How to Install Costumes Manually (Patreon)

As you may have noticed, I've been releasing Zack Island VIP costumes individually just as raw costume data. I think most people would agree it's a bit too inconvenient to redownload the entire archive every time I release a costume, and releasing individual patches would complicate the installation process, and to be honest people struggle with it enough already.

Usually I simply wait and release a new update when I feel enough content has been added to warrant a redownload, but due to the nature of this new tier, I want to make sure people's requests are fulfilled as fast as possible, which is why I'm starting to release costume data individually. It will of course be included properly in any forthcoming update, but the option to install them individually is here for people who don't want to wait.

However, the process of installing individual costumes, while not difficult, is slightly more involved than just dragging and dropping files. One method is more complicated than the other, so for now we're just going to stick with the simple version, which uses Autolink, a tool and modding backend that comes with Gravure Studio.

Installing costumes with Autolink

Note that this works with any modded costumes, although non Gravure Studio costumes should be used with "Gravure Studio Lite". A great resource for non Gravure Studio costumes is Funnybunny's vast collection of DOAXVV costumes converted for use in DOA5.

So, to begin, first we must navigate to where I upload the individual costumes. As always, all my mod content can be found on the Mega repository.

I've created a new folder called "Early Costumes", which will include all the Zack Island VIP costumes that haven't been rolled into the latest version of Gravure Studio yet.

Here are the costumes that, as of this time, I haven't added to Gravure Studio's main branch. I'll prune them from this folder as they're added to Gravure Studio so as to not confuse people.

We'll download "HONOKA_SOFT" as an example. Once the archives is extracted, you'll see a lot of files. There's technically two costumes here as one is a Wet T-Shirt version and the other is a standard tan version.

The next thing we're going to do is move the files to where they need to go. The directory will not be the same as your drive letter and version of DOA5 (Steam or... other kinds) may be different than mine, but regardless, you should be able to find your DOA5 directory if you've already installed Gravure Paradise.

Once you've gotten to your DOA5 directory (where the game executable is located), open up the "Autolink" folder. If this is your first time, you'll need to make a folder for the name of your character, in this case "HONOKA". Next, move the files from the archive into that folder. Once you've done that, you're done with the Windows part of the installation.

The next step is in the game itself. You'll need to navigate to a character selection screen in VS or Training in order to configure your Autolink slots. Hover over a costume slot you want to use for the costume you want to add and select it (DLC slots are preferable, as default slots will not show the proper icon).

In this case, we'll use Honoka's default "Clove" costume. Hover over that costume slot and select it.

Once you've selected it, you'll notice the "DETAIL" section looks different. Rather than saying "A" or being crossed out, it says "ORIGINAL +2". This is a function added by Autolink to allow modded costumes to be selected here.

Scroll through the "DETAIL" section and you'll see the costumes we just moved into the HONOKA folder! This makes it easy to select in the VS menu for example, but what about Movies you might ask, where there isn't a "DETAIL" menu option? For that we'll have to set up a configuration, or a hotkey. You can do one of 3 things:

1. Exit out of the VS. screen and navigate to the same slot in the movies menu, and it will remember what you had selected in the VS. Screen. Autolink will forget once you've restarted the game however.

2. Hold control and press 0. This will write whatever costumes you currently have selected in each slot to a default configuration file, so that Autolink will remember when you restart. This effectively makes it permanent unless you delete the configuration file or overwrite it.

3. Hold control and press any other number key. This will do the same thing as two, but make it so that you have to press the number key to activate the slot configuration. So, for example, if I have HONOKA_SOFT in Slot 23, and I hold control and press 1, this will write a configuration to the 1 slot, so that anytime I press 1 without holding control it will set that configuration. Unless you have a LOT of costume mods, I would recommend option 2 over this option.

Regardless of which method you choose, it should achieve the same end result of allowing you to see costume mods in the slots you've selected. If you've been following along this specific tutorial, what was once a slot for Honoka's default Clove costume should now look like this in the movies menu.

And voila! You can now use this newfound knowledge to install costume mods at your own convenience!

If you found this tutorial helpful, I may end up making more to help you guys out!

Again, I will reiterate that you should use Gravure Studio LITE for non Gravure Studio costumes! I hope this tutorial has been helpful for all you newcomers to DOA5 modding. Sometimes I take it for granted that we get fresh blood in here! Thanks for reading!