Question About Altana Viewer

[Whimsey]

I downloaded Altana Viewer the other day, and I have a question;

Can I download some of those pretty .dat files and put them Somewhere Else, and have access to them for making pretty pictures? If so, how do I do that?

 

[Zerayla]

If you download .dats from sites, you actually have to "replace" regular FFXI dats. This means that when you play the game, or open modelviewer you will have replaced something for the prettier .dats. You can always go back to the originals, but you would have to have made a backup of the original files before you replaced any.

Ex: If you replace the fugly Ohat with a custom made flower .dat file, anytime you load the Ohat for that specific character/sex, you will see the flower. This will show both in game an in the modelviewer.

If you want to revert back to the original Ohat at any point though, you will need to replace the file again, but this time you'll need to replace it with the original file (from the backup you should have made)

Hope that answers your question (assuming I interpreted it right)

 

[Whimsey]

I think you did, it's just not the answer I wanted to hear.

Can I have a second copy of FFXI on the computer, one for playing, and one for messing around with .dats? How do I tell Altana Viewer which copy to look at for .dats?

I don't really want to actually change any of the game files, I just want to be able to get to some of the pretties to play around with for picture-making.

 

[Zerayla]

As far as I know, the modelviewer or altana viewer both access the files located in your playonline folder. So in order for you to have altered .dats to take pictures of in those programs, you would need to replace the files in your actual FFXI folders which of course, would also mean they'd be replaced in game.

There might be a way to make a copy of of your files and have the programs access them there, but I don't know for sure. Hopefully someone else might be able to confirm that for you.