So… why are YOU not joining our club of (future) modders?
Honestly. I would like to understand what are the actual obstacles keeping you away from modding - or (more positive) - what would you like to see, to get your hands dirty?
Maybe we (the community) can work on removing one or the other hurdle… if it is not directly link to the current state of the game. From my point of view we have some quite helpful guys / girls around here. I would be astonished if we cannot move this whole community-modding-thing to the next level .
I am convinced that there might be no better time to start digging into the dark corners of the game than right now. With time there will be more guidance, but also a bit more complexity with each feature implemented into Stonehearth.
It is the first alpha release. There is no modding support, all modding has to be done in the core files, meaning all progress will be wiped out when the next update goes online. This will (?) change soon with the new version and mixintos.
Besides that, there is very little content so far, and it is unclear if the most logical directions in which a mod could go will be added to the core game. I.e. if it is worth it to do the work of adding an apple/cherry/peach tree if they will be added later anyway. The same goes for new classes, professions, items etc.
Absolutely wrong. If there was no modding support, the game wouldn’t even exist. Stonehearth itself is a mod, and it’s possible to create mods without messing around in the core files. I’ve done plenty of stuff with RP and not a single core file was “touched”.
My main problem is the fact that the only thing I’ve really got is going to be rendered a useless husk in a matter of days. I’ve got the bare basics of what could be useful something done but it is completely useless without the ability to save data in some form. The problem is that io is getting removed in the next update and we can’t (or at least I can’t figure out how to) save data, once we get that and I get it working it could be developed.
The whole lack of features to use is kind of a limiting factor too, the inability to run qubicle doesn’t help. All the free alternatives are inferior even if they can do the exports.
I can definitely see why the inchoate state of the game excites some modders, but
I think it’s so early in the development that you almost couldn’t even call it modding.
I mean, a typical mod takes the core of a game and extends it in some (hopefully, fun)
way. But there isn’t enough of a core yet to really extend anything. At this point, modding
Stonehearth look a lot more like game development than game modding.
The other big thing is that there’s no audience yet. A modder’s reward (typically) comes
in the form of audience appreciation. Small audience, small reward.
But if the game turns out to be fun, and especially if it becomes a hit, it’ll have a giant
modding community that’s for sure.
Agree with this one for sure @EisenengeI. Hopefully the next Patch will help us here. Apart from that there is still the option to go with “RP”.
I also see that there are not so many features yet in the game. However, for me this is more an “advantage”, no? As mentioned in the initial post… less features means less complexity and an easier start.
For sure the “small” audience is also a good point @mscottveach. What I try to “solve” here is the chicken and egg problem. I guess that all kind of content will help the game / community to grow. The devs are doing their part and I hope we can also contribute to it.
my excuse is a bit… pathetic… my machine is only just able to run SH (well, thats not true… the game runs fine, its the loading that takes some time)…
my past experience with modding reminds me of constantly tweaking one value here, one value there, and then loading the game to test/confirm… there is a lot of back and forth between coding tools and the game proper…
that would equate to a ton of down time… once i have a respectable rig in place, i am confident i’ll get to work on a few of my ideas…
If io is going away without replacement functions I have a few tricks up my sleeves that I am somewhat certain will continue to work. RP will definitely have some sort of file API - either based on the official API (if necessary) or some self-made io replacement.
rp_test_world - you can configure the size you want. By setting the size to 5, you get the normal map generator again - setting it to something smaller (like… 2, 3) you get faster loading times but a smaller map. Seeing as this isn’t too much of an issue right now as there’s not that much to do, it’s a good deal I think.
I don’t have money for this and I still need to learn to code better. I expect to do this before release, as I am taking a comp-sci course this and next semester and I will mess with lua over the summer.
During Kickstarter I started modelling some dwarves and dwarven stuff for my Dwarven Kingdom mod. (Not sure if anyone has seen/remembers it lol) however when the Dwarves’ Stretch goal came up (and we reached it) I kind of left it behind.
A few months later I thought about creating a norse-inspired mod, but the brilliant work on Norsehearth kind of changed my mind.
However I do love norse culture and mythology and really wanted to come up with something like that. So recently I decided that I’d create my own culture and mythology heavily inspired on norse mythology (something like The Banner Saga did) and that’s what I’ve been doing - fleshing out the world, myths, gods, legends and stuff like that
I might announce it someday, when I’m happy enough with it - shouldn’t be too far away tho… I’ve been really busy but soon I will have more spare time
The name for now is Skjöldrgarðr, it’s a simplification based on old norse that would mean * “the shield enclosure” * for in the lore I’m creating the world lies upon the raised shield of Dróttningflagð, the queen of the giants, who is kneeled on the endless sea of blood where the Ormr, the serpents, are waiting for the day when the sea will raise so much that they’ll be able to eat the world.
I’ll probably play around with mods later on, after a proper release version. But for right now it’s a lot of adding things that will probably be added throughout normal development anyways. Things that would be rendered useless or broken. And a bunch of tools that are very much in flux. So much in flux that given right now, the majority of the toolset/process would need to be relearned upon new features and functionality being worked into the official game. Not to mention, after an official release version, things will be properly documented, rather than a ton of guess and patchwork to make something happen.
So yea, in short, there is far too much in flux right now to make it worthwhile.
There are free alternatives to Qubicle, unfortunately they are pretty uniformly worse to model in and not as useful. They exist though, for example Zoxel is fairly pitiful in comparison but supports .qb and .obj exports so it’s mostly the same output with a bit more effort.
Well, there are a few reasons why I am not doing any digging around through the code right now.
FIRSTLY, I have little to no know-how in terms of actually implementing the things that I’d like to see. I know how to write code, but have no idea how to do graphics or call other codes within another code or anything like that. Basically, I can build some stuff, but I couldn’t tell you how to use it.
SECONDLY, I can never seem to get anything to work. I’m not sure if it’s just me or if it’s my computer or what, but that just seems to happen quite a bit.
FINALLY, as @Newf said, I’m really just too lazy to figure out how to fix these problems. Besides, I’d rather be enjoying a game than be worrying about whether or not my mod is going to crash the game/cause massive crashes/other people enjoy it/etc.
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