If that works for you, go for it, but I’d advise looking through the Lua files anyway. All those JSON files are being consumed in the Lua scripts, so rather than guessing what each JSON property does, you can see exactly what they do in Lua.
You can’t run functions quite like from the browser console with Javascript, but there is an in-game console which you can enrich with your own functions (ctrl+shift+c to open). It already comes with a very generic command that can call pretty much any Lua function in the game. I also wrote a post about how to add your own functions to it.
What variables confuse you? Some quick personal notes first:
- The ones that say stuff like
self._sv.some_variableare variables that get hard-saved to the entity (that is, they will be accessible if the game is exited and re-loaded). - Some variables are
imported, but I assume you figured those out. - Some variables are global, and are initialized at game start in client and server init lua scripts. Others are global with a nebulous source (such as the
radiantmod).
For the most part, it seems like it’s easiest to find an existing asset that does something similar to what you need, and then copy/modify it to fit your ways. If Radiant is accessing the stonehearth variable in a random file that you haven’t seen declared before, you can probably access it in your own files, too.
EDIT
Also, no, I’d say the Mods category is for completed/wip mods. Here we aren’t really talking about specific mods, but about the process of mod making.