Building the Demigod Mod'ing Communty (A Must Read For Any Interested Modders)

from Demigod Forums

First off, greetings.  For those who don't know me I'm TheScottishAlien \o/ .  With the SDK fast approaching a few of us interested in mod'ing Demigods have banded together to pool resources and talent in an effort to better our own mods and the game of demigods itself.

Since mod'ing for demigods requires quite a bit more expertise than previous games it's very important that a community comes together with fast, efficient and high quality mods in order for this game to withstand the tests of short-term memory gamers.

in order to get a jump start on this community a few of us have put together several strategies of attack and would like to invite you to help us out with it.

 

Channel

Currently our main focus is in discussion of what can and can't be done right now with the game.  through the IRC channel:  #dgmodding  We've been exchanging ideas and knowledge about what we (as modders) have found out about the games capabilities.

if you're interested please join us there:

Server: irc.stardock.com

Channel: #dgmodding

 

Website

Malard (Malard999 on the forums) has put  a lot of effort into building a community mod database with instructions on many of the aspects of mod'ing that are available now.  It's our goal to stream line the communities mod'ing abilities to create a truly amazing game; and the website will be key for this to happen.

feel free to browse the website here at:

www.dgmod.com

 

Goal

so the goal of this is simple.  we want to make sure that the talent that is available to the Demigod Community is used to its upmost potential.  Our fears are that when the SDK is released half of the community will all start work on their own variation of the same mod.  We hope that with some prior organization this can be averted and rather than ending up with a hundred variations of the same mod we can get more unified, high quality mods being built by not just one or two people but the whole community.

 

As mentioned before, those interested should come and chat with us at #dgmodding on irc.stardock.com (this can either be accessed through impulse or any 3rd party IRC) .

Right now we're discussing the possibilities of creating an overhaul to the LUA in the game to allow for many features left out by the dev's such as having multiple team, observers, sandbox modes, enhanced UI and many other aspects that other mods might require to be built.  If you are thinking of a mod right now that might either seem like too much work or involve repetitive aspects included in other such mod, then this is definitely something you should be interested in.

 

any questions or concerns feel free to post them or ask us in person on the channel :thumbsup:

 

demigod
8,791 views 17 replies
Reply #1 from Demigod Forums Top

good luck for your projects !  :)

 

all modders out there - join the crew !!

Reply #2 from Demigod Forums Top

Hell Yeah, let's get the SDK out, v1.2, impulse phase IV, Ready2Play and the new demigods.  With that and mods, hopefully this game can gain a bit more appreciation for what is a great game (with increasing positives and decreasing negatives).

CursorFX - Customize your Windows cursor
Reply #3 from Demigod Forums Top

Great work Alien and Malard!

I was thinking about this the other day, looking through some of the files myself. LUA code is a little different to what I've dealt with before so I was secretly hoping someone else would come to the table with the Mods I'd love to see. With that in mind, perhaps we should have a bit of a 'Requests List' in some form, so that Mods that people really want to see - like an improved Minion UI and Party HP/Mana bars - can be done without there being 50 different UI mods as since the game is synched, we're all going to need the same stuff.

Reply #5 from Demigod Forums Top

See the website for details on our trac server, you can submit tickets with ideas bug fixes or whatever and you can also see the source code and download it to see what we've done so far!

Reply #6 from Demigod Forums Top

What would be really helpful is some sort of commenting on the code of the different lua and bp files, that says what does what. I've spent alot of time only trying to figure out how the mechanics work, and how buffs are applied, and so on. This would make it so much easier for others to get into modding. I'm quite sure alot of stuff is already known by other modders.

Reply #7 from Demigod Forums Top

Good Morning,

I've been trying to catch a couple of you folks on the IRC channel for quite some time now, but without much success. Can you guys post an approximate schedule of when you might be around?

 

Some things I think would be helpful for the modding development.

