Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Mods Modding community

I can't believe the community is this dead.

Is there another website I'm missing where modders and mappers hang out?

As long as the editor remains as arcane and needlessly over-complicated things will not get better

Creating a new mod with a simple map, working dialogs, character creation, properly loaded loot tables etc should be a button press, currently it is.. not even remotely that easy.

Everything you want to edit script wise is requiring you to unpack the main game files to boot.

My point being, the editor is too complex, and too complicated. It scared everyone away. And the few remaining have weird editor bugs to boot.

Maybe if at some point Larian focuses on making this editor an actual TOOLSET with wizards, tooltips and everything editable with a simple standardized interface things will take off. But until then...

I mean I basically gave up once I realized that to make more than 2 characters talk in a dialog I have to become level 17 arcane script master of pandemonium. And making campaigns is fun but scripting them in THIS editor is NOT fun ;p (to me)

And with the use of radgametools real TC's are impossible anyway. Which is a HUGE issue for big mod projects. You can't add new weapons or character models, new armor or new monsters.

I have no experience with other RPG editors. What makes dialog easier to do in those? Character creation and loot tables should definitely be easier to get going.

Dialogue is pretty standard in most editors, including this one. You edit dialogue and attach it to a character - pretty easy.

Unpacking the main game was kind of annoying, but once I did that and figured out what I needed (Factions, scripts, character creation, etc) it's been pretty smooth.

It took me a solid 2-3 days to learn the basic ins and outs of the editor, but now I'm good to go and I have a campaign in progress.


The bugs are an issue, but if you back up your work thst's not a concern either. The GoG version was broke, but that's fixed now.

I really don't see what all the gripes are about. Powerful tools are complex, it's something modders should be used to.

Namely in most other RPG toolkits the dialog writing is a wizard like system where each action/condition you have available is listed in drop-down menus (This is also infinitely easier to actually quality control for the devs, since the script behind it is global, it only accepts variables in certain places and thus can be easily bug-tested.. and it is always the same script). In D:OS you need to actually learn the script language in and out to write dialog with correct scripting since you don't even get the story-editor style help lines there....

Essentially, the dialog writing is for coders, not for writers or content creators.

In Aurora toolkit for example you click on "Equipment" and you can select the equipment you want out of the entire item library that the game has for the NPC. Same for loot, you assign the loot you want from Item list in that chest and give it random chance or not.

These usability things would allow normal people to make campaigns imo... The lack of em is why you don't see dozens of user campaigns.

Ps.: IN most rpg's (actually.. in pretty much all of them) dialogs are global. You write your Dialog line "Khendar has fallen" in "QuestLine1" you give it a condition (Variable = 1) and when that variable is 1 and you talk to a NPC that has "Questline1" dialog assigned that NPC then has that dialog. And any else that are not locked by variable checks..

Detailing how that works for each and every one of them goes beyond my time. But most of the toolkits make dialog creation and scripting incredibly easy. By wizards and drop-downs. Pre-defined script pop-ups where you only enter your values or variables etc. and the game then writes that script in the background.....

You talking about the syntax guide? It's there just a little more buried. For example if you type:
CONDITION IsLocalFlag(

On the bottom left corner you'll see the order for the arguments.
(Flagname, Bool)


It does require a lot of scripting though for sure. I took a 2 month break from editing and had to relearn it. But I got my first branching dialog with choices and consequences working yesterday. The main thing that annoys me is how the editor doesn't remember string names of flags like it does character and item names.




But I basically agree with this that once you get going it's pretty easy to spit out content. The Caveat to that though is every time I run into something I don't know how to do it massively slows down progress.



Modders sure. But for a successful modding community I think new modders are always needed. People passionate about DOS but not necessarily modding. So the tools taking a good chunk of hours to learn is an impediment for those folks. Even if only 1 in 20 were going to stick with it over the long haul.

Point taken, it's not friendly to first timers.

While we're on the subject - the biggest hurdle I've run into is you can't have a running save game through mod changes? For instance, I play the first hour of my campaign, but then I change something in the second hour. The save game I have doesn't reflect that change.

Am I missing something or is the save game editor and changing the player start position my only hope?

SniperHF, the problem is that to get those syntax helps, you need to know the script you wanted to write to begin with. And this is were literally 99% of people stop caring for this editor. Because they don't know what script does what, what script command to use when and what the heck anything of that gibberish means. They want to write story and dialog, choose actions, conditions, flags and consequences from lists, see global variables in a proper editor window. Click on a trigger and see what script references it.. and stuff like that.

Editor is simply too barebones, toooooooo to the metal. Anyway, by now the chance for a booming mod community is squandered. Everyone waits for Pillars of Eternity and Torment 2...

With Rad Game Tools blocking any kind of content creation aside from level geometry there is simply not going to be any major TC mods. And without those, no proper source of really good information tutorials guides and stuff. It's true you need new modders, but you also need at least 1 mod that really pushes forward and shares every discovery. And D:OS did not have that.

Either way, the editor is too arcane for me.

Eraser (not going to use the numbers), not sure if you've noticed but there is a drop down menu in the dialog that contains all the script terms. On the right side of the action and condition boxes, the blank vertical button brings up a menu. Most of the stuff there is pretty self-explanatory, though they definitely need more documentation explaining stuff like the differences between the flags.

But yes, the editor is annoying, and sadly Larian has done little to improve the experience. Even if they improve modding life significantly now, a lot of potential modders have already forgotten about the game, and it will take a lot of work to revive the modding community. D:OS is a great game with a lot of potential, but Larian has dropped the ball on modding. It's obviously not something they have high on the priority, considering how long it took them to even get out some written documentation.

There's an IRC channel that a few modders *appear to be* on, but nobody has replied to me yet. See this post on how to connect: http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=533636#Post533636

Personally, I think starting a group chat on Skype would be way easier.

Hello! I just joined the forum. I hope it's not completely dead. Even if it's only a few members posting, that's still very much alive to me. Anyways, as I haven't had experience with other editors for games (aside from Portal 2's ingame map creator), I can't really compare it with anything, but I do like the editor. It seems pretty powerful. If there are people to answer my questions on this forum whenever I run into problems, then I don't care how dense it is.

Anyways, what all have you created? It seems Burgee is working on a longish campaign. Anything else?