What does “Event Modding Team” mean? Event Modding Team means exactly what it says: A team of modders that works on events related to common festivities or random ideas for events in form of event servers in the main game (not custom game).
This usually involves a theme map (redesigned areas, just with a few limitations) and fun stuff such as boss / hero / survival events, hidden features, pvp events etc in a server that can be freely joined by anyone without having to activate a mod.
I’ve been working on such event servers and hosted some back in TQIT, so for these who played TQIT and want to get an idea of what these looked like (theme maps), here are some screenshots (event maps in the area of helos):
So my idea is to found a team of modders for Grim Dawn that are interested in this sort of modding, hosting such servers and having fun providing this sort of gaming content.
Who can join?
If you are interested in joining this team, you should have
some bit of modding knowledge as I / we will not have the time to teach everything from 0.
fun playing in multiplayer
fun in doing / learning about unusual modding
no problem with much testing (endurance)
a sense for fairness
the ability to keep secrets (responsibility)
creativity
Who / What is searched?
Map (Re)designers
Database Workers
Scripters (hex-editoring / lua / 3rd party applications / reversing)
Balancing Managers (Persons who balance out things like droprates, enemy strength etc)
Questing / Scripted Scenes workers (this job will be really hard as most of what the tq engine had regarding this got cut out)
Event Managers (introducing events on the forums, execution of events, all types of members can do this if they want)
What can I offer to you?
Lots of headaches, frustration and things to breed about
Responsibility as the host of such a server (since these provide an entirely different sort of control)
Unusual moddin knowledge regarding how serverbased mods work -> losts of stuff to learn
An entirely new field of modding possibilities
The chance to work in a team and getting more modding experience, such as knowledge about how the engine works
The chance to learn about stuff that should not get into public as it might otherwise destroy open multiplayer
Interested?
If you’re interested, feel free to drop a post regarding which tasks you’d like to take (what you think you can do) and maybe why you want to do that.
If you’re not a modder but have suggestions for such events or anything to say regarding this idea, feel free to leave a post as well
Team Lead?
There will be no real leader in this team, almost all decisions will be done in form of polls by all team members (except things that can not be decided this way).
The goal is to provide a serverbased mod that does not require the client to run any mod.
What can be done by this sort of modding is creating new (object based) maps or rather redesigning them, rebalancing monsters for greater player masses, spawning stuff, creating a special form of semi-new skills that can be seen by players without a mod, adding trapped stuff (mini games).
The only limitation is that these have to be made of stuff that is already linked in the database and that terrain tools can not be used for redesigned maps.
If you want to add entire quests given by npcs, the client has to use a mod. But you can make host / modders based quests using the lua / quest system and in some way maybe even the conversation system though this will be for functionality only so that clients won’t see it.
It’s sort of running around the limits of the engine trying to widen them as much as possible.
With current modding system its… not quite hard, but every modder will probably update his mod by himself for the upcoming event (like halloween, christmas and etc.), or you are talking about some uncommon events?
It may be hard for some modders to be in the team while they are leading their own projects that take most of their time. For example, I would like to join but I am afraid of becoming useless because Eternal eats quite much of my time
Well, if you are interested - thats what can I do:
scripting
reverse modding (I am talking about correct extraction of the .arz files mainly. I have IDA skills and assembler knowledge, but it is not exactly what I really want to do. I dont like hard mods that include changing of the clientside files)
questing
map redesign
balancing
I was actually interested but I drank last night so wasn’t in the mood to type something.
Then, this morning I log in the forum and he’s asking to get the thread deleted already.
I was really disappointed and if he’s already made his mind up about it, there’s nothing I can do.
And even then that would only make 2 of us, I’m not good enough with modding to provide him the help he needs with the event.
I was also expecting more people to replies to this thread and it didn’t catch many people attention.
It’s been really hot outside for the past days and the forum is a little bit less active.
