What tools do you think would help the modding community?

[Night Stalker]

Hello everyone,
 
I have made this thread to get an overview of what kind of bespoke tools/applications people think would help the Deadfire modding community.
 
I have made a Google Document to keep track of all requests – please feel free to add more applications or edit it.
 
Here is what I have come up with at the top of my head - some of these are infeasible in practice, but I felt it was better to be exhaustive than to prematurely remove tools that might potential help the modding scene:
 
Conversation editor:
An application that can edit or create Deadfire conversation files.

Map Editor:
A tool, or toolchain, that makes it possible to create new maps for Deadfire.

Vendor editor:
An application that makes it easy to edit existing vendors or make new vendors.

Class editor:
An application that makes it easy to edit existing (sub)classes or make new ones.

Ability/Spell editor:
An application that makes it easy to edit existing spells and abilities, or make new ones.

Item editor:
An application that makes it easy to edit existing items, or make new ones.

Quest editor:
An application that makes it easy to edit existing quests, or to make new ones.
 

Manifest editor:

A simple tool to create and maintain the manifest.json file in mods.

What tools do you think would help the modding community?

[Murp]

Definitely the first three and the quest editor, With those modding activity would increase significantly.

 

Something akin to the Shadowrun Returns editor if that is possible.

Edited July 7, 2018 by Murp

[Xaratas]

Quest and Conversation Editor, i have there something for PoE 1. It should be not that hard to update it for PoE 2.

https://github.com/Xaratas/PillarsOfEternity-Quest-Editor

[ferzal]

All of those things are required for a game to be truly moddable and have a long lifetime but, as stated, most aren't possible at this point.  Perhaps after the DLC is done it'll be made possible.  Having a game of this calibre with all of those things fully moddable would be something unique and fill a pretty large niche... maybe a room even... in the gaming community.  It all depends on Obsidian and how quickly they intend to pump out Pillars 3 but giving this game full life through modding would give them time to do a great Pillars 3 whilst keeping the series right in the spotlight.

 

With the ongoing changes it's hard to write tools or complete mods yet because I have a feeling we're nowhere close to where the end moddable state will be.

[TT1]

An item editor like those in Diablo 2 would be awesome.

 

[Penemue]

A simple map we can load with some enemies and such to easily test the changes made by mods would be cool.

[gkathellar]

I would really like a list of all UUIDs presently in the game and their current associations.

[peardox]

There are three that defo ain't do-able ATM

Maps, Quests and Vendors

 

I've requested Vendor support soon as possible

 

Maps - not a chance as they are inbuilt and use Unity3D plus you'd need a load of art so forget that one ATM - we're not a FPS

 

Quests - Adding new ones, again, unlikely though I'd live this one. You can (possibly) do something with existing ones as these are convo mods - I'll have to try that out

 

Everything else is things I have been working on for weeks but it's a very long process as I do other stuff at the same time.

[peardox]

Add to the manifest creator a thumb.png creator

 

I see some of my friends have started doing this (prob using another of our friends)

 

I'll have to update mine...

[ferzal]

There are three that defo ain't do-able ATM

 

Maps, Quests and Vendors

 

I've requested Vendor support soon as possible

 

Maps - not a chance as they are inbuilt and use Unity3D plus you'd need a load of art so forget that one ATM - we're not a FPS

 

Quests - Adding new ones, again, unlikely though I'd live this one. You can (possibly) do something with existing ones as these are convo mods - I'll have to try that out

 

Everything else is things I have been working on for weeks but it's a very long process as I do other stuff at the same time.

 

Quests and vendors don't seem too crazy.  Maps would be tricky but they don't appear to actually be 3D but 2D with 3D mapping with 3D assets in PoE2.  So essentially a map is one big scrolling 2D image with a corresponding 3D infomap (up/down ramps, stairs and boundaries etc).  Things like doors etc is a little tricky.  I could be wrong on that but that's how it appears to me.

