Coming 11/28 – proved a bit more challenging but now we’re just onto final testing
It will have some limitations, however: Hosts will get to specify a Base Mod, a Base Map, and then EXTRA STACKED mods that will initially be limited to adding new Creatures, Engrams, & Items/Weapons/Structures, and appending values to the Remap_Whatever Arrays. This will enable us to avoid (most) functional conflicts between Mods, and get pretty much all of the “additional” item & structure mods to work together along with presumably a base major mod (such as a “rebalance” mod).
We’ll see if we can do more down the line (possibly diff’ing both PrimalGameDatas to incorporate whatever values each changes arbritrarily), but that’ll be a start
Remap arrays will also stack, but if two things Remap the same class, the later-applied mod will take effect. (The mod application order will be change-able by the host.)
Before starting off on the grand mod stacking adventure, I would really love it if there were more checks, balances, and conditionals for when someone loads a mod into a vanilla save. It would be great if running a mod would force a player to create a new save file, but people put a lot of time into leveling up their characters and most of the subscribers to my mod seem to be quite adamant about not having to restart on a fresh save. With the total overhaul mod I’ve spent a stupidly large amount of time on(770 files and counting!), basically 90% of all “I’m having a problem” posts in the comments section are because people are loading the mod into a vanilla save and getting strange/unexpected results.
Common issues I’ve seen so far: Your new arrow doesn’t work in my bow! - We have no way of adding new ammo types or doing a ‘direct’ replacement on a vanilla item, the person has to basically trash their bow and make a new one. I can’t build <X> new item! - This comes from someone either trying to create one of my new items that requires something like the fabricator, and are using an unmodified fabricator, or one spawned in via console. As it stands right now, making an item require a crafting station to be made is a 2 step process requiring a definition in the PrimalItem -> Crafting Requires Inventory Component, AND in the PrimalInventory of my modded crafting station and we can’t change the PrimalInventory without making a separate copy of that PrimalItemStructure. Now when a new item gets added to the game (like the crossbow), if we’re running a modified version of that crafting station, even if the PrimalInventory is subclassed from the vanilla, the new item cannot be crafted until we are able to add it in via updating the mod. I haven’t found any method of setting up modified crafting stations without breaking the patch-friendly subclassing inheritance for crafting items there. My dino/newly tamed dino can’t harvest fiber/stone! - The remapping of NPCs doesn’t translate across to existing entities in the world like people seem to be expecting, to get them to have the proper dinos I’ve had to get people to use the kill all dinos console command and then re-tame new ones. VERY strange spawning issue - One thing that happened with my mod, is I have almost all dinos re-mapped to a new version that I’ve tweaked. At first all I did was re-map the NPCs, and not the NPC spawn entries, and when all I did was re-map the NPC it seemed like the game would keep spawning versions of my modded dinos. I assume there’s a check on the spawner object to see if its current “set” of dinos is still alive, and since it was spawning dino_modded not dino_original, the check for the count of spawned dinos never satisfied the stop spawning condition. I came across a beach with about 10 Sarcos on it, and one of my subscribers said he saw about 40 Plesia at the bottom of the ocean. That seems to have been resolved by remapping the NPC spawners, BUT it’s something I wanted to bring to your attention for the future.
Ones that come to mind: HarvestComponents - What happens when you tweak a harvest component and it’s loaded into a vanilla save? Do you have to harvest it once to make it ‘respawn’ with the correct values similar to dinos?
Obelisk Transfers - What happens when you attempt to ‘transfer’ a modified dino via obelisk? I had someone in my comments section ask that, and I had no foggy clue what to tell them. If the ‘modified’ dino is transferred to another server not containing the data for it, what happens? does it vanish into thin air? or does it crash the server entirely? If it loads in properly, then that’s something that could be VERY abusable. Make yourself a dino of your favorite flavor, give it 500,000 HP and a really high base damage and you could essentially murder the whole server.
I know it’s not exactly “cool” to do, but I have just made all of the new items completely independent of a fabricator/smithy. Until things like this can be properly addressed and fixed, just find a way to work around it more effectively.
As for the dino loads… that is a really good question. I almost want to try it just to find out.
That’s fine if you only tweak one or two items, but my mod touches on 95% of the craftables. If I took out the requirements on the ones I’ve modded the crafting structures would be worthless.
The inability to “overwrite” vanilla files… and instead having to subclass everything… is just a royal pain in the ***.
