[modding] Mod works perfectly fine in UE, half-wrong in actual game

[DrKoin]

So basically, I have no idea why there isn’t a modding forum or if there is an unofficial modding forum or reddit out there. So I guess I’m stuck with asking here?

I’m in the process of swapping out creatures models. Think arachnophobia / ophidophobia.
Models are working fine, behaving fine.
I also created a few material instances to vary colors ( and have a sign that you’re not attacking, say, a scorpion, but a modded spider ). Let’s say I create an instance of the base material and tint it in blue.

Issue is, while everything works perfectly fine during test play inside Unreal Engine, I find myself with a scorpion with no textures but an overall blue tint. No diffuse, spec, or normals in the actual game.
Likewise, while the small Spiders converted to Scorpions work ( animations, behaviour, patterns, etc, with the exception of aforementionned material ), the Boss Spider converted to Boss Scorpion doesn’t work in game : no animation, no attacks, no nothing, despite working perfectly fine during testing in Unreal Engine.

Any insight ? Cooking reports no errors.

My question is probably vague, but I guess I’m fishing for potential help, or even a link to some more dedicated place to ask. =)

[Phnx]

Hey. I’ve had that happen too. For example I modified the parent material for human NPCs and it would work fine in the DevKit but wouldn’t work in the game. What I did to work around that was create a new parent material and redirect the NPCs’ skin material to the new parent, that way it worked in-game. I hope that helps.

[DrKoin]

Ah, either it didn’t do the trick or I did it wrong

But I feel there must be some truth to it. I’m suspecting it’s more because of the textures, though. Somehow, they don’t seem to load at all, while the tint from the material instance still apply. I’ll try to dupe the texture and include it in the mod… Though it would be less than ideal for the filesize.

edit: Yup, including textures work.
And the file goes from 5mb to 50 with only 3 out of the … huh… way more textures needed.
It won’t do… How can I force the game to load textures it already includes ?