Modding in Crysalis
Added 2023-07-31 07:42:01 +0000 UTCHey folks,
today I found something nice, while checking a different feature.
This will allow modding! Though not endless modding (unless someone hacks the binary).
First off, actual modding, with code, is quite hard to achieve in GameMaker Studio 2 (the engine I use) and not something that I strive for. Simply put, it's nothing I see essential for the game.
Nevertheless, I am not against modding and this is an opportunity.
What I saw is, that I can have texture pages in PNG format and drop-in (other formats work too, but are harder to work with). Other parts of the game can also be easily modded, if I make them data driven.
But what is a texture page? Some may ask. Well, texture pages, is where graphics live and they are then send to the video RAM to draw whatever you need. As I can put these plain onto disk, I can then allow people to drop in their own texture pages and mod the look of the game.
Also I can have certain aspects of the game excluded from modding (like character inserts), to protect those who don't want their character modded.
So graphics could be exchanged then, for characters, backgrounds and even scenes (but the coding won't be effected, so the game is pretty much the exact same).
Depending on how I end up building maps, it can also be that map design might be data driven and changeable.
As of writing this, it's not though. The data is there, but not used, as it's rather clumsy.
But I might use it again, in the future
