Whats the easiest way to edit quests?

simple questions:
whats the easiest way to edit quests?
assuming i can use shed, but what files should i add to the manifest for instance? or is there a better way?

If you want to create your own quests, then add a “data:gm_index” alias in your manifest pointing to your gm_index.json file (like RC/NA do) and SHED will be able to recognize your new campaigns (since SHED doesn’t care about mixintos nor overrides).

Then add a mixinto to the stonehearth gm_index, so that the game starts your campaigns together with the rest:

"stonehearth:data:gm_index": "rayyas_children:data:gm_index",

SHED helps A LOT with making campaigns because it detects missing or wrong fields, shows you a dropdown with choices when you type in the json, and shows the quest tree visually better than the campaign browser, which makes editing easier.

If you need to remove SH campaigns you can use mixintypes, but be careful since that might mess with other mods if they expect them to exist.

If you want to edit existing stonehearth campaigns, you can use mixintos, but since SHED doesn’t care about them you’d need to edit the files on your own and test in the game with the campaign browser to see if they were correctly applied.

You can also create your own gm_index to edit more easily in SHED, and then use a different mixinto to replace an existing stonehearth campaign, instead of adding your own to the list of existing campaigns (or use “can_start” checks to gate it, etc).

It all depends on what you want to do but there’s always more than one way to achieve the same results.

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well i added gm_index.json to my manifest as an alias, and shed could indeed see the links, but i could not ctrl-click to where they are pointin at: the screen just stays blank. then again i point shed at my steam uploads folder and edit stuff directly there instead of movign things forth and back between the mods folder. might that be why shed ocasionally throws a wobbler?

Ah, I forgot about that.
SHED can’t read / work with 2 locations, it can only read from the mods folder that you select.
It doesn’t support the steam_uploads folder much, sadly. :disappointed_relieved:

I guess you could try working in the “mods” directory, and when your mod is ready for upload, moving it to the uploads folder. :confused:

@Relyss, just thinking cleverness here: does shed understand shortcuts? Could make one to all the original. Smod files in the steam uploads folder? (or failing that, symlink) that might make shed more steam uploads folder friendly

I don’t think it supports it, but you can give it a try :woman_shrugging:
I guess if it doesn’t like it it will say that’s not a valid mods directory (I hope at least it doesn’t crash).

Hmm I was able to select the steam_uploads folder and it could read my campaigns just fine. I think not all of the tooltips were working but I was at least able to clone one encounter (although those encounters already existed).
But I think the “Add node” option in the right click menu on the graph didn’t do anything :cry: yeah, in the “mods” directory it has a dropdown with all the encounter types. I wish someone fixed this. SHED is still missing many functionality and fixes. The most obvious one is the bad compatibility with the steam_uploads directory.

About the blank screen, do you have an application associated to open json files? I was able to ctrl+click a campaign link and it opened the file in Sublime (because I have that as default program for opening json files). Did the file pointed to have valid json or was it an empty file?

Anyway, did the node graph appear? If you prepared at least the arc file beforehand, you should be able to click the node and the json file will appear below, no need to ctrl+click.

Well the thing I’m trying to open is a modified version of the town upgrade quest, my modifications so far were done through notepad++ (the thing that opens my json) buy I was hoping shed could do more for me in that respect, I’ll let you know how my tests with shortcuts go

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I just realised I was a nob because shed requires uncompressed files anyway. So i just dumped those in my steam uploads folder. Just fyi, shortcuts don’t work, shed did see a hard symbiotic link but it doesn’t help because it can’t uncompress on the fly anyway.

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the what now? in shed or in game? (the, for lack of better words, campaign browser? the white thing with the nodes too close togeather and no zoom function so you cant read the text?)

I meant in SHED, when you click on your campaign node on the left:

ok, seriously that screen would help, so, so much :’) .
unfortunately…
i do have the GM_index in my manifest and can view it like so:

but the encounter designer looks like this:

which probably has to do with the whole point shed at steam uploads folder thing, because you dont want the unpacked files anywhere in the stonehearth folder because they turn the games load time to absolute POOP.
but you need them to use shed on the mods folder… so yeah :confused:

Do your trader_campaign.json and town_progression_campaign.json have any encounters?

its a modified copy of ascendency with different unlocked items. wanted to get this up and running before i edited text and pictures
(so yes)

Your alias is wrong. Make sure it is exactly

"data:gm_index" : "file(....)"

like in the RC mod. I changed it locally and now it shows the graph. Hope this helps.

Is that so? Wasn’t this issue caused by having many installed mods? :thinking:

not for me, unpacked files in either steam uploads or the mod folder = poop loading speads. and, lets be fair, the game sees them as huge mods ofc. testing your trick now, if this works this should MOST DEFINITELY be in some guide somewhere…

edit: @Relyss you are a genius. and YES this should be in a guide if it isnt already…

god this makes editing quests so much easier…

It will be in the guide, of course. unless someone changes SHED to accept other aliases. I haven’t gotten to that part yet.

Hmm… But all of the workshop mods are unpacked. The ones you download and the ones in steam_uploads :thinking: I’ll tell the devs that we should investigate that as part of why does it take so long to load.

To be able to use all the functionality of the encounter designer, you’ll have to have your mod in the same folder than the base mods, unfortunately. I think SHED loads some stuff from the encounter Lua files.

well it seems to work so far, then again i did copy the entire ascendency town tree including luas and all and started from there, maybe thats why its not hating on me yet. seems to work fine for re-naming and changing images and things so far.

then again i might want to at least have the en.json unpacked so i can see what the original line was. or something. gotta think something up there in the mean time. maybe just dump the unpacked stonehearth folder in while i edit the text or something.

EDIT: shed does not look kindly to people only putting a folder called stonehearth, with a manifest, and a locales folder with content in there. damn there goes my quickload-but-still-edit-lines ponzy scheme.

Option 2: copy the relative En. Json parts with the quest lines to my own, and just turn all instances of stonehearth: to nordlingmod. Edit afterwards

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Excuse me if I am misunderstanding something, but why is an alias required here? Will mixing into the gm_index file be insufficient?

probably because SHED looks for that exact name, is my guess.

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This alias is only required if you want to edit your campaigns in SHED. SHED doesn’t care about mixintos so if you just mixinto your index file (without an alias) SHED won’t show it in the Encounter designer.

And yes, it looks for that exact alias: https://github.com/stonehearth/stonehearth-editor/blob/master/StonehearthEditor/EncounterEditor/GameMasterDataManager.cs#L52

If you don’t use SHED, you don’t need the alias.

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