Easy Mode difficult

Modding Current Mods
23

I once thought about creating a new mode. Not crazy in difficult but in the mechanics. Like, you chop a tree and it drops an entling, or you mine some rocks and the stonelings appear. Or your town receives some trojan horses, or spies that summon enemies inside the town. Things like that.

A traditional increase of difficult (like an extra hard more) is something that I really don’t know how to do. Coding it is ok, but I would not know how to balance it, or make it interesting besides just spawning more and stronger enemies.

3 Likes
24

“Crash To Desktop”

this would be amazing! i’ve often hoped that mechanics like this would be added to the base game, where if you chopped down to many trees or mined to much stone within a certain amount of time entlings/stonelings would spawn. (i know there’s the ent encounter for deforestation, but that’s only if you chop a crazy amount of trees)

3 Likes
25

Sorry, acronym crazy there. 8BitCrab is correct, the game crashes to desktop. Here’s a link to my save file zipped up.

The other mods I was using besides easy mode are: better stockpiles (adore this!), du_tracker, settlement decor, stonehearth expanded & terrain colors.

Let me know if it’s something I borked somehow, you’re fantastic and love your work!!

1 Like
26

Uhm… it loaded fine for me. Except 17 errors from the mods that I did not have. (I will try activating what I have here to see if any incompatibilities rise) Edit: I tested with du_tracker and better_stockpiles, it is ok with them.

Can you try loading your game each time with one less mod? Maybe it is one of them that are giving problems?

1 Like
27

@BrunoSupremo

I tried this out last night, my first mod on this game. I liked it… Congrats on it!

But… I was wondering, and bear with me please… I would like to make an adjustment to it, but I have not coded in about 20 years (took c++ and some other probably extinct languages then), and while I was good at it, to say I am rusty would be overly generous, but I would like to get back into coding type stuff for possibly my next phase (I retire next year)

To that end, a couple links on the language and how a old fart like me can open and edit the mod, to mod the mod would be really awesome. :slight_smile: What I was thinking of changing (the first tweak, at least) is see about making the easier mobs more frequent. I would like to have my footmen actually level up. :slight_smile: I like battles, I just like the slower pace easy provides, but it does not have to be that slow, imo.

I think this would be a good way to get my toes wet and ease the learning curve as well as have a lot of fun, which I am having with Stonehearth, though my housework is being neglected, LOL. I could google the file extention and figure it out, probably… But a bit of tips from the author of the mod would be helpful, if you don’t mind.

B-

28

The .smod extension that you see in the mods are nothing more than a .zip renamed. So you can rename ti to .zip and extract all the contents.

The entire mod language (in this case) is .json only, a language that is like html, you only mark stuff, no scripts or logic programming. The game is looking for specific keys in there, that’s how it works.
Although this mod is not easy to understand for someone just starting with modding stonehearth and .json files. Easier mods (from code perspective) are those that simple add objects into the game.

For what you want, you can modify the file at:
data/game_mode/easy/easy.json

The line:

   "encounter_tuning_overrides": {
      "default": {
         "generator_delay_modifier": 1.5
      },

Has the value of how much delay is applied to the encounters. 1 is the default, 0.5 would be twice fast (half time), and my 1.5 is 50% more delay, 2 would be twice slower, etc… Just math.

Hope it helped you :slight_smile:

1 Like
29

So all I have to do is rename the mod file as something.zip then unzip it.
Then find “data/game…easy.json” and open it ( the internet says notepad
will do it, and it is probably on my home computer, but do you have a
recommendation of something free that, from your experience, makes a
difference? )

After I open it, and make the change I want, then Save it as the same name
with same extension, I’d have to re-zip the folder again? Like with 7zip?
It has been a while since I had to zip any files, and unzipping them is
just a right click away these days… Is there a zip utility you recommend
more than that? I don’t even have that on my computer at the moment, afaik.
:stuck_out_tongue:

So once I rezip it, and rename the extension .smod, and it should work?

I appreciate you letting me pick your brain, you taking a few minutes saves
me hours. I DID look for a tutorial on this, but the one thread in the
forum referring to tutorials about working on mods was a few years old, had
no tutorials and the thread was closed. :confused:

30

Any text editor will do, as the file is pure text. But those for programmers are better, like notepad++ or sublime, both very good editors.

Not necessary, the game recognizes folders as mods too. You can zip it again and rename the zip to .smod, but we just do that for easier sharing and to avoid users damaging the mod by accident while messing with the files inside.

There is not much tutorials (if any). What we have are simple mod “models”, that we can look to see how it works, basically what you are already doing, but doing simpler things. Startermod_basic updated with weapons, armor, lights, and particles

1 Like
31

Thank you, I feel I can not only do what I want to, to play tonight with
it, but also have more to go on! I was watching EllogeyenGames
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpAVyUI2UdbtWW6arM644Dg on youtube, an
old video on modding, it looks cool, but a lot of steps I need to cover
before I can get to where he is, :stuck_out_tongue:

Excited to get home and play with this. Both the editing of the mod and the
game. :smiley:

32

Hi @BrunoSupremo, I wonder is this mod compatible to A21?

33

Yes it is (from what I just tested). I’m going to update the first post to reflect that.

3 Likes
34

Hi was wondering if this mod is compatible with A22? I tried a new game and felt like i was playing on hard mode. Five footmen nearly all got killed trying to kill 3 goblins. Goblins also multiplying rapidly.

35

The only thing this mod does is add a buff to the mobs that makes them weak, but only if you selected the easy difficult when starting a new game.

I tested a new game, and my 7 starter guys defeated 2 warrior goblins without any footman in the team, just workers. (But everyone ended really hurt, obviously)

To make sure you are playing on easy mode, select an enemy and at the bottom left of the screen, check if he has a debuff applied by the mod.

36

Thank you for the reply. I did put it on easy mode but ill try again and thank you for all your hard work it’s amazing. I’ve been playing new archipelage all day. It’s awsome.

37

I was talking about the game needing this earlier today. Nice! I just recently started playing the game and normal was kicking my butt. I got the hang of it now, but this is definitely useful for new players. :slight_smile:

38

Necro-ing what might be an old thread here to say this, but i hope you don’t mind if i tweak your mod a bit for personal use. basically, my situation is that I’m playing on a crappy pc that lags terribly after i get about 18 hearthlings, so i have to keep my population small, and i like that this makes enemy raids easier and less frequent, which is good for me, but the military strength requirement is doubled which means i cant get to the tougher enemies even though i could get them to spawn when playing on normal. so what I’m doing (again, for personal use, no plans to redistribute it) is changing the military strength requirement to be a bit lower than it normally is so that i can get decently challenging combat for my tiny villages. Just thought I’d let you know, cause it’s your code and i didn’t see any licensing or anything explicitly saying that i couldn’t, but there wasn’t any that said i could either. Also, great mod. thanks for making it.

1 Like
39

That is actually a good point, when I need to update the mod again (for compatibilities) I will take this into account.
About modding the mod (lol) go on, no problems. It is even encouraged, that is how most of us started modding too.

1 Like
40

patch_notes_button Mod Updated

Download:
Through Steam Workshop, or at the first post. :up:

Changes:

Added compatibility for the Tower Defense mod (so there is no need to remove this one when playing that one)
Added to this mod page the link for the Steam version. Last update I did on this there was no workshop yet.

1 Like