Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Mods Modding Dead in Water?

When this game was in development I remained very hopeful that it would have an easy to use modkit similar to that of Neverwinter Nights. While the game has exceeded my expectations, the mod tools have fallen more than a little bit short. It seems there are very few custom campaigns to speak of, and even common mod targets like player skills have been found to be hard-coded.

Do you think that Divinity:OS is lacking in moddability? If not, why has the modding scene been lukewarm? Are you holding out any hope for better documentation and tools as Larian iterates on their engine for future titles?

There's a similar question asked in the general forums where you can get opinions on why modding is in the state that it is, and what people think about its future.

Oops, thanks m8.

I'm still moronically charging forward at full speed knowing full well that the EE could blow up half my stuff. But on the plus side there's so much old crap built into D:OS that I doubt it will really blow up half my stuff.

I am expecting to lose most if not all of my level data and placed objects because Larian might replace them with DX11 versions. If you look at a lot of the current stuff it specifically references dx9.

Hopefully they A. Keep the old stuff and simply add the new.

Or even better B. Any new stuff simply replaces the old letter for letter and thus I wouldn't have to change it.

Even if my level gets nuked all my scripts and globals are maintained on the old version so I'd just simply have to write it all down and quickly rebuild it. I'd bet that would take a month tops. Assuming the EE Editor comes out in a timely fashion :P

while doing my personal mod i found many unused yet exist materials. like dual wield animation, dual wield expertise (ability), some unfinished skills like shadow step, free attack, or Fatality, some unused abilities and talents, n many more

shadow step is literally a very cool skill with good animation and effect. my rogue can go down into the abyss then suddenly appears behind the target as a shadow-like creature.

fatality, man at arms skill. perform 4 slashes simultaneously. too bad it only deals damage once which should be 4 considering the animation

and also unfinished day/night cycle. so it cant be helped. DOS is an unfinished work, the editor also has many limitations in my game-modding experience. lets just hope they will make the new game a totally finished game, a whole one. including more fluid editor. as an asian i want characters with asian's faces n body XD

The dual wielding and some of the other stuff was from data being updated for the Enhanced Edition of the game, not finished or otherwise not implemented in the release.

After the EE is released, the editing tools will be priority, since they are being used for the next couple of games, as well.

Hello all, new user here. Sorry if this has been answered somewhere else, but just looking to get an idea of the current state of the modding community? The topic of this thread doesn't bode well. Apparently people aere waiting for some expansion or whatever? When is that expected to arrive?

I spent many, many hours in the NWN 1/2 toolsets and this one here looks to be quite similar. Are there any group projects going on or are most people going at it alone? I may be interested in helping out with scripting or whatever.

The Enhanced Edition will be released about November.

The only mod I recall of the top of my head with a couple people collaborating (Of Doves and Demons) is on hold pending compatibility with the EE.

I do not even own the game myself so please bear with me on what might be simple or dumb questions. I am considering getting the game for the toolset mostly. I spent a whole lot of time writing scripts and doing GUI mods in NWN and enjoyed it. Looking to maybe get in on some of that here. Found out before I like scripting more that any other aspect of module building so if anybody could use a scripter or the community on general needs some sort of "system" done up then let me know.

Which all leads me to ask those who may know - how powerful is the Script Editor (or whatever it is called in this game) compared the the NWN editors?

I bought the game solely for the toolset myself.

It has a steep learning curve for sure, and the script language does leave things to be desired compared to the NWN script.

There are no OR conditionals. This hurt me more than most things. You can still make it do whatever you want though. I've done a passage of time system, so have other people. I've done a eating / hunger system, I've done random NPC spawn locations, respawns, and more.

I have a pretty much completed 5-6 hour mod that I'm waiting to release, but I'm waiting on the enhanced edition to build some hype around the game so I don't release it to a crowd of 10 people.

Still plugging away

Last month or so I learned how to use some more built in Larian systems like the Kill count procedures, location/quest markers, how to fix bugged out keyword files where only the node name shows up, Subregions, and some neat scripted sequence building ideas.

I'll probably write up a post on a few of these soon.

I'd like to do a collaborative project after I finish my current mod and after I port it over to the EE. Hopefully the latter isn't a huge project......

I'm 100% down for a collaborative project. If I could focus on JUST mapping or JUST writing or JUST scripting I could be so much more thorough.

Been keeping my eye on this section of the forums here. I must say, the general lack of chatter is a bit disheartening ...

Well, the whole forums are kind of dead. There just isn't much reason to be modding right now with the Enhanced Edition on the horizon, which will almost certainly break current mods in some way, though it's hard to say how severely they'll be affected. Of course, people can always keep the mod on the old version of D:OS once the EE comes out, but the playerbase won't be very big. Also there's no reason to mod the main campaign since so much will change. I was working on a loot mod, but since they're changing a lot, no point in wasting my time.

The EE might revitalize modding if the editor is improved, but if little is changed, I expect only a minor uptick in modding activity.

Thanks for the reply. But it does make me wonder how large the player community is for this game, anybody have a general idea?

The player community is of pretty good size compared to the budget levels of the game and all that.
Best way to get an idea of the size is to check steamcharts which track active players.

http://steamcharts.com/app/230230

So a year after release there are between 500 and 1100 people playing the game at any given time. Back when it was released it had a peak of over 20,000. That's a comparable number to something like Batman Arkham Origins. Not too bad for a turn based RPG.

Hey, thanks for the tutorials SniperHF!

I'm planning on attempting to create some Wizards for the new version of the editor. Whether I'm actually able to do this or not depends on how much trouble I run in to, so wish me luck.

But my vision is to make modding for this engine to be as quick and as easy as it was for the Aurora engine in Neverwinter Nights, which will require a lot of automating common actions with easy to understand controls that will allow for quick manipulation of levels/dialogues/triggers/etc.

I certainly do .
Anything would be helpful. I'm pretty well versed in the editor itself now but I'd say it took me 5 months to really get there as someone who started with zero modding experience. And the the only thing to learn from being the combine posts on this forum.

So the next question is: will standalone mods made with the EE editor be compatible with D:OS 2? I assume (and really hope) so, since I believe it's the same engine, but if they change root templates and whatnot, it could be another hurdle to establishing a modding community.

Automated processes would be really helpful, though best of luck trying to get them working. Another way to work it might be to code systems to automate things like ownership possession. Like, if there were a way to create ownership of items for NPCs for all items within X units from the NPC, instead of having to place triggers for every NPC. Or a way for all NPCs in a database to sleep in the nearest bed when a certain CharVariable (E.g., night time) shows up, instead of having to individually tie each NPC to a bed.

Also, making a lot of big prefabs for houses, small caves, etc, could be really useful for people who aren't good at making beautiful scenery. An "auto-texture" function that would automatically place grass, rocky surfaces near cliffs, leaves under trees, sand near the ocean, etc. would be dreamy, but probably really hard to implement. More of a suggestion for Larian.

The only real issue that I see with the new games that are being released, is that if you used assets from a different game (D:OS, D:OS EE, D:OS 2, etc.), and a new version of the editor gets released, it may cause issues.

The main way to avoid this would just to build all of your assets yourself and not rely on the pre-built assets from Larian Studios. If doing it that way, I see no reason for mods to get messed between editor/game releases.

Another way is to make the editor a standalone installation that does not require us to find editor paths and shit from our D:OS, etc. directories so that it's completely independent so that we can import assets on our own, instead of on start-up.

Well, it's one thing for mods to work for the modder, it's another for random people playing it. I assume all the assets in D:OS EE will still be in the files of D:OS2, though obviously not the reverse. Unless the modify assets from the EE for D:OS2, then there would be problems. Probably would be smart to make your own root templates at least, though doing that for everything would be a nightmare. And actually including all the models and whatnot in your mod release would bloat the file enormously.

D:OS2 could very easily have new engine features that make mods from the EE incompatible with it. They are probably spending a lot less time on brand new features, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some in development. We'll see on the 26th whether D:OS2 looks extremely different, or more of just a new campaign.