Official GUI Based Mod Creation Tool

[Cameron Textor]

Since mod creation in VS is based on somewhat coding with JSON files, and most people suck at coding, what vintage story needs for modders is an Official GUI Based Coding/ Programming Free Mod Creation Tool. The tool should heavily be like Mcreator which is for minecraft (except the vintage story tool should be official and made by the dev team behind vintage story) and should have as many if not more features than Mcreator.

The tool should have the ability to create any of the following (Without needing to do any coding) in a similar fashion to mcreator.
- New Blocks
- New Ores and Easily Configurable Ore Gen
- Block Bases for certain types of blocks (Such as stairs, slabs, fence, ingots, stackable blocks etc)
- New mechanical blocks
- New items
- New Item / Block recipes
- New Armor types
- New Food types
- New Fuel Types
- New Building Structures
- New sounds and Music
- New Tools
- New storage containers / Chests
- New Mobs / Animals
- New Plants
- New Tree types
- New Biomes
- New Liquids / Gases / Plasma's (Gases and Plasma's references have been found in VS Code)
- New Weather Patterns
- New Dimensions (If VS gets something like MC's nether, end etc)
- New GUI's

+ anymore that I can't think of that should be added onto the list, if you think of things i missed list them in your reply.

The Tool should have the ability to do the following

- Use drag and drop procedures like Mcreator does to replace having to do coding to make the logic etc of your mod.
- Make new textures with a MS paint like tool with built in texture templates of every block / item / mob texture used in Vintage Story.
- Create Ore packs that would generate everything associated with bringing a new ore into the game (ore block, ore itself, ingots of the ore, tools and armor made of the ore etc.)

Edited September 20, 2020 by Cameron Textor
update 1

[Erik]

For most mod creators such a tool wouldn't make creating mods easier, having a GUI based approach is simply just often slower than editing a JSON file. Furthermore, editing JSON files isn't really coding but more like editing a configuration file, it's a data format and not a programming language. So a "VSCreator" wouldn't really be that helpful in my opinion, as it would only be a differently formatted text editior opening the right json files for the things you want to add/change, just another json viewer/editor, something that already exists. Also, MCreator wasn't a great success or useful tool for existing modders either, as there wasn't any mildly successful or unique mod created with it. The resources that would need to be allocated to creating such a program would be much better spend on creating more content for the game.

So, if you want to mod, learn the JSON format and experiment by editing the games json files, consult the wiki and ask for help on the Discord if needed.

[Stroam]

I like the idea of making modding VS more approachable and template generation, which is what you are asking for, definitely helps speed up the coding process. However making it GUI based I feel might be like handing someone who doesn't know math a calculator. They never pick up the fundamentals are limited to what the calculator can do. Whether that's bad, good, or just is would depend on what the goals of the individual are. Thanks for suggesting the idea!

[hiddenmonarch]

On 9/20/2020 at 8:22 AM, Erik said:

For most mod creators such a tool wouldn't make creating mods easier, having a GUI based approach is simply just often slower than editing a JSON file. Furthermore, editing JSON files isn't really coding but more like editing a configuration file, it's a data format and not a programming language. So a "VSCreator" wouldn't really be that helpful in my opinion, as it would only be a differently formatted text editior opening the right json files for the things you want to add/change, just another json viewer/editor, something that already exists. Also, MCreator wasn't a great success or useful tool for existing modders either, as there wasn't any mildly successful or unique mod created with it. The resources that would need to be allocated to creating such a program would be much better spend on creating more content for the game.

So, if you want to mod, learn the JSON format and experiment by editing the games json files, consult the wiki and ask for help on the Discord if needed.

I feel like what would also be important is more clarity within the files themselves. I wanted to make wolves less aggressive or stop them from attacking entirely but wasn't able to figure out how to do this as what some of the values actually do are unclear, and especially what the limits are for those values (would my game break if I set this value to a negative number?). This also occurs in this post.

Edited September 22, 2020 by Waterwing Spiritstream