Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 - The Modding Dungeon Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Modding General - D:OS2 ModdingTool - Discussions/Suggestions

Indeed. I'm looking at this now as Divinity is the core ruleset in a d20 game. It could actually result in modders making different systems for the game, which I'm really intrigued in if we get the ability to do that.

For those who haven't watched the stream where they talked about the editor, check it out:

http://www.twitch.tv/larianstudios/v/18338554

They're looking into: making terrain generation more efficient (adding textures to terrains with 1 move instead of the dozens you need now), undo terrain, and terrain prefabs/moving terrain, letting multiple people work on a map at the same time, improving the wall tool and let you generate roofs more easily, and giving modders the generic files for making new models and whatnot.

What you can now do: resize terrain, have a brand new dialog editor that visually sorts the dialog (is so great! See 13 minutes in for that) and will include various dialog templates

Regarding the GM mode, it seems like their focus is the ability to add things on the fly and change basic parameters, but not necesarilly making wide sweeping changes, and removing things and taking control of monsters will be more difficult because it might wreak havoc with the scripts. And Swen was throwing the word "template" around a lot -- and here's the kicker: He wants modders to be able to create templates and tools for the GM mode so we could easily plug in quests, creatures, items, and whole systems (like, for example, ressurect tools, tools for the GM to manipulate the mod in general), and GMs could get these tools from steam workshop/nexus. And I think the most important thing for the GM mode is to let modders do most of the work, but to set up this malleability well.

I probably missed some things, and the video is interesting overall, so go watch it!

I don't know if this is already doable with the D:OS editor, but a way for the editor to convert a level into a map that you can bring up in-game. You know press 'm' and you get a map with moving dots as characters.
Maybe have the editor convert terrains and walls into a mapmode, or something.

A few more to add to the pile:

1. Fix the issue of importing scripts and other assets/resources from crashing the editor.

2. When you are editing the "script list" on an NPC, it's impossible to manipulate around other menus on the editor. Make it so you can use the other windows so you can find the triggers and items you need to add to the script list.



The mini map has that, so they could probably bring the same functionality to the main map.

It's sad, we had so much problem with the stream at that time that we spent 40 minutes trying to get me on it from Quebec and it didn't worked in the end...
We had so much stuff to talk about but I guess we will give you more update in the future.

I'll have a personal look at all the tools you told be to have a look at. I never used NWN tools myself so I guess that'll be great to see.


I've used everyone of those and I can understand why you post them as examples for user-friendlyness but keep in mind that 2 of theses are from 2D platformer and 1 is for super grid placement (mario maker) with a pretty narrow range of possibilities. The other is 3D but everything is also placed on a grid and there is no terrain manipulation, texturing and other "big" stuff to do. You can do cool stuff in Disney Infinity but it's still pretty "simple".
We will never have an editor that is that user-friendly because creating a game like D:OS demands a lot of freedom and manipulation. On the other hand, we still want to make it easier to use and understand.


Well, for a lot of "you out there" it seems that it was pretty much the big problem no? The tool we use is NOT super friendly for non-profesionnal. If we would release the exact tool that we use I'm pretty sure we would get a lot of complains.

To put it another way, I'd say the concern is we don't want to lose the power of things like charscripts and full access to Osiris. I wouldn't want to be limited to only a "quest editor" sitting between me and the script.

Basically add on top of the editor some simplified interfaces and utilities to get people going along the lines of what has been requested. Powerful enough to make an entire mod out of if need be.

But don't remove access to things that are complicated, just provide easier up-front options for the majority.

That could be done with a simplified interface with the most common functions, and then an advanced mode with everything.

This sounds like a good idea.
There are a few functions that will be used very often, while others are used very rarely. This fits to my experience with computers in general and the RPG maker2000 (The only game creation program I have used.)

The RPGmaker was 2D and simple (SNES look), but even somebody who knows nothing about programming (like me) was able to create a good game.

NWN toolset was pretty easy to understand even though it could be tedious for people not into programming at all. I think they can make a toolset with many layers, from a very simple one for people who only want to concentrate on dialogues and story to a complex one for those who want to program triggers and such. A multi layered mod tool would be nice.

A bit like photoshop. Very accessible for people who only want to improve their holiday pictures and super powerful for designers who can create awesome stuff with it.

That is precisly what I'm hoping for. I simply don't have the time to learn a complicated programmers tool, but if it's simple to begin with and I can get some ideas up and running fairly fast, I might invest some time in it down the line and learn some of the more complicated stuff.

Yes, that's what I was getting at, SniperHF. After Larian does their best to improve the user-interface and workflow, I don't want them to cut features from what they release to the community if some features remain inherently complicated. Swen has always marketed the editor as "the same thing we use to make the game" and I'd like it to stay that way.