  • Similar to ntropy's idea, it would be nice to develop a complete wiki on the lua code used. Comments on the structure, where things are located, what it does, etc. I know that many of us have been just repeating the same work trying to understand what's going on. If we had a searchable, commentful index of everything, that would make things a whole lot better.
  • When the trac site was first put online, I put up some tickets and some patches. Some of the them were commented upon, and Malard did take upon the QoT attack animation scripting error. The Hauberk/Sigil fix was eventually added to the trunk by someone, but I doubt they referenced or use the patch I had already added to the ticket. From this, I've come to the conclusion that I have no idea what the protocols for using the sites are. Can we get something added to help those of who don't have formal programming training.
  • The description project: Frogboy mentioned that if we wanted better descriptions of items and abilities that we would have to create them (and translate them into other languages). I'd think a wiki format for this would be a good way of doing this.
  • Website. The website is a little underdeveloped. I got the debugging functions and Moho debugger somewhat working after googling and harassing someone on the IRC channel, but I still have no idea what exactly they are doing. I also have a problem with the fonts that may make it impossible for me to use (video driver issues), but I'm sure that others may find it helps. If we could get the website updated, that would be great.
  • Forum. Before this forum was added (yay Frogboy & SD & GPG) a forum would have been useful, but I think that isn't an issue anymore.
Reply #8 from Demigod Forums Top

like i mentioned in another post somehwere this week is pretty crazy for me.  next week i should be on mostly in the evenings (that mountain time) and sometime in the morning on tuesday and thursday.

i can't speak directly for Malard and Cody but Malard tends to eb on in my morning (so evening in britain) and cody is usualy always on (i suspect he might be an insomniac :P jk).  what i usualy do is just get home and log on to the IRC and then go make a sandwich or something.  best way to get my attention is just to type by name (i get a nice little sounds that way).

once school has settled down for me i'll be much more accessable and will really try to get that wiki all pretty and like

Reply #9 from Demigod Forums Top

I'm around whenever I'm not asleep lol, my sleeping pattern changes every day. I leave my comp on most days to idle, so you can leave me messages whenever.

Reply #10 from Demigod Forums Top

Great! :)

I have worked a lot with bug testing so if you need somebody to do that please tell me! :)

Reply #11 from Demigod Forums Top

How often are you on the IRC?  Like what are the best times to get on

Reply #12 from Demigod Forums Top

We already have a place to gather - here, and also on the GPG forums, where many moho engine experienced modders await.

Reply #13 from Demigod Forums Top

well actualy this was created back when the modding sections wasn't up and running.  i just moved it here once the section was made a week or two after the post. 

as for the GPG forums i've been keeping an eye on them from time to time and i'd have to say they are basicly dead (well the Demigod part at least).  if there are a but of waiting mod'ers there then i'll have to make another post soon to try get them on the IRC channel cause we'd like to see as many people as possible interested in mod'ing this game :grin:

 

like i've been ranting for a few weeks now... if you interested in mod'ing, joing the IRC (channel: #dgmodding) and chat with those online.

clubs week is over for me so i'll be on fairly regualarly... if anyone want to talk to be specificly best bet is to PM me a time and i'll try my best to be on then.  see u online :thumbsup:

Reply #14 from Demigod Forums Top

I'm a So Cal native who is a Developer/Project manager for a local software company, and I'd love to help as much as I can, I've started pooling ideas for a Balance Mod (In another thread) but I could probably also help anyone who needs a bit of coding help. I haven't worked in Lua before, but I did read a fair about it this past weekend. Seems like a pretty decent scripting language.

Hmm, I had a link to a lua tutorial page somewhere, if I track it down, I'll post it.

Reply #15 from Demigod Forums Top

Some people have alot of knowledge about modding already. I really miss large scale information sharing at the moment. I'd like to mess around with lua, but I simply dont have the time to browser the lua files for hours, especially when I realise others probably already know what I'm looking for anyway.

I wish there was a better wiki for example... where lets say there is a guide that for example says, which lua file does what exactly, something like the phrozenkeep for Diablo2.

Reply #16 from Demigod Forums Top

Only way to get that now, is to make it ourselves. Maybe I'll try that at some point.

Reply #17 from Demigod Forums Top

Something like this would be a huge help on documenting the code...

http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/PeerReviewPlugin