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Re: Modding

#46
JoshParnell wrote:From my perspective, coding an interface would be a lot easier than integrating an interpreter, since an interpreter requires an interface to begin with, and then some. I had not considered kurush's idea that some really skilled programmers might be able to take a DLL-based modding system and use it to construct an interpreted script modding system. That would be quite cool, and could actually work...although I could see it becoming chaotic, with a hundred different types of scripts floating around based on which third-party interpreter you're using...

Still, it's a cool idea, and certainly less work for me. All good things to consider :)

I'm mostly imaging the idea of 'plugin' much the way emulators are going nowadays. The ePSXe emu had different plugins depending on the graphics driver, input, and more. I figured that if anything, since not too many people would make the 3rd party DLL interpreters, there would be a couple, and then scripts based on that. Either way, if you make the interface, you basically gave the community MUCH more than you could ever imagine.

I'm ecstatic that you actually consider this a good idea! Great going Josh! :D
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: Modding

#49
Can we prioritize stuff (mod support) in terms of how feasible it would be to implement? Time-wise and such:

Easy:
CONSTANT.TXT files
- weapon damage, armors, shields,
- starting credits, trade good price scales
- faction reputations, names
- colors (tinting with RGB 0-255)
- Text (usermade localizations anyone?)

Fairly easy:
- Make ship designs import/exportable
- Custom textures (drop in .dds overwriting stuff)
- Procedural model components (design a wing in 3ds max, export as .OBJ, put it in)
-- If you're going to use any non-procedural stuff, please do it in an easily accessible/modifiable format. Please. Reverse engineering Plug-ins bad. Yes to .OBJ, no to proprietary Autodesk/Collada/ActorX/whathaveyou formats.
- Replacing audio, HUD, etc

Medium:
- Effects (shader files? etc)

More difficult: (which I don't expect first release)
- Scripting
- AI logic
- Command extensions
- Physics
- etc

I'd really like to see the easy stuff, and most of the fairly easy stuff implemented at release at least.
Post

Re: Modding

#50
Keep in mind, the FAQ says there will most likely be no mod support.

I am going to list off the things that have already been answered first -
  • Weapon damage, armors, shields - Already planned for the game, scalable
  • Starting credits - Already planned for
  • Faction reputations, names - Already planned for
  • Ship designs exportable - Not only is this already planned, but there have been multiple threads talking about this.
  • Drop in textures - Textures will be procedural
  • HUD Customization - Already planned for
  • Audio replacing - I believe this is planned for, and there have been a couple threads on this already.
  • AI logic - This has some current ongoing discussion as well
Josh has also stated that he does a lot of the custom framework stuff himself, so more than likely if you want to be able to mod you'll have to reverse engineer quite a bit of it. As for the points that haven't been hit, feel free to bring those up in suggestions. Josh has been incredibly open to including quite a bit of this stuff so the need for modding will be much lower.

Be sure to use the search function next time, most of these could have been easily answered that way.
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.

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