 

It'd be a little bit of work for a digital artist and then you'd need the ability to actually do something with it and I'm not sure how keen Obsidian would be on people messing with their world to that extent and, to be honest, at this point I don't see enough interest or talent to pull something like that off.  You might as well be on Obsidian's payroll and do DLC if you can put that together.   We can always hope I guess but, in reality, a dungeon building tool with limited map options is the only thing that would make that feasible and that requires significant modding interest to even have devs consider coding such an app.

 

Then again... build it and they might come.

[peardox]

I've put a Dev req in yesterday for some do-able things that make Modding more interesting

 

1) Small icons (we can already do large ones)

2) Spawn an enemy to attack

3) Store creation

 

These are feasible and hopefully not a huge headache for the Devs

 

As to new maps - far more to it than you think

 

Yeah, a level is a big 2D image. But then it's got content that's in the levelNNNN file and unity3d files plus a load of scripting.

 

If you look at a full map - here's Port Maje - https://poe2.peardox.com/img/BKG_AR_0901_Port_Maje_Exterior.jpg (smallest I could squeeze it was 5.5M - proper is 50M) there's no trees or sea. The trees + sea plus all NPCs + enemies are tied to the level file (I think)

 

There is interest as can be found as our little (10 of us, all from here) Slack group shows (see sig). We've got two artists dying to create new images and prefabs plus a group of Modders and translators

[peardox]

Something I've been working on for a few days is maps for an internal project (I have 8G to stitch so this won't be happening soon - got 62 / 200+ done)

 

Once I finish this, yeah, creating a tool to do your MOD outline is a good concept. It's not exactly hard to write one of these (a day for finished product is do-able)

 

In a case like this I won't make any memory - type it in, get it - forgot you

 

I'll have two do a Sub system to remember (takes longer than writing the stuff)

 

Comments?

[Nudal]

Prefab editor!

[peardox]

Not currently possible

 

Ask me more in Slack

[Nudal]

Not currently possible

 

Ask me more in Slack

[ferzal]

Many things aren't currently possible but you only have to look at other Unity titles to see what can be possible and more is being made possible each patch.  How far it goes... who knows. 

 

Large icon changes are possible for  a couple of things but not for stuff like abilities (which, honestly, is essential for class modding since reusing existing icons gets confusing).  There's plenty of FX to play around with and some are fairly generic so prefab editing is not quite as high on the list just yet.  Some easily modded audio fx would be nice though.

 

A lot of the current changes are good for adding items and messing around with conversation bundles but not a whole lot has been done for combat/class modding which is where you'll get a lot of interest - especially if you can combine them all.

 

I understand there's a lot more than just an image for a map but that's the starting point.  I also said being able to do something with it is required.  Creating the image is step 1 of 100. I've been through all the unity files.  Nothing is undoable.  But it's not practical without a tool IMO.  There are more than 10 modders and I have access to a brilliant artist but I'm just fiddling at the moment because PoE2 is current slightly moddable but that's still not much of a modding community.  You can add in a little toy or a rejigged spell here and there.  That's not what serious modders will come for.  It's fun but I'm waiting to see where it goes.  Release a tool and modding could go nuts.  It's a time-risk but could pay off hugely in goodwill (something many game companies continually neglect these days to their own detriment). 

 

Bad news: this doesn't have Skyrim-sized footprint to begin with.

Good news:  This should be far easier to mod given the right access/tools.

 

I'm very curious to see where it all goes so I'm staying on top of it, working away slowly in my spare time on the basic building blocks and waiting out the DLC cycle and see what they slowly add in each patch heading towards the end state.

[NocturnalTrance]

Just wondering, is there a way to list out all the character prefabs, that'd be fun to play with when I am making a class with a summon ability. If not it would help greatly to at least have them listed, so far I am using attack game data to find the character prefabs and change it from there. Also, I agree having the abilty of adding more ability icons would be great.

[Night Stalker]

For my own amusement I have begun making a manifest maker.

 

I know it is at the bottom rung of what the modding community needs, but it's quite relaxing and I am learnig a few new things about C# MVVM.

[TKDancer]

merging tool for stringtable files unless that was adressed with removing the need of having them require the specific name and folder structure that they currently do?