Might be slightly interested though I’m still considering.
edit:
So far I’ve messed around with level design quite a bit and also enemies/npcs. An idea popped into my head regarding this thread title which I may look further into as it could be rather amusing.
You’re the first modder that I meet in more than 5 years modding that is planning to update his mod regulary regarding such things lol.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea, keep going just the first time I hear of something like that.
Actually I was kinda suprised that there was that less interest and as the thread was already at the bottom of the thread list I expected it to be at page 2 soon where nobody ever will see it again.
Maybe it’s just a bit to early to try to get such a type of modding team together, idk but since there are only two vague answers stating only half-interest or to less time I don’t see this happening anytime soon.
Maybe in the future.
It’s not that I’m not motivated enough, I wanted to do this for a long time and did it already 3 times all alone in tqit but back then I had way more time then now, so now I don’t have the time to do all that work alone, at least not in a reasonable amount of time which would require me to begin working on stuff for events like 3 months beforehand.
Another reason could be that people have no references for what “events” could be done in Grim Dawn so I might have to do one alone to give people an idea of what this is about…though this is probably not going to happen that soon as already said, it’s a whole lot of work.
Ok sorry i’ve been slow. I have been thinking about this for a while.
I was a DBA in a previous life… now i do cybersecurity stuff… i too have limited time but id love to help on either the hosting, server configuration or DB related work.
adding kind of API that takes configuration / scheduling from a real database would be optimal… then you can schedule/calculate/generate all sorts of stuff on the fly.
Question about what is possible from a technical standpoint
tags -> do they have to be on client?
notifications -> do they have to be on client?
We can solve some of that with the fact that tags, scripts, conversations and quest arc files are very tiny - we could have people do an “update before loading grim dawn” for those files. and just include EVERYTHING. that way stuff will just “work” when they play.
there are some free autoupdate/launcher type programs we could use that are opensource and proven to work.
What can be done server-side assuming the client is “prepared” in some way.
1.are there any objects that resemble walls or bridges? what types of terrain can be generated on the fly? in my own experimenting with scripts. i found that you can spawn/despawn pathable objects like bridges… but would they be pathable without a map pathing update? I haven’t tested that.
can we trigger any script/convo/quest we want on the fly if the client already have the .ARC files?
can we teleport the player around (gm powers) against their will?
one thing i did in an eqemu server i ran for many years was
Players who died would come back as undead immediately . their bodies not ressurectable (they respawned of course i didnt have perma death). but if they went back to the area where they died, they would have to contend with their former selves… this could get nasty if many people died in an area
we could do this in grim dawn by having a little plugin/mod that registers certain things with a server like deaths, kills etc. and then gets a little update every so often sot hat you can experience aetherial-turned players in the wilderness.
furthermore - this should happen by default when you die. you go back and its you. there is no body to reclaim xp from. would make multiplayer more fun and challenging.
If clients download a preparation mod, you can do nearly everything serversided that could be clientsided as well.
But the actual goal was to make a server that doesn’t require players to download a mod beforehand.
As I already said, this is very limited and keeps walking along the lines of the engine’s limits so most of what you suggested is only going to work with a preparation mod.
There are pretty strict lines what is possible with serversided only mods which includes for example that you can not do any visual changes regarding paths to resource files, you need to use what is already there (dbrs as they are in the database).
Making new skills is a bit different as these can be used to create new combinations but also only using already existing ones, maybe changing a bit of their functionality but nothing visual as said above.
Tags and notifications are client sided, they only appear because a lua function is called, questglobaleventb that triggers existing scripts that will work with local tags and notifications.
All objects should be possible to spawn, some only by using workarounds but generally shouldn’t be a problem. Pathing objects such as bridges should by default be pathable though I didn’t test that.
yes
no. only if the players have a preparation mod.
4…?
Not possible at all due to engine limitations.
You can not enable players to attack each other other then enabling pvp which is global.
If there are more interested persons, I’d still be interested in hearing about that. I know about at least 2 more persons who would be interested in learning / doing this so if there are more persons, let me know.
