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What about fan based mods?

WarlockDWarlockD Registered User regular
edited June 2012 in Penny Arcade Games
I was glossing over the content directory to see how hard it would be to port this to iPad when I stumbled apon the XML file that has all the dialog. Then I saw the raw tiles for the Soulcaster part in a nice grid. Instead of porting I thought of making a lua scripted interpreter to put on little puppet shows.. *cough*

So I was wondering what the stances are on moding it? Making your own maps, levels, fanfic dialog, etc. All the content is in proprietary compressed xnb format so would it be ok to build a program that would extract the images to png? Not asking to upload the pictures to anywhere, just when someone installs the scripting engine I am thinking about, it would find the directory where the game is installed, extract the sprites to its directory and run them there.

Also, to be fair, while I am fairly good in C/C++/OpenGLES coding, I am also good at not finishing projects:P So is it ok to open source said engine using the BSD licence? It will be mainly coded around the cocos2dx engine as I am familiar with it on a bad iPhone game I made a month back and it being able to run on windows/mac.

WarlockD on

Posts

  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    Steam Workshop for this would be awesome if feasible.

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  • OsvirOsvir Registered User new member
    I third this!

  • WarlockDWarlockD Registered User regular
    I wish. The pathing and mechanics are all hard coded. ILSpy shows that all the maps walking paths are all hard coded into the class. I am sure it looks alot nicer in real code, its just messy the way C# compiles itself into .NET

    My idea is to make a simple sprite engine that uses lua to do the battle/script mechanics. It shouldn't be hard to as this game, lets face it, is not that complex. Heck, all the map levels are just big images and not individual tiles done in realtime. That makes it way easier to work with, though, harder to mod with your own custom map using the existing tileset.

  • RainbowDespairRainbowDespair Registered User regular
    WarlockD wrote: »
    It shouldn't be hard to as this game, lets face it, is not that complex.

    Have you ever programmed an RPG before? It's a fair bit of work even if it's a barebones RPG (and this game isn't a barebones RPG).

    Now admittedly, the sprite/map code is relatively simple as far as these things go, but the code that handles the bulk of the gameplay (like combat & classes) is a lot more complex than you might think.

    In any case, I'd prefer it if you didn't try to mod the game. There are plenty of free RPG making toolkits out there if you just want to make an RPG.

  • OsvirOsvir Registered User new member
    I respect that :)

  • WarlockDWarlockD Registered User regular
    edited July 2012
    No disrespect! Its incredibly hard! You have to check for each door, badguy and event on everything you do to make sure the story is on track. Not to mention the saves. Just figuring out how to save the state of all that is mind boggling. Its why I tend to make action/shooter/puzzle type projects rather than something with "plot":P

    To be honest all I wanted to know is if I can put the tools I am building online, I am doing this mainly to learn how to make rpgs. As you said, there are plenty of RPG making toolkits out there but almost no good solid examples on how a full game is built or balanced. Books aren't bad but I seem to only learn by reading code, its how I learned lua/coca2dx so well is I know the code library like the back of my hand after 20 or so random projects with them.

    Again no disrepect, its why I am learning from this game because by no means its a bare-bones RPG. Its been well thought out from the job system to the combat itself. If you don't want any mods for that's fine bye me, its all I wanted to know:)

    PS - If your still bothering to read my stupid posts, why do use you XNA raw rather than some engine with more general cross platform engine like Unity? I mean except for the cost.

    WarlockD on
  • RainbowDespairRainbowDespair Registered User regular
    WarlockD wrote: »
    PS - If your still bothering to read my stupid posts, why do use you XNA raw rather than some engine with more general cross platform engine like Unity? I mean except for the cost.

    Cost. And now that we might be able to afford Unity, I'm used to XNA (and our engine is already in it) so I'm not sure I want to switch.

  • WarlockDWarlockD Registered User regular
    If you want a suggestion, I would try out the Torque 2D engine to see if you like it. It makes cross platform games much easier and its fairly cheap. Their iphone product just blatantly sucks, however, (nothing is optimized, its a straight OpenGL port of their PC 2D product), but its good enough for games like this.

    Doesn't solve the xbox pure/safe C# issue though. Well, unless you pay a ton of money to Microsoft for a developer licence:P

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