Modding Help Mod Starting

Discussion in 'Starbound Modding' started by Xoriah, Sep 16, 2014.

  1. Xoriah

    Xoriah Void-Bound Voyager

    Hi-

    I went through a mod guide, and able to make simple mods. However, I really liked the Star Foundry mod, and looked into how they made it work. I'm noticing some LUA scripts.

    My question is how are they implementing the lua scripts? Is there a guide that talks about that?

    -X
     
  2. The | Suit

    The | Suit Agent S. Forum Moderator

  3. Xoriah

    Xoriah Void-Bound Voyager

    I can figure LUA out, that's the easy part. The over all modding structure still is confusing to me. Outside of packing and unpacking and basic editing, it's still a mystery. I'm sure it's not that tough, but it new and it takes time to learn. I never modded a game, in fact I don't know of any other mod friendly game. Trying to learn how to mod well enough I can teach my friends to do it.

    So I'm going to reference the StarFoundry mods because I like it.

    So if I want to edit the stone pickaxe I have to modify the "stonepickaxe.miningtool" file. Is the extension significant? Or does it matter? The same goes to an object file. I found the solarpanel.object file. It's also placed in an objects folder? Is that special?

    I'm trying to figure out the whys and hows, so I can create not just duplicate what someone else has done.


    -X
     
  4. Folder location does not matter. The extension does, as it provides the game knowledge of what type of item it is parsing when it scans the JSON code.
     
  5. The | Suit

    The | Suit Agent S. Forum Moderator

    That isn't entirely right. Folder location matters when you are modifying vanilla files.
     
  6. You are quite right, good sir! (Just woke up) Allow me to clarify :)

    Folder location does not matter in the instance that you are creating new items. If you are intending to _Merge or Patch existing vanilla files, you must make sure the paths match.
    So if your vanilla file is located in /items/tools/someminingtool.miningtool then you must have your path of your mods folder match the same. In otherwrods /mods/YOURMODNAME/items/tools/someminingtool.miningtoo.
     
  7. Xoriah

    Xoriah Void-Bound Voyager

    I get the folder location. But not the extensions entirely. The animation, frames, and lua extensions seem self explanatory, but everything else seems arbitrary. Do I need to use .object? Or can I just call it .whatever?
     
  8. The | Suit

    The | Suit Agent S. Forum Moderator

    Yes all extensions are important.

    Just like how VLC media player cannot play a word document if you rename the extension mkv
    Starbound cannot parse the file unless the extension is right. Each extension follows a different set of rules to be parsed by starbound.
    Unless the extension is right, and the code in that extension used is valid. The game will either ignore the file or throw errors.
     
  9. Xoriah

    Xoriah Void-Bound Voyager

    You sound very abstract to me. To make more sense for me, can you give me a list of all the Starbound extension with what they are for or link to them?
     
  10. Thats actually not true. :) You can right click it and "Open With" it using VLC. A Great way to hide special pictures ;) We catch people doing this at work all the time.


    .object -> Objects
    .frames - > Frames for animations
    .animation -> animation
    .tech -> A Tech
    .lua -> Lua scripts
    .config -> Configuration files for various purposes
    .item -> Generic item
    .matmod -> Material modification like grass
    .material -> Building materials
    .generatedsword
    .generatedweapon
    ...

    .... Do I really need to do this? They are all self explanatory. Either the extension is what they actually are, or very very close. Its easier just to look at the files yourself.
     
    The | Suit likes this.
  11. The | Suit

    The | Suit Agent S. Forum Moderator

    Header injection - is one of those techy exceptions. I remember learning about steanography about 10 years ago when it was all the rage. Then i realized how useless it was to me, as what messages do I have that require such drastic measures?
     
  12. I haz no ideeer what you are talking about there mate. :(
    Send me a PM so we dont derail this thread :lickitung:
    /offtopic


    Oh yes that's always fun. Hiding a .zip in a .jpg. Never knew the word for that
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2014
  13. Xoriah

    Xoriah Void-Bound Voyager

    What's the difference between an object, item and material? Aren't they all objects? To me - item ISA object and material ISA object.
     
  14. No. An object is a placeable object such as the crafting table, torch, smeltