Welcome to the Damned Workshop guide!

This guide is a huge work in progress. Currently, it has everything you need to get you up and running.

In this guide, you will learn the following:

• What the Damned Workshop is.
  
• Why it was created.
  
• How to install the Damned Workshop.
  
• What you can do with the workshop.
  
• How you can participate in the devs public test patch.
  
• How to properly add in new stages into your Damned game.
  
• How to properly package your stages so you can share them with the community. This includes the following:
  
  • Having the game properly use a loading screen for your stage
    
  • Having the game properly use a button image for your stage in the lobby
• How to properly share your new stage with the community
  
• How to browse the community map repository and install the new stages in just a few clicks.

Without further ado, let's get right into the Damned Workshop!

Picture of the Damned Workshop taken on August 27th, 2019 that has a valid Damned directory set. You will learn how to do this later. It is very easy.

The Damned workshop is an open source program written in C# using Microsofts .NET framework and winform for the GUI. The goal of the program is to act as the official Steam Workshop for Damned.

I love Damned a lot. One of the things that I have always felt like was missing was community content. With that being said, it is time for the next section.

Normally, It is pretty difficult to install a new stage into the game. It requires a lot of different steps and it is a tedious process. Even if you know what you are doing, there is a good chance that you will mess it up and it can be a waste of time when you are trying to figure out what you did wrong.

I wanted to remove that barrier so people can easily play custom content. Before I have written this tool, I used to see people share their stages by simply overwriting one of the original stages in the game with their own stage file. That is unacceptable to me. It is a very terrible solution to this problem.

The right solution was to have a tool that would automatically sort all the stages in the game and properly index them. This means that new stages can actually be new stages and have their own unique identity within the game.

Talking about all of the features here would take a lot more text. So below I will put a bullet point list. You can also see this list on the programs Github. The list of features are:

• Easily backup your game. Required if using the public test patch.
  
  
• Upgrade to the public test patch and downgrade to the retail game with ease. This is very useful to those who want to help use test our changes.
  
  
  • Public test patch files are found and removed when downgrading so they will not mess up your copy of the retail version of the game.
  
  
• Easily install brand NEW (not overwrite) stages into the game after you select all the stage related files.
  
  
  • The tool runs all sorts of checks to make sure that the game can properly render your new images for your stage.
  
  
• Easily remove a stage from the game.
  
  
• Easily set up a zip archive that can be shared to other people who will use the Damned Workshop to install your stage into the game
  
  
• Easily install other peoples stages that are in a zip archive created by Damned Workshop in just a few clicks.
  
  
• Browse a repository where people can automatically upload their stages to through a Discord bot that sits in the uploaded-maps channel.

Before you can use the Damned Workshop, you have to download and install it. Depending on what version of Windows you are on, you may have to take some additional steps.

The good thing about all of this is that you only have to do this once.

The first thing that we should do is install a font. This is the same font that the Damned uses. My program has been designed with this font in mind so if you were to not install the font before using the Damned Workshop, the text may not appear correctly.

Go to your Damned directory and look for a file called RomFatal.TTF. The file is located in ./DamnedData/GUI within your game directory.




When you find the file, double click on the file. You will see a new window pop up:




In the top left hand corner of the window, you will see a button labeled "Install". Go ahead and click on that.



The font should now be installed. Next, you need to download the Damned Workshop executable that is linked below:

Damned Workshop Download[github.com]

After you download the executable, make a folder anywhere on your PC and put the downloaded executable in there.

Next, download this DLL file. It is required. Put this DLL file in the same directory as the executable that you downloaded in the previous step.


DLL Download LInk[github.com]

Your workshop directory should now look like this:


Last but not least, download this zip file:

DamnedData Zip File[github.com]

Inside the .zip file, you will see a bunch of images. Take these images and put them in the GUI directory within your Damned directory.

Once you do so, your GUI directory should look something like this:



Note the red square in the image. Those are our new files that you just put in the GUI directory. This is what we want.

If you are on Windows 10, you don't need to do anything else at this point.

If you are on an older version of Windows (Windows 7, 8, etc), you will need to install the .NET framework. You can find the .NET framework at the link below:

.NET Framework Download Link[dotnet.microsoft.com]

Run the installer. Once that is done, you are now ready to start using the Damned Workshop.

In the next section, you will learn how to set up the Damned Workshop itself so you can start taking advantage of all the benefits it brings.

Now that you have successfully downloaded and installed the Damned Workshop on your PC, it is time to set up the workshop itself. This is a one time setup. The program is smart enough to remember your user settings.

Before we can set up the Damned Workshop, you need to open it. When you open the workshop for the first time, you should see this:


By default, the program will look for Damned at the location C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Damned

If you have Damned installed in this directory, click on the Check button. You should see this:


Notice how the buttons an the left are now white. That means that they are clickable which means that you are ready to actually start using the Damned Workshop. You can skip the rest of this section if you want to.

If you do not have Damned installed in that directory, you will see this instead:


If you see the path turn red like in this picture, then that means you will need manually set the location to your Damned folder. To do that, click on the Select Damned Directory button:




You will see this window pop up:




At this point, you will need to browse for your Damned directory. You must select the root directory for Damned. After you select a folder that you believe is a valid Damned directory, click on Ok:



You will be brought back to the main window. Notice how the text is now white like in this picture:


You are now ready to click on the Check button.

If the path turns orange, it is good. If it is red, repeat the previous steps until you select the correct Damned directory.

Now that you have selected a valid Damned directory, it is time to create your backup!

Now that you have downloaded, installed, and set up the Damned Workshop, you are now ready to create your Damned backup. You will only have to do this once.

You may be wondering, "Why not just redownload the game from Steam?". There are a couple reasons:

• It is slower than simply restoring the backed-up game locally.
  
• In the previous section, you took images from a .zip file and moved them into the GUI directory. Now those images are gone and you will need to do that again.

Without further ado, let's get our game backed up:

First, open the workshop. Next, click on Patching Tools.



You will see this window pop up:



Click on Select Backup Folder...



You will see this window pop up:



Remember how you did something similar in the previous section? This works the same way.

Once you have selected a folder, you should see something like this:



You are now ready to backup your game! Go ahead and click on Backup and Check...



You should see something like this:



If you see something like this, you are all set. You are ready to use the workshop to its full potential.

From this point on, you can skip around in this guide if you want. Each section will only focus on one task in the workshop. You can always come back to this guide if you forget how to do something or need to reference something.

Have fun!

Please read the paragraph below before reading the rest of this section.

If you at any point you click on the Modify Stages button, you should not join public lobbies unless everyone else has the same stages installed as you. To be able to play with random people again, simply restore your backup in the Patching Tools window. If you are not sure how to do this, read the Restoring your Damned backup section before modifying the games stages.

Open up the workshop and then click on Browse Community Stages...



You should see this window pop up:



Click on Refresh All:



As of this writing, it looks like this. This is subject to change as more people create stages and share them with the community.



It should be self explanatory at this point.

When you have selected the stages that you want to add or remove into the game, click on Modify Stages.



Modify stages does the following:

• If the stage is already installed in the game, it will remove it.
  
• If the stage is not already installed in the game, it will install it.

If everything is successful, you should see this:



Notice how in this example, I added the new stages into the game and the stage listing on the left there is marked as orange. The column Installed is now Yes.

If I were to select everything again and click on Modify Stages, it will remove the stages from the game instead and the text will turn white and the column Install would say No

Final Result?




It's that easy to install and remove custom stages from the game.

The ability to restore your backup easily is very important. If you think you have messed up anything for any reason, you should read this section so you can revert your Damned game back to a clean slate.

First, open the Damned Workshop if you have not already. Next, click on Patching Tools:




All you have to do is click on Restore:



Depending on how many changes you have made to your game since the backup you have created, it may take a few seconds or more.

When it is done restoring your backup, you should see this:



You have successfully restored your backup!