Modding Craft the World

[Maianna]

Step-by-Step Instructions (Windows 7)
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To begin: Get into the main.pak. C Drive ->Program Files(x86)->Steam->SteamApps->common->CraftTheWorld. You'll find the main.pak in this folder. Copy the folder to another location so you have a backup available in case of a an accident. To access the files located within:
1) download and install WinRAR
2) right click the main.pak and click 'open with...'
3) click 'more options' and go down the list until you find WinRAR Archiver. Click it and the main.pak turns into a rar file and loses the .pak to just become 'main'.

After following these instructions double click on 'main' and go into the data folder. You'll find all the moddable files in Notepad form. Some of the instructions are in Russian unfortunately (for those who do not speak it) so I suggest using Google Translate.
I suggest actually translating the Russian into English, doing so due to curiosity revealed new options to mod.

The files I mod included:

Blocks:

<block name="iron" file="gfx\level_tiles\resources\iron" extract="15" through="false" resource="iron-3" crack="true" draw_layer="front_a1" properties="resource,iron,can_replace"/>

The part to mod is resource="iron-3". I changed the 1 to a 3 and thus get back three iron every time I break 1 iron block.

<block name="top" file="gfx\level_tiles\tile\tree_top" through="true" resource="wood-3,apple-3" crack="false" ontop="true" />

This is part of a tree: I changed resources again to increase wood and apple output.

The part that took me a while to understand goes something like this;

resource="wool-1-50"

it means you'll get 1 wool 50% of the time.

changing it to resource="wool-1-15" means you'll get wool 15% of the time.

Creatures:

<creature name="worker"> means the dwarf's.

Such changes include
<walk_speed value="110"/>
<climbs_speed value="60"/>
<climbs_ladder_speed value="70"/>
<capacity value="5"/> (warning! the more you increase this value the heavier the load becomes and the slower the dwarf walks)

Going down the list reveals all the creatures in the game. You can change resources they drop and increase the number etc. you can also change the health value 'healt value' and to have an easy game change all the 'healt values' to 1.
<healt value="1"/>

All the way down reveals the Spawn creatures (includes ghosts and fish etc), you can change spawn times etc. for example 'octopus' (known as flying octopus in the game) are territorial and will not lay nests next to one another.

Items: search for 'magic' (ctrl+f)
mportal is the magic portal available at the beginning of the game;

<item name="mportal" effect="portal" size="60" properties="magic,magic_portal,time=600,use_mana=1,radius=1,stayin" light="4">

I changed 'time' to 600 seconds (10 minutes) and mana to 1.

<item name="mlight" effect="spell_light" size="60" properties="magic,magic_light,time=600,radius=1,use_mana=1" light="5"/>

This is the magic light available at the same time as torches, I also changed it to 10 minutes and changed the mana value to 1.

World:

One change tree values!

<!-- время за которое должны подрасти все деревья на уровне -->
<!--<param name="TreesGrowthTime" value="600"/>--> (leave this line
<param name="TreesGrowthTime" value="120"/> (I changed the value here)

^ this seems to only work in the Forest World, in the Ice World there are no significant changes that I can notice.

I changed the line I told you to leave and my game crashed and kept crashing, thankfully I kept a backup and could change it back. Mistakes do happen.

<param name="HouseTotemRadius" value="50"/>

From what I can gather changing this value increases the totem radius so it protects more of your home, but I'm not 100% sure.

<param name="MaxMonoResEat" value="3"/>

Changing this value apparently makes it so the dwarves will complain about their food less (for example when a dwarf eats berries in a row they refuse to eat any more berries for a while).

<param name="NoFallHeight" value="6"/>

Apparently changing this value means dwarves won't fall from bridges as often (or so says the Russian).

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Hope this helps, if it does or you have anything to add, comment and share the knowledge.

[Draconuuse]

Hm. I need to test this out. If it works like I think it does I can self implement a lot of the balance changes I want in the game myself.

[psanni]

Good job. Well worth looking into.

[stylez]

There's also a marked decrease in game load time if you unpack main.pak in the CTW directory, and rename main.pak to something else like main.pak.backup. So your folder looks like:

CraftTheWorld\     
     _CommonRedist
     data
     Fonts
     gfx
     gfx_atlas
     Lang
     Layouts
     Levels
     sfx
     sounds
     bass.dll
     CraftWorld.exe
     CraftWorld_steam.pdb
     dbghelp.dll
     Engine.dll
     lang_en.txt
     lang_ge.txt
     lang_ru.txt
     main.pak.backup
     steam_api.dll
     version.txt

[Maianna]

I put the backup elsewhere and I don't notice much of a change, I could be wrong however.

[stylez]

It's only on the initial start time of the game, while it would normally be unpacking the data. It's not a huge difference but it was noticeable.

With main.pak in place, it takes ~7 sec to get to the start screen.
Without main.pak extracted and removed, it only takes ~3 sec.