Export, edit and Import textures on example of COTW (for Generation Zero there is all the same pipeline)

• Preparations

Before of starting go to your Steam games library. Right click on theHunter:COTW and choose "Properties". Press "SET LAUNCH OPTIONS" and past in it:

--vfs-fs dropzone --vfs-archive patch_win64 --vfs-archive archives_win64 --vfs-archive dlc_win64 --vfs-fs

And press Ok.

This is for the game for being able to load mods files without of changing original game archives.

Now in the same Properties window choose "LOCAL FILES" tab on top of it and click "BROWSE LOCAL FILES" to open game root folder. Create here "dropzone" folder.

This is the folder where you should paste any of your mods and where from the game will load up your mods and that's why it's required to change Launch options.

• Actual Modding

Find in DECA any texture that you want to edit. For this example, it will be particular region of Layton Lake reserve map in maximum zoom.

So in DECA go to "textures\ui\map_reserve_1\zoom3" and double click on "106.ddsc"

Press "PREP MOD" and it will create "mod" folder where your "project.json" file is.

Go there in "\mod\textures\ui\map_reserve_1\zoom3" and here you'll see two files with DDS and PNG extensions. PNG is enough if texture doesn't have transparency. Otherwise, you need to use DDS file.

• For being able to open DDS file in Photoshop you need to install "Intel® Texture Works Plugin for Photoshop"
• or you can use GIMP which doesn't need any plugins. Note that Photoshop can't open this kind of DDS with NVIDIA DDS plugin.

If after opening DDS in Photoshop it showing you "Load Options" and you can see here "This File contains Tranparency", than you should check box near "Load Transparency as Alpha channel".

But in case of map textures, original file doesn't have Alpha channel, so just press Ok.

Edit it as you wish.

After you done, save it and replace original DDS file and make sure that in "Save as type" you see "Intel® Texture Works (.DDS;.DDS)"

Once it's asked you options for saving this as DDS, in general, if image doesn't have Alpha channel, you should choose "Texture Type - Color" and "Compression - BC1...". If image have Alpha channel, than "Texture Type - Color + Alpha" and "Compression - BC3...". But depend on exact files, it might also need other compression types. So in case of map texture, it will be just "Color" and "BC1".

After that, in "\hp\mod\textures\ui\map_reserve_1\zoom3" you should see this

Go back to DECA and press "BUILD MOD".

It will create another folder where your "project.json" file is and it will named as "build".

Copy everything from inside of "build" folder (in this case it will be just one folder "textures") and paste it in "dropzone" folder.

Run the game and check if everything work as it was expected.