Getting your skins into the game -- Sting Ray

This tutorial is to help you modify the skins and textures in the game Heavy Metal FAKK2. Don't be intimidated by the amount of information here. This tutorial is written so that even the most green newbie can modify the skins and textures in the game. Hence, even simple tasks will be explained. If you are a computer guru, just breeze through this file till you read the next point that interests you. There will be a few things that you'll need in order to modify the skins. First you'll need to do a full game install. Second you'll need a program that can edit Targa files (pictures with the .tga extension). Any $20 graphic editing program such as Photo Shop will do. Finally you need three programs, two of which you will find here: FTX-TGA converter, TGA-FTX converter (both in the FTX Converter file) and WinZip.You can get WinZip here.

This tutorial will assume you installed the game in the default directory.

Go to the C:\Program Files\Ritual Entertainment\Heavy Metal - FAKK2\fakk directory. For the newbies, click the My Computer icon, then click the C: icon, followed by the Program Files folder, Ritual Entertainment folder, Heavy Metal - FAKK2 folder, and finally the fakk folder. You should see the files we are interested in. The three files are "pak0.pk3", "pak1.pk3", and "pak2.pk3". These are zip files. You'll need to unzip these files in order to get to the skins. I suggest you create a temp folder to house all this info you'll be unzipping. Just go to your C: drive icon, click the file tab at the top of the window click new and then click folder. Type the word temp when the new folder appears and you'll be ready. For this tutorial, we'll only unzip the pak0.pk3 file. Double click the pak0.pk3 icon just like you want to run the program. Windows will come up with a screen asking you which program you'd like to open it with. Choose WinZip32 or whatever decompression program you're using. Go get yourself a beer or two (Soda may be substituted). When you're about halfway done with your second beer the file will be unzipped. The file you should get is a pak0 folder. Move this folder to the temp directory you created. You should know that the files we are looking for have a .ftx extension. For this example we are interested in the julie1_skin2.ftx file. This file is located in the C:\temp\pak0\models\players\newjulie directory. For the newbies, just click your pak0 folder, models folder, players folder, and finnaly the newjulie folder. Find the julie1_skin2.ftx file. If you click the view tab at the top of the screen and arrange the icons by type, all the ftx files will appear at the top. COPY this file to your FTX to TGA folder. Run the converter and you'll have a targa picture of Julie's lower torso. This is the skin Julie wears when she first goes below the city.

Open your favorite graphic editing program and edit the skin. Keep it simple at first. Try writing your name across her butt. Save the skin in 32-BIT format. Now move your skin to the TGA to FTX folder. Run the converter and you should have a ftx file again. You need to build a mock duplicate folder just like the pak0 folder... just without all those files. First create a folder and call it user1. Then inside that folder create a folder called models, then inside that one, players, and that one newjulie. Place you modified julie1_skin2.ftx file in the newjulie folder that you created. Go back and right click on the user1 folder that you created. Choose add to zip. When zipping this file, make sure you change the .zip extension to .pk3 before you start the compression prossess. Now place this file in the folder that you got the original pak0.pk3 file in; C:\Program Files\Ritual Entertainment\Heavy Metal - FAKK2\fakk.

Now play the game till you go under the city where her blue suit getts ripped and you will see your name across Julie's butt in all it's glory.

If the instructions don't work for you, try re-reading them. You missed a vital point somewhere. This tutorial would have been delayed had it not been for FAKK2dude. Thanks to him for his help. Visit my FAKK2 skin site for skins and textures.

Sample Julie skin

If you wish to mirror this tutorial, contact Sting Ray