So, someone sent me a message asking for a bit of advice on how to set up a mod so you can start playing around with all that stuff. I may have gotten carried away and made an entire guide… sortof.
Thought I’d post it here. It’s short, simple, and should hopefully get you working on your own mod pretty quick.
And just so you know, this isn’t a guide about making the map itself, rather just getting things setup so you can make and play with your world as you make it.
Use the Asset Manager first. Under Tools, select Extract Game Files to the default location, which should be directly to the Grim Dawn install location. It’ll take a while to extract about 5gb worth of data. This should give you everything you need to start working on the map. (I think)
Once it’s all done, go to the top, select Mod, and then New. Put in a name for your mod and select OK. This set up the folders and stuff needed for your new mod.
Exit out of Asset Manager and open up Editor, it’ll give you a little window. In the dropdown box at the top, select your mod you just made, and then just put in a name for your mod in the File Name spot and select OK.
A black screen will meet you. At the top where to toolbar is, select Region and select Add New Terrain, which gives you a terrain region to mess with.
You’ll get another little box, where you can name that terrain, and then pick how big it is. in the big window of it, open up Source, and then select Maps. This’ll put the terrain into that folder, where it belongs.
Edit: After a Patch, 256x256 is no longer an available size. Biggest is 128x128
Now that you’ve done that, you’ll have a colorful little box on the screen. You can do this several times, and then use the arrows on a box you have selected to move them around and shape the general world.
Now the fun part happens. Select one of those terrains, and then in the bottom right, select Editor Mode. You get a close up of your WORLD. Now you can get to the fun part. Put things in it, makes some holes, color the holes, fill the holes with water. If you’re creative enough to figure it out, fill the holes with lava instead! Might be a good idea to look around in the items section and find the Spawn Point, so you can choose where you’re going to appear when you start.
Once you’re done messing with it, go back to Layout Mode, open up the Build tab, And select both Rebuild all Pathing and Rebuild all Maps (or if its a really big map with lots of areas, and you only changed a few of them, then rebuild Selected… is what you use so you don’t rebuild the entire world every time you move a stick.)
You’ll get something that looks kinda like this.
Then select File and Save All. Exit the Editor.
Open up the Asset Manager, and make sure the Editor is closed, or you wont let you do this stuff. Select the Mod tab at the top, and then whatever you named your mod. Find your .wrl file, right click it, and select Auto-Create Asset. Once that finishes, go to Build, and select Build. Once it’s done, your map is ready for playing. (I hope)
To pack it up for others to play, first make a folder somewhere that is the same name as your mods folder name (in my case it’s “Testaria mod”). Inside that folder, you want to make two folders, one named “database” and the other named “resources”.
Then go into the actual mod, which should be found in “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Grim Dawn\mods” or wherever you might have Grim Dawn installed. open up the database folder and grab “database.arz” and “templates.arc” and put it in the database of the other folder. Then open up resources, grab all “.arc” files in it, and stick it into the appropriate folder. Then take your now ready to play folder, compress it (i recommend .7z) and now it’s ready for others to play, without being able to mod it themselves.
Remember: In order to make any sort of changes in the Asset Manager, the Editor must be closed.
I THINK i covered everything i needed to. At least for a basic guide. If i missed anything or went out of order, lemme know.
As I work on my own map and learn things about it myself, I may post another Dummies guide to map design.
Additional issues:
[spoiler]
Oh yes, this is actually something i can answer! If you don’t select a region when in layout mode, this will happen when in editor mode. It doesn’t have a region to center on, so it defaults to absolutely nothing.
You can fix this by going up to the top and open up the drop down bar, and select one of your regions from that. Then you’ll be centered on the region you chose. This will be especially helpful when you start making really big maps and don’t wanna drag yourself around to find one, or you make caves somewhere and you wanna jump to it really quick.[/spoiler]
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