Apart from getting massively burned myself because I had to remove a mod (and all the new tamed dinos got wiped along with it)… there is also as said… just a truckload of additional and really unnecessary work to simply “mod” = modify… the vanilla game.
Oh… and stat-rebalancing… without the ability to simply “overwrite” vanilla files you are basically looking at a complete fresh start/wipe to make any form of stat-rebalancing/normalization/nerfing-of-OP-tamed-dinos.
Can you make it so that if you specify on the dedicated what mods should be used on the server, when you start it up, the dedicated goes and downloads the workshop mods itself. That way we don’t have to try manually upload what can be very large mods/maps directly to the dedicated server (not forgetting any mod updates that would need to be done)
Is it gonna be possible to run a mod without changing the command line? as some hosters don’t allow you access to the command line. IE Blue Fang Solutions. don’t want to write a ticket every time I want it changed. would rather not switch hosters either but I will if need be.
It will have some limitations, however: Hosts will get to specify a Base Mod, a Base Map, and then EXTRa STACKED mods that will initially be limited to adding new Creatures, Engrams, & Items/Weapons/Structures, and appending values to the Remap_Whatever Arrays. This will enable us to avoid (most) functional conflicts between Mods. We’ll see if we can do more down the line, but that’ll be a start
Remap arrays will also stack, but if two things Remap the same class, the later-applied mod will take effect. (The mod application order will be change-able by the host)
Cheers,
Regarding this: Is it gonna be possible to run a mod without changing the command line? as some hosters don’t allow you access to the command line.
We’re working on a tool that will allow you to manage mods via a GUI for the dedicated server, and the GUI will interact with the remote dedicated server through RCON
And yes, this tool will also handle DOWNLOADING the mods in the first place from Steam Workshop.
As for adding new Craftables via standard Structures, v190 will also support appending engrams to Structures via additional array within the PrimalGameData, so you won’t have to override the Structures directly.
, I know it would be coolest to just have a Mod directly override any existing Asset/Blueprint without having to subclass, but sadly it turned out to be near-impossible for us to pull that off – believe me, we really wanted to, but the UE4 Object<->Class system was having none-of-it
I was thinking “not the end of the world”… but actually if server admins do decide to remove any mod that remaps vanilla player/dino/engram… it is the end of that world hehe.
Anyway good to know… time to adjust modding strategy to leave the vanilla game in place and avoid remapping anything that will badly mess up existing games should the mod be removed. Was hoping to rename some of the dinos (Trike!) to more authentic sounding names (Triceratops) in addition to removing the 3x tame damage multiplier… but I’ve got some ideas on how to mitigate that…
One thing that I would like to bring up is that if you use the “Remap Engrams” array, it doesn’t re-map the “Required Engrams” components on anything further into the tech tree requiring it to unlock.
For example, lets say the new feeding trough had an engram pre-requisite of the storage box. If someone had re-mapped the storage box engram to a blueprint subclassed from the standard storage box engram, then no one using that mod would be able to learn the engram for the feeding trough until the devkit is updated with the engram for new items.
I believe I’m also seeing similar behavior from the ‘Remap NPCSpawn Entries’ array, as I have all spawn entries remapped in my mod (from a subclassed version of the original) with the only change being setting the vanilla dinos to point to my custom ones. With that in place I haven’t seen a single Meganeura spawn while testing. I do have another very odd bug regarding NPC spawning but I’ll post that in a separate thread.
TL;DR: It would be highly appreciated if we could have the devkit updated to the current major release version a bit closer to when the patch hits. I don’t care if I have to pull from a buggy beta branch on github, and a beta steam depot for the newer content, I just want to be able to keep pace with the speed that Wildcard are updating the game so that the mods I release can be compatible with the new game updates.
, in the case of huge overhaul mods like yours, that is the perfect place for the “base mod” selection. Overall this implementation sounds like it will be enough for mods to work together and the collection of remap arrays are really what is making this possible. Sounds like it is a huge pain-in-the-butt to get those remap arrays working as intended developer side so I appreciate the work going specifically in to the dev kit.
This is good news indeed! I’ve had fun (more fun then success admittedly) with the dev kit. The idea that I can make mods that will work with other mods out of the box is really nice.
Subscribers of the dragon mod and my npc mod seem to be having varying issues with mountain spawn zones, will we just have to choose different zones or is there a way to make them compatible with the same additional remap?