If you want really simple look at Xcos: It is a simulation software that lets you connect code blocks with each other.
These blocks openly show their inputs and outputs color coded - red for trigger i/o, black for numbers - a principle that is immediately obvious and can be expanded. If you want to manipulate code you can do that in a very natural way which is ideal for logical puzzles like connected levers or traps that go off in a periodic pattern and the community can even write mods that prepare new blocks.
You get even more intuition if you allow for context sensitive drag-and-drop. You Ctrl-drag a unit (or even a button) into the trigger board, its creature token-block appears (no need to rename the unit). Then you choose its trigger output (e.g. 'dies') or its number output ('isDead') and connect it to the event of your choice (journal entry). This has the advantage that search range of functions is reduced and a certain redundancy of options smoothens your workflow. Debugging is absolutely simple if you refer to existing objects.
Also whenever drag'n drop is not possible you know that an editior function is either not optimally standardized or has prerequisites that could be automated.
Problems are when you need to refer to templates or you want an object to inherit alien methods. And larger scripts might suffer performace problems.

I do not have the experience on modding to know which activities are the most time consuming. Please do not attempt such a mammoth for your editor if you do not agree it would reduce work time since it isn't new functionality and the scripting in your language looks pretty comfortable already.

100% agree.

Another question:
Does Larian intend to include community mods into the official game at some point?

I am not an expert on this topic, but I believe in World of Warcraft Blizzard included several functions in the official game, after other people created a program for this themselves.

The only mod I have worked on:
When I played Pillars of Eternity, the official german translation was partly terrible. The biggest problem was, that several items had stat modifiers as name (the item type "short bow" was named Intellect+2). The community made a translation mod and I reported several errors that were corrected with this mod. If you want to play the game with a proper translation, you still have to download the mod even though it would be no problem for Obsidian to replace the old dialogue files with the new ones. The Modders even discussed with the devs about some translations and every change is documented.

By the way: Does Larian translate their games themselves?
As belgium company, most people can speak english, dutch, french and german I guess.

Never did get into DOS editor : always seemed a bit too high of a learning curve.

I do have some experience with modding/mapping though, primarily using the StarCraft 2 editor. That thing is great - if your editor is half as good as it is, then you will have done a spectacular job. If you don't have anyone familiar with it, it might be a good idea to have someone spend a few days fiddling with it (or just watch some tutorials to see how easy it is to accomplish major overhauls) in order to understand all the features it offers, and how powerful it actually is. In particular, how the editor can be used to create fully custom abilities, effects, import models, or even create a new UI, with a scripting system that fires on top of more standard data editing.

That said, some things I would like to see (that the SCII editor does!) include :

Ability to make your mod depend on another - this will inherit any data changes made in the base mod, which you can then further modify.
When you start a new mod, it automatically sets up all the basic systems you need (I heard in DOS editor, you need to copy/paste and then fix scripts and such to even run a blank custom map, nevermind adding in campaign-like features).
A basic WYSIWYG first level editor : This allows you to create terrain (both fully custom and with prefabs), place units and features, and perform other basic operations. Clicking on units/features should allow you to do some basic customization of them (facing, unit level, feature size, etc)
A middling (XML-like) editor. This would be used to modify units (statistics, buffs, abilities), change or create abilities/items/crafting, add quests, etc. All fields have mouseover text explaining what they do.
A middling effects editor. This should allow you to view models or graphical effects, make a (limited) set of changes to them, such as scaling, rotation, recoloring, retexturing, etc, and give you options on when to use these new graphical effects (eg create a ice sparkle effect by recoloring, slowing the rain effect. This effect can then be used when a new snowfall ability is triggered)
An advanced scripting editor. This should take in arguments from the XML editor (eg if you create a new ability in the XML, you should be able to trigger something to happen when it is used, or if you need a more complex quest chain, you could make one here)
Ability to import custom models, icons, etc would be wonderful.

I've no idea if anyone at Larian ever though about this but for me it's a great idea if the new modding tool we have is great for users.

No, at least not for any games so far.

That is something the leading game has just started getting into a bit and it seems their next game it maybe more standard. It made sense to me that if someone was to create some killer content/features, you could monitor how many downloads, rating etc and then add that into the game as options of course. Probably need some legalese stating anything created with our tools we own and can use. And you being cool if you did use someones stuff you send out some free stuff to them.

Finally had a chance to watch this thing.

Few thoughts:

1. On the stream they mentioned not being sure why people were bringing up Prefabs when they already have that functionality.

Personally I could never get this to work right. I try creating a prefab and it just causes crashes. Maybe in the newer version this works better, or maybe it always worked fine...If you had developer mode.


2. Dialog Editor:

It's great that the old editor files open in the new one.

I think the actual dialog should be a little larger though. The high level overview is nice but it doesn't look very pleasant to type in.

Or perhaps is there a dialog pane where you can see that and it just wasn't shown?


3. Game Master mode and relating to the editor:

It was also mentioned that the community could make templates for people to use in GM mode. Just make sure to include a fair amount with the game's base otherwise the mode will never take off in the first place.

Couple of new ideas after watching the stream... if they go with the templates functionality, some of this could be done by modders:

1) Copy map

Sometimes, I want a city/region/world to change climate, be devastated by war, or a volcano to erupt. There may be ways to do this already, I'm not sure. But it would be great to copy a whole map over in order to maintain the same basic shape/structure and change the environment, or replace some models, etc.

2) On the Fly water levels

This could be a templated script from modders, probably. Something to change the water levels in a region on the fly (simulate flooding, etc).