More information on modding possibilities?

[LunaticPandora]

I was just wondering if any of the technical / programming devs would be able to shed a bit more light on what kind of options there will be for modding and how much of the game data they are hoping to externalise, e.g. similiar to infinity engine games, restricted to just ai scripts and conversations, full control over everything. Also any information on whether they plan to release some of their in house tools would be great.

 

I know there has been confirmation that modding will be supported and some speculation as to what form this may take, but as someone who often enjoys making mods more than playing the actual game I would love to know what I can expect when I get the game.

 

As an aside I fully appreciate that modding is not exactly a priority for the team, but even just a post which says we havent really considered it too deeply would be something.

[BAdler]

I was just wondering if any of the technical / programming devs would be able to shed a bit more light on what kind of options there will be for modding and how much of the game data they are hoping to externalise, e.g. similiar to infinity engine games, restricted to just ai scripts and conversations, full control over everything. Also any information on whether they plan to release some of their in house tools would be great.

 

I know there has been confirmation that modding will be supported and some speculation as to what form this may take, but as someone who often enjoys making mods more than playing the actual game I would love to know what I can expect when I get the game.

 

As an aside I fully appreciate that modding is not exactly a priority for the team, but even just a post which says we havent really considered it too deeply would be something.

Modding is definitely something that we are considering, but there would need to be some technical hurdles that we would have to solve first. Maybe we can do an update about it in the future.

[Sensuki]

Yeah Unity hasn't even been reverse engineered yet.

You'd be able to store ini files and 'override' files outside of the unity file structure, but I read that your area files will be using Unity compression, which likely means that no new areas will be able to be added, unless you guys provide the modding community with a method of doing it.

[IndiraLightfoot]

M&M X Legacy beat their chests about coming with a toolset and all, but then when they released it, it was actually Unity for like 1,000 dollars, and their tools imported into that program. I mean, the NWN2 toolset was included for real with the game when you bought it, thank God. If there ever will be PE-modding down the road, please make it more accessible, or at least not that expensive.

[Messier-31]

Game isn't out yet and people want to mod it already? Nice, some of it could be interesting.

[Sensuki]

Modding is definitely something that we are considering, but there would need to be some technical hurdles that we would have to solve first. Maybe we can do an update about it in the future.

If you do end up doing an update on modding please don't be afraid to go into the technical jargon about the obstacles / features required for modding. This will be easier as the modding community (which doesn't encompass me) can directly interact with you and give you better feedback.

 

I quote SCO from RPGCodex

 

To have a modding community that is not all incompatible 'megamods' you have to organize the game data (rules definitions, dialogs, items, spells, gui etc) into formats that can be 'patched' without replacing the whole files. You also have to do this for scripts, which is harder for complex compiled languages, since their decompilers are usually a load of crap - compilers discard function, variable names, etc - so if PE wants to support modding they better provide their original script files (like bloodlines did).

But this is not enough! They also need to enforce a standard for distinct mods to hook up to the engine without overwriting the script files (code is also data after all). This requires a hookup mechanism and a tool to append mod code to the main files. It would also be nice to have a tool like mlox from the beginning for mods that are irreconcilable. Oh and the script compiler of course, but since they're using a opensource language that is already available i guess.

 

Probably nothing of this will be delivered.

[Luridis]

Unity is, by default, not desinged to run uncompiled scripts. However, several plugin vendors have made run-time script parsers available for Unity for everything from Lua to F#. Obsidian would need to acquire one of these and then give us the details of what globals there are to modify and what they do, etc. Hopefully that would/will be setup as some sort of Object/Struct heiarchy instead of a huge flat list of global game vars ala Elder Scrolls.

 

As far as assets are concerned, the community could easily use UnityFree to create things like areas, triggers, NPCs, etc. However, Obsidian would need to setup a dynamic load & parse for that with heavy duty exception handling to prevent engine crashes created by buggy mods. Because, even if they shipped the uncompiled project to modders, and they won't do this, we still couldn't compile our mods in without Unity Pro. Additionally, the areas are 2D backdrops created from 3D tilesets that were rendered, and then captured as an image. Unity definitely doesn't have a built in tool for that so, Obsidian would need to make a for-community version of the tool and provide it to us. That is, assuming they're not just using Blender and a few plugins. (I'm not an art guy, so I dunno how or what handles the tilesets they showed.)

 

I'll have a look at the game files during the beta and see how things look. But, I won't make any attempts to reverse-engineer or uncompile anything unless Obsidian says that is okay to do. But, at this point we just have to wait and see on the whole modding subject, it's entirely possible they've got plans for the Steam Workshop, etc.