots available for each character if DLC tool says there's no filename for given character with given costume slot, then you need to take a lower slot.

• It seems that the game currently only supports 8 Hair variants per character, Having more options than A-H will crash the game on start screen.

• Hair/Face indexes are fully interchangeable between characters.

• It's very likely that indexes 0-8 will contain hair variations available for given model and then each next one is just random stuff (0 = don't add separate hair, used when hair is provided with costume).

• Hair indexes above 100 seem to load head meshes for hair

• The --P file (costume icon) .dds texture, should be saved as 8.8.8.8 ARGB.

• Using body from other character with same body type is possible, however face swaps are not, thus as of now a moveset change seems possible but not very pretty (changing face along with body will morph swapped face to resemble that of the original character).

• This post Contains a list with hair variations available for each character (in one of the spoilers).

• In case of certain (new) DLCs, Archivarius may not be capable of detecting few/some/any costumes within DLC archive. That's because it relies on doa5LRarchivarius.dat as an index of files. This index can be (re)created using BLP converter, simply parse given DLC with BLP converter and copy entries to clipboard. Then open doa5LRarchivarius.dat using text editor (Notepad++ is a good one for this) and paste the entries at the end of it. Now previously skipped files should be listed. Alternatively you can get this .dat which contains all DLC data for archivarius (as of 10/05/2015).