Scripting Build Videos

It takes time for it to show that you have a gold account on the forums.

 

Devs never gave a date. lel

 

I'm both confused and curious as to where you're getting this information, and how its believable enough to post.

 

KAG 1.0 @ WikiLeaks?

 

I would take Ninja12's post as wild speculation, at the most; the scripting build will be released when it's ready, and that's all we can know for sure.

 

hmm really? strange... i can play on gold servers + customise my head though... what do i do after i enter in the access code for premium for my name to show up in gold? actually it doesnt really matter to me much

 

It takes awhile for the forum to register that you're gold.

 

:p I use clues.
</br>--- merged: Jan 12, 2013 4:25 PM ---</br>
Or maybe I'm a dick.

 

And mind showing us where this super sekrit clue is?

 

...Go on devlog, go to the post on Jan. 21, AND LOOK AT THE WHOLE POST.

 

Done, and now? Just quote the thing you mean

 

'The wait won't be much longer..'
'..a few gameplay videos'
'...scripting preview, and release shortly after..'

 

Not everyone has the same definition of soon and not much longer.
I remember at one point a company said "SOON" and we had to wait 1 year.
Basically, its out when its done.
That can be today, next day,month,year or who knows when.

 

Soon for indie devs is 6months, but it will possibly be shorter, maybe 2/3 months?

 

Angelscript update will need a lot of well explained tutorials if you want modders to mod (more than 2 people) I looked at the scripting documentation and if you don't already know how to script with C# you won't be able to script with angelscript... Futhermore it will be twice as hard for those who don't speak english very well.
So yeah if it'll be like that, that's really a pity because not everybody have the time to learn C#.. And not every programmer want to mod, so we'll have like 2 or 3 modders only ? :/

 

I'm sure well get some good "angelscript modding in KAG" tutorials in the wiki (I'm certain ill probably write some myself after getting comfortable with the new API). Plus, from what I've heard, a lot of basic stuff will still be changeable in configs, making very basic modifications easy for non-programmers.

In my experience as a software dev for communities like this, a more robust API is far better than a watered down one. It allows for more growth, better quality mods, further development past the company's release cycle, and overall a much happier community.

I wouldn't worry about the learning curve for the API. if the game's good enough, the rest will follow.

 

Will modding CBlob be simply extending the class, or "overriding"/redefining it, Ruby-style? (Or better, both?) Curious to see how this would work.

This is crucial. If you all do this, I promise it will make every modder happy. Regular changelogs available somewhere that we can view will be excellent, and necessary.

Also, I'd like to ask if you all will adhere to normal software versioning standards - meaning (for others reading who aren't familiar):
[major].[minor].[patch].[dev]

IOW, will modders be able to get a good idea if their mod might break based on version #s alone? It'd be great to not have to worry about mods in a 1.0.3 to 1.0.4 patch, for instance; but totally reasonable to check the changelogs on a minor release to see if the affected code would break the mod. Curious if we'd move away from the "build" model and more toward a more traditional format.

Might be neat, some things off the top of my head I'd probably quickly look into as a modder:

• The ability to "insert" objects (blobs?) on the map at the start (pre-built workshops, "abandoned" cities, etc etc)
• The ability to spawn at random times blobs into the map during gameplay (a la zombies)
• The ability to cause events to happen during gameplay as a player reaches a certain point in the map (think: Indiana Jones mod where you have to escape a dungeon)
• "Collapsible" cliffs/bridges that fall when you touch them
• Seasons (snow, rain, etc)

FWIW, definitely don't expect all of those to be doable immediately, but would be cool if they are. :)
Thanks for the update Geti!

 

The funniest part? I actually had an idea for something similar once scripting is released. I'm making it start you (and possibly a team) on the shore of an island, and there will be huge maps that you can explore. Certain points of each map will link to another map, allowing for huge labyrinths and an end goal of collecting treasures in certain portions of the dungeon. Highlights will include random mobs you'll have to fight, bosses guarding each treasure, an end boss, possibly items that can be equipped that will increase damage/health/etc, possibly skills if you can fuck with keybindings. It's gonna be good fun!

 

So in summary, creating objects and characters is stable, but messing the world or metagame logic is likely to be unstable.

In essence, this is the same situation as Cortex Command was and is still in. You can create new objects or groups of them to your hearts content, but giving them context to use in for gameplay and tie all the created content together into a coherent experience... yeah, good luck with that. Not so fond about that, to be honest. Its not a modding platfom I'd personally settle for.

Back then, I created the AAL faction and all the other similar item/actor things with the hopes that Cortex Command would tie them and all other user created objects together somehow in the future in a consistent and persistent manner, but unfortunately the game was never designed for that to begin with. I had no idea of this since I was also inexperienced with content and game design to begin with back then.

This left all the created mods and other content inconsistent and unstandardized to begin with, meaning the mechanics of all the created content was at the mercy of the modder's own judgement and emotions, which meant that a consistent game experience was as good as impossible if you used content from two different modders or even content of one modder versus the original vanilla content.

For KAG, I was thinking about creating an entire consistent game experienced that was designed from scratch, starting from the way the environment works, what tiles the world has and how they behave, working all the way to entities and their interaction, and finally, defining the game logic based on the previous components.

But a modding system like this won't be able to support something like that I'm afraid. I could try to hack that in, but that will mean a whole load of pain trying to adapt to new changes within the engine simply because the world system and the game logic system is not as robust as the blob-entity system.

I don't know man. I'll still take a look at modding system anyway and perhaps modify the zombie fortress experience to some extent, but my original plans are probably going down the bin, along with any serious modding effort I would have put in. I will look into the system before I set those words in stone, but thats how I feel right now with the progress I've seen so far.