Fortnight Discussion: Mod Support

[Madguy]

I plan to start working mod support at some point after the game exits Early Access later this year. I’m not entirely sure what form this will take, or how extensive it will end up being. To be frank, I’ve never really done modding for a game before, and I’m not particularly familiar with how comparable games are handling their mod support.

The only thing I know for sure at this point is that I’d like to create a level editor. Beyond that, I’d like to give people a lot of flexibility to modify aspects of the game without creating an enormous workload for myself.

What sort of mod support would you like to see? Can you point me in the direction of other games whose examples I might follow? Is their any sort of “standard, baseline knowledge” that I should probably have?

[shrimply]

I Would love to see workshop support! Even if it was as simple as 'uploading' a character creation to the workshop.

[bean]

Ever heard of Ravenfield? Make mod support like that game.

[Mistery]

some tool for modding maybe ,in game map editor, or tool map editor , support for new items , clases , missions , textures

[Birds]

I think the best way to do it takes a lot of time: Writing a modding api and allowing for maybe lua script and making objects through json files following the rules you place (starbound for example). I believe a more lazy way to do it is somehow let people import their own unity scripts and things which will require a little bit of a modding api and mostly just writing info on how the game works, but most the work is done on the modders end (which I think ravenfield or unturned does it like this)
The problem with doing it the cool way that makes it easy for everyone is it seems to take developers a lot of time and over time they seem to slowly release more and more features to it.

I think a great example for modding is from a game called voxel turf:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/404530/Voxel_Turf/
Ignoring your first impressions from the name and voxel/sandbox building, the developer sort of makes half the game open source. The engine and what runs is closed source, but all the AI scripting, entity scripting, missions, generation, items, and server/client interactions is all done on freely editable lua scripts. He develops his content using his own functions and api and modders can do the same. He hasnt made time to write a comprehensive guide on what all his functions are or how they work, but he comments on some things and wrote a few example for people to try and figure it out themselves.

[Untapped RadianceTM]

I'd love to see support for mods using Lua, but I'm not sure how easy it is to embed Lua into Unity.

[A.P.Erson]

The mod support could work where in the home base there would be a worker npc that would when talked to open a menu that would show you the mods you have. You could get mods via the workshop like many games like Don't Starve or Gmod, where you subscribe to a mod on the workshop and it then shows up in the menu, you click on it to enable and/or read about it. Boom, ez.

[Joyeuse]

Well: What parts of your game are hardcoded, and what parts of it are softcoded? A solid definition of mod support would be "having a substantial amount of your game be softcoded." As opposed to hardcoded compiled programming, does your game use a scripting system for its mechanics for you to simply expose to the user? (Although, if it does, that begs the question of why it isn't exposed to the user already.) If it's not, or if there's just a lot of hardcoding in your game more generally, you can refer to what's going on with the OpenMW developers who are in a state now of having a very hardcoded engine that they're starting to plan out the process of dehardcoding now; see how they're handling it and what notes you can take on how to handle dehardcoding your game based on their methods and plans of doing so for their engine.

[MonkeyJunkie]

I support mods, they might break multiplayer. My real question is, WHEN DO VOODOO DOLLS GET A USE

[Lightningcrush]

weapons are hard to put in mods but it can be really nice if we get good mods it gives you more time to update the game

[shadowwolftjc]

Personally, I find that Starbound is a rather nice example of how to give your game a wide variety of moddability to the game. Not only are custom races, items, and monsters/NPCs possible, but also custom biomes, planets, solar systems, and procedurally-generated dungeons that could be spawned on any of these planets (and that even barely scratches the surface). Heck, the game even allows modders to create custom scripts!

Imagine if Streets of Rogue could offer mod support for not only character classes, items, and traits, but also templated set pieces (such as buildings, shops, and graveyards), levels, biomes, mutators, or disasters, or even NPC behaviors. Imagine if the game even allowed players to create their own scripts that could fire under certain circumstances (such as, say, having Upper Crusters run to the nearest Police Box to spawn an allied Supercop when they come under attack, or having the Cannibalize trait restore health, but only work when there's a dead body nearby).



Basically, whatever you've already organized into some sort of list, pool, category, or other such things, you should probably consider them prime candidates for offering mod support.