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FrozenOne-94

Q&A about modding!

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Even though I have no intentions of moving forth onto EM5 in modding, I commend you for taking your time in trying to help get others started.  I believe that will have a greater longer-lasting benefit to the community as a whole and certainly appreciate you taking your time to do this, hopefully those who are interested will take advantage of this courtesy you've extended.

 

Even though I don't have an interest I believe these would be prudent things to start people off with.

 

1). Most importantly of all, which model applications that you are aware of have the capacity to make files in such a manner as to function for EM5?  As with any format you have the risk that even though it's the same file-type it may not be formatted in such a way as to be understood by the program it's intended for, so any assistance you can provide in listing applicable model apps that can create/export in the proper format for EM5 would be a good place to start.  I am sure there are a few that can do it, but preferably list the more reasonably priced options you're aware of first, going down the line to the more expensive ones that can do the job.

 

2). Once they have this program it would be nice for them to know any structure-based restrictions that are required to be met in order to make the model dump correctly for the game. Being a new format to everyone around here, the things that you'd think would be obvious if you've dealt with the format before won't be so obvious to those that don't have experience.. So for example, explaining how to setup the bodywork of the vehicle, the interior aspect, the wheels and doors would be nice. In EM4 they were separate parts that had to be dumped, I don't believe that is still the case, so it would be nice for them to know the structure for how to do it right.

 

3). Texturing was done diff in em4 vs the em5 system, so a basic run-down of how exactly the textures work with the new system and how to set them up to work within it would be a nice starting point, from there people can ask more elaborate questions but I'm going for the "getting started" sort of thing.

 

4). From my tinkering with em5 it was pretty easy to put items into the editor, but people could benefit from a quick tutorial to get it into the game and working properly.. IE just getting the new content to show up in the editor, and going further to making it usable in the actual game (as far as advanced things like settings for them can be hammered out by others once they know what they have and what they want it to do).  Again going for a starting point for them.

 

5). Any noted restrictions or defects to be wary of in the above mentioned tasks, things that you can incidentally do that will potentially cause problems (conflicts or crashes and things like that).  Any pitfalls in doing the above things that you don't want to do for the undesired results.  Kinda sucks but we've all been there in trying something that did not work, it's nice to point out to anyone that follows what doesnt work at all and why, such as why taking em4 models and trying to direct-port them is a pretty bad idea.  I've seen the EM5 models, so I know what you mean when you said that, but others may not quite grasp how different the systems really are.

 

6). How to package your "mod" components in such a way that they can be easily added to another's game by a relatively novice-experienced user... When I played with em5, it did not have a mod package feature, and to be totally honest I don't know if it does as of today or not, but either way it'd be a prudent thing to explain to modders so that they can make modification components that are easy to use, and ultimately easy to remove if the users should need to.  You'll have to wing it a bit to explain this one, but being that I don't know where that stands in doing that for this game I can't be more specific, sorry.

 

Other than that I can't think of anything else that is really prudent.  I am sure I missed some points along the way and simplified tasks a bit much so for that I apologize, but ultimately the name of the game in what I've posed to you should hopefully be a fairly reasonable starting point for people to get the ball rolling if they so desire to start working with EM5.  I appreciate you taking the time to run through and try to help people get started, hopefully they respect and appreciate you taking your time to do so and ultimately get more specifics than I have posed here.  But as I said I'm trying to give a nice starting point that hopefully will at least put people down the path to ask the more specific questions related to what they want to do.

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