Hey Dani and everyone! I think this is a great idea. I want to elaborate a bit on the logistics of it.
For context, I stepped in to be the Tech Lead for Stonehearth at the beginning of 2018, when the decision was made to move the release date to July. Since SH was the the only reason I stayed at Riot, I will be leaving the company at the end of July to work on my own tiny indie project, so I cannot commit the team to anything beyond that date. That said, I started my game dev career by investing 3 years of my life into modding Morrowind long after Bethesda stopped supporting it, so I know a thing or two about keeping a game alive beyond its official release date.
So. Here is my advice on how this can work out, and this is me mostly speaking as a modder, rather than a Stonehearth dev:
- The setup that will scale best is for you guys to assume ownership of an “unofficial patch” of sorts, rather than relying on Radiant/Riot. I know we have been quite supportive (and I hope the team continues to be so for the foreseeable future), but the reality is that at some point that support will wane and won’t be sufficient. So if you rely on the devs to merge stuff in, you’ll be handicapping yourself. Plenty of games have must-have unofficial patches that feel absolutely like part of the game, and that would be the direction I would suggest going.
- Following on the above, generally a project like this will need someone who can act as the coordinator and central hub of communication. This is a large responsibility, and the project will live or die by this person’s commitment.
- The question of skill and usefulness has come up a bunch of time. I want to emphasize that making a game is absolutely not about just coding. Artists, writers, and testers are absolutely vital, so don’t let lack of coding know-how stop you from pursuing this. When I started modding Morrowind, I was in high school and knew absolutely nothing about coding, and still managed just fine with the community’s help.
- On the point of what is and isn’t possible to mod, pretty much anything you can think of as a game feature (as opposed to an integration feature like a Linux port or Twitch support) is possible without altering the engine. For better or worse, all our game systems are written in Lua. Terrain generation, water physics, all AI actions, crafting, all of the building system, the concept of items, jobs, combat, encounters, etc., are all done purely in Lua. And since all the Lua source code ships with the game, you can always modify it or learn from it. It’s true that some API hooks will not be exposed by default, which means you’d need to use overrides, but for an “unofficial patch” sort of project, this is a lot more acceptable, as it can become the standard platform which other mods use.
- On the point of open-sourcing the C++ engine. We have certainly discussed this, and the decision not to do it is not final. However, if you look at the practical aspects, it does not provide much beyond what is possible with Lua, and while game mods (Lua/JS/etc.) are well-supported by the infrastructure including multiplayer, the Steam Workshop, and so on, distributing engine mods (C++) is a much more complex problem, and opens up all kinds of legal and security concerns (since it would involve distributing executables that can do whatever they want to your system). If you run into concrete cases of features or changes that absolutely require C++, reach out to Stephanie to continue this discussion. I think if by the time 1.1 rolls around your patch proves to be a success, that will strengthen your bargaining position immensely.
I wish you all the best of luck in this, and as a player of Stonehearth, I look forward to tasting the fruits of your labor. I will remain as active as I currently am on Discourse until the end of July, but after release I’ll switch to lurk mode. That said, I will still always be happy to answer any modding questions you might have - just DM me.
Thank you for being an amazing community! I hadn’t expected to get to experience that same joy that I had modding all those years ago, now that I do this for a living.