Phantom Doctrine Modding and Localization - Discussions

[CFG_Hitch]

Feel free to discuss here everything related to modding and localization. Have fun!

In case you missed it, the Official Guide is available here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/559100/discussions/0/1777136225018374972/

[DOGGYSTYLER 🗕 🗗 🗙]

Originally posted by Canucklehead79:

Originally posted by ⎛⎝ DOGGYSTYLER²⎠⎞:

this is so idiotic if you want people to mod your game just integrate steam workshop, not everyone is an experienced modder

A lot of games are setup so you can just drag and drop a file into a mod directory, and choose what you want to use when you start the game up. When you sell the game on multiple platforms, means that mods on steam can be inaccessible to everyone else, so a lot of mod communities use nexus mods, moddll or other similar sites instead as a primary spot.

Looked at the guide, and that's much more details than what you sometimes get. If the game is popular, generally someone will make some kind of vbasic frontend to make modding easier, and a merge tool to avoid interference between multiple mods.

In any case, based on the guide, should be pretty straightforward to tweak the gameplay and do other simple things.

Kudos to the developers for this though; personally tend to avoid games that don't have mod or customization options now. Found that gives the best long term replayability, so that's something I look for when deciding if I buy something.

this is the most passive answer i have ever gotten but thanks i guess

[76561198007484948]

Any ideas yet when we are going to get a Steam workshop for this game?

[Amish]

Originally posted by Kama:

Found the way to take off limit on number of agents. I had 17/15 and everything was great, so i was not going to lose any. :lunar2019grinningpig: So i found it in CE, address is +747EAADO from the address that's used by money.

But it's so much more fun capturing enemy agents, influencing them with Control Phrase at your MKUltra facility, releasing them, and then taking control of (and essentially recruiting) them in later missions. (I presently have 69/30 agent slots filled).

Edit: Phantom Doctrine is a perfectly balanced game with no exploits.

[davea]

Does anybody come to this thread to discuss creation of mods? I "posted" on the discord modding channel a couple of days ago with no reply. Or, is there another place that has some activity for this?

i made a small mod to make the corkboard simpler. in dt_campaignstage.csv, i changed the parameters like bogusdatamin, etc to all small values. but, when i start a fresh game, the first two folders still have the default settings, and the corkboard isn't easier. are these parameters supposed to be moddable?

in the same directory i was able to change deadpan's weapon to aug like the tutorial says, so i know it's finding the mod directory. if anybody is interested to help look, i can upload my dt_campaignstage.csv somewhere.

[davea]

I got some help on the discord channel. The mod is working, but all the secret files which go to story missions are hard-coded and the csv files don't apply to them. Most of the secret files are story missions, so this mod doesn't really help much. Later in the game there are random secret files, and I can see the mod affects them.

I guess the modding capability was added afterwards and there are a lot of things it doesn't affect. For example, I wanted to experiment with reducing the game effect of the body engineering station by putting C/S/R/M bonuses on perks or training, but you can't.

I wanted to try making "classes" by separating the hit point bonus of chemicals from the firing point bonus. Then a spy could be either melee oriented with high hit points to take down high level agents, *or* fast firing, but not both. Unfortunately both are granted by circulatory, and you can't affect that with the csv files either.

I'm going to put this "less int" mod up on nexus anyway, which will increase the world availability of mods from two published mods to three. I'll keep experimenting.

[Juravis]

You can`t mod anything in an extensive way. You can modify values for things, but it's limited. Half of the values in the CSV are marked as "deprecated" because the devs implemented things early on only to ditch them later on or make it work differently. You'll have to use whatever they gave you unfortunately. Also sometimes the game doesnt load a CSV correctly and your values are not used, it means your CSV is "corrupt". I also advise against adding columns with text, even at the end (works sometimes, sometimes not).

I found out that if you make the LMG take 2 AP and 1FP, any enemy equipped with them can always double move and fire without care. However if you change the default fire rate of a Rifle from Auto to Burst, they will never pick Burst or Auto appropriately for the situation, they will always Burst at all times.

For chemicals I made a simple split tree choice. You get X chemicals marked as level 1, and they all exclude each other. Same for level 2, 3, 4 etc. so you get 9 chemicals by the end maximum. There is no random "X chemical cant be used while Y is active", the rules are clear.

I have an extensive mod but i`ve decided to not release it until a new modding patch is released with added support. Maybe in 1.2 someday, unless the next game comes out first.

[davea]

Cool, thanks. Most games with modding support don't behave well when any of the inputs are wrong. I'm not surprised the AI doesn't use all these values either. I think it's hard to add good mod support after the fact. XCOM2 actually had "day zero mods" and their modding scene worked out pretty well.

Your chemical idea sounds interesting. The game gives out chemicals at random, and I have seen sometimes that chem A requires chem B, and the game gives me A before B. So I can't even use the chem I got. Is your chem csv available somewhere? I'd be interested to look more about how you split up the benefits.

Does your extensive mod change only the csv files? Did you change the campaign xml files? Did you find some other kind of thing to change?

By reading the old history of the discord modding channel, I got the impression that 1.1 was the last major patch and the development team has moved on to other projects.

[Juravis]

Ill upload my entire CSV in a couple mins in tinyupload

[Juravis]

Here you are:

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=60114998976444852673

This is a 80% complete remodel of the game. It figures extensives changes, but i havent gone through the entire Techs yet. So do NOT use the Tech CSV file, its in debug mode. The rest work.

[davea]

Cool, thanks. I'll try tomorrow.

[davea]

Thanks for putting it up. I didn't quite get the numeric chem values, but I see what you mean about the simple mutually exclusive groups. Not that it matters much, but I'm curious that compound_10 requires compound_09. That doesn't seem to match the symmetry of the others.

[Juravis]

Its an exception. I made argoxy and xenoxy dependant

[Sir Lord Wololo]

Still no workshop support? o_O

[nighthawk2002]

always sad to see a game with potential
that's obviously dead

[C 4 R P 3 T]

Originally posted by CFG_Hitch:

Feel free to discuss here everything related to modding and localization. Have fun!

In case you missed it, the Official Guide is available here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/559100/discussions/0/1777136225018374972/

Question. At the "New Agent Portrait" part of the guide there is a short description of how to name the .jpg files with a small description. However you guys did not describe what the race letters mean. "C, M, N, H or A" What do they mean? "C" for caucasian? But then what is "A"?

A - African American?
A - Asian?
A - Arabic?

And what about the M, N and H?