Hi Scorpiovaeden,

GDC is/was happening this week so everyone is away and I don't think they've decided on a release date. I still have a few things to address on my side but they're pretty minor things. John will probably have more details on any additional features/tools and release dates in the coming week.

Pierre

hmmm... that's an interesting point. Would you all prefer to have 2 icons, one for the Steam UI and one in game? That might make more sense right?

Hi there,

So, yes there's groundwork that was done for a future update. Basically, instead of straight up replacing some files, you may now add to those files instead by creating your own version of that file.

eg. You just want to add effects without overriding the base.effects.darkest. Instead of replacing the base.effects.darkest, you can now create a file with just your effects called saint_michaels.effects.darkest and the game will load both the base.effects.darkest as well as your saint_micheals.effects.darkest.

The pattern that was chosen for these "additive" files is [some_name].[file].[extension] where [some_name] is anything you want it to be, [file] matches the content type and [extension] matches the type of file. This also allows you to have multiple of these files if you choose.

eg.
effects/op.effects.darkest
effects/weak.effects.darkest
effects/crazy.effects.darkest

and so on.

So far we have

colours/base.colours.darkest
effects/base.effects.darkest
shared/buffs/base.buffs.json

audio/base.app.load_order.json
audio/base.campaign.load_order.json
audio/base.dungeon.load_order.json
audio/base.heroes.load_order.json
audio/base.raid.load_order.json
audio/base.system.load_order.json
audio/base.town.load_order.json

inventory/base.currency.inventory.items.darkest
inventory/base.gem.inventory.items.darkest
inventory/base.inventory.extra_stack_limits.darkest
inventory/base.inventory.system_configs.darkest
inventory/base.quest_item.inventory.items.darkest
inventory/base.supply.inventory.items.darkest

campaign/roster/base.roster.groups.json
campaign/town_events/base.town_events.events.json

scripts/layout/base.popup_text.layout.darkest

Of course you can choose to just override the file as well by picking the same name as the base file.

Finally, rules.json is a bunch of variables that used to be hardcoded in game and was pulled out... and there's very significant variables within that touch on many aspects of the game... they probably just need to be documented! (coming soon!)

Pierre

Hi everyone,

I just pushed out a new build that is more or less the latest from the main branch (mostly bug fixes) but one feature that I should have put in from the start is the ability to set the preview icon for your mod. The preview icon is the image you see when browsing available mods through the steam UI. You'll see my colours 2 test has it set as the torch. In any case, The preview icon will also be visible in the modding UI list in game.

So how do you add it? Just put an image named preview_icon.png (under 1MB in size) in your mod's data root directory and it should get picked up by both the uploader and the game (well once it's downloaded again).

I'll also be working on bugs and requests for the next little while!

Pierre

Hi everyone,

Small(ish) update today.

• Finally fixed the pesky "SpineData" assert you've been seeing with hero mods.
  
• Localization process will now look at your mod's colours.darkest file (if it finds one) for colour information.
  
• Steam build will now look for manually installed mods in the data/mods folder as well as mods downloaded from steam. The tooltip should show how the mod was installed, Steam or Manually Installed, as well as their paths (absolute and relative respectively).

Also, I am aware that there are some errors that pop up when you go back out to the main menu when you have certain files in your mod and will address those probably after we are finished with the radiant update.

Thanks!

Pierre

Hi everyone, I'm sorry if you're having trouble with the tool. What would be helpful is if I could see what you have in your project.json file.

Aside from that, maybe I can clear some things up a bit.

1. steam_workshop_upload.exe is meant to be run from the _windows folder. It should not be moved. If you run the steam_workshop_upload tool by itself, it should give you a bit of information on the project file (.json file). It should also produce, within the folder, a sample_project.json file. This is a sample project file that can be modified to make into your own. I would suggest moving it out of this _windows directory. To be clear, your project.json file can live anywhere, it doesn't have to be within your data directory.

2. when you open up your .json project file, you'll find the ModDataPath parameter. This is an absolute path (including the drive) to what is essentially your own data directory that has your modded files. (Please use forward slashes (/) not back slashes (\) in your path, thanks!)

3. The json reader is quite strict. For example if you decide to change your project file to only have one tag, you have to remove the comma after the first tag.

Anyways, this is a quick example to modify the colours in game that should (hopefully) work for everyone.

I grab the project file sample_project.json file from the _windows directory, move it to my mod directory and rename it to colour_mod.json like so:

c:/my_mods/colour_mod/colour_mod.json

I then create a directory called data here
c:/my_mods/colour_mod/data/

I open up my colour_mod.json file and change ModDataPath point to c:/my_mods/colour_mod/data/ like so

"ModDataPath" : "c:/my_mods/colour_mod/data/"

Copy colours.darkest from the game's data/colours directory and place it in my mod's colours directory like so

c:/my_mods/colour_mod/data/colours/colours.darkest

I then open up c:/my_mods/colour_mod/data/colours/colours.darkest and muck around with some of the colour values and save it.

At this point you should be able to drag your colour_mod.json project file onto the steam_workshop_uploader tool that is in the _windows folder.

If this is your first time, the tool should ask you to go to steam and sign off on the workshop user agreement. Please do that and drag your colour_mod.json file over the steam_workshop_uploader tool. Once that's done, if you open up your colour_mod.json file it should contain a PublishedFileId parameter with some large number. This is your mod's id in steam and is needed for each subsequent upload to make sure you're not just constantly re-creating mod. So please keep using the same project file but feel free to modify things like UpdateDetails, ItemDescription, Title, Visibility and Tags if you like.

Hope this helps and if you feel you've done this properly and still can't get it to work then it's probably on our end... we just haven't come across the problem yet with our limitted testing. Oh and please feel free to let us know how we can improve things!