Imagine you've made the next Minecraft in GLBasic and get flooded with requests to make it easier for players to create their own mods for custom games. :doubt:
How might such a thing be done? Would the original code of your game necessarily need to be modified? If not, would there be a way to make sure modding was easily supported?
I don't have a clue how it could be done myself, and its friday, and I'm already a bit tipsy, but it seemed like an interesting idea to bring up. :booze:
I'm no modder, but i see at least two ways to mod games:
1. simply replace some resources, like grafics-, sound- and Ini-files, etc. for getting better in-game-feeling. You don't need to change any code to let players do this, but it has limited possibilities.
2. you can define some things, that happens in you game, in Ini-files or even better use an scripting language. So the modder would be able to create new events or edit existing ones and can expand you game easily. If you use more scripts and less "hard coding", the fans can mod more/easier/faster... but it makes developing you Project hard, not to mention bug-hunting...
I would just starting mind this, if i develop a big commercial game - it may be to much, to heavy for one person. Just my 2 cents, i never tried this, just thought about it. ;)
I'd have a website where the mods could be retrieved from and then saved out from the app. This would work for iOS too. As regards to the actual mod building isn't it just a case of tweaking variables which could be done in an ini file. I'm no modder either so not sure of the depth of variables or scripting language needed to be created.
I guess this has a lot to do with the thread about a scripting language inside glbasic.
It seems, most of the moddable things out there, were engines created in house or on contract, so people with less knowledge on the code can mess with it, like if you are up to spend top dollars on a brew, why not spend top dollars on a brewery instead?
I guess by the little I know of glbasic, mods can be done as long as your project was done for that in the first place.
Like shotemup construction kit kitty did? or the 2d platform engine another chap is working on?
On another extra off-topic subject (I refuse to use the smile), I don´t like GAME mods, I can see their value, but I dislike it.
On a super extra philosophical off topic, could you consider GLBasic a mod for C?
That is acceptable on my book, not only acceptable, it is a "thanks God it happened" because I would never be able to mess with C.
Could this not be the same on , let´s say, unreal engine? It allows people to mess with something that otherwise they would never be able.
Maybe it is all about getting more people to have access to things... shall we skip assembler or machine language stuff?
This is a very interesting subject for me, maybe my dislike for games mods is a selfish thought of mine at the end :(
When installing a general mod in Minecraft, the simplest and common form is to just drag modfile.jar contents to main bin/minecraft.jar file. So in this case, there is no internal scripting. but alternatively, in World Of Warcraft, there is internal macros and LUA. GLBScript could explore this area and I really like the idea on others being able to expand the game system with glb code. ;)
I'd say it is programming your game so that the standard content has to be created in the same format the mod content would, be it xml files and/or lua scripts and/or whatever you might want to use. That way you don't have to do double the work.
I've seen some games use a separate folder for mods that will replace or append the default content. No need for overwriting important game files that way.
As for scripting, I guess many game events and object behaviours could be handled by a simple scripting language that was specific to the game. No need to mess with stuff like LUA. What kind of indie dev would have the time to create an engine complicated enough to make use of that anyway?
Hey Matchy, what is GLBScript?
Quote from: erico on 2011-Oct-15
On another extra off-topic subject (I refuse to use the smile), I don´t like GAME mods, I can see their value, but I dislike it.
I don't like them much either. They can often break a game's immersion or introduce new bugs. However, many players/users seem to love messing with them. It can make the difference between a game that is liked and a game that is obsessed over.
GLBScript/HTML5 discussion about it here...
http://www.glbasic.com/forum/index.php?topic=4524.0
Kinda confused by GLBScript, it started as a scripting language for GLBSCRIPT apps and now seems to be an HTML5 from GLB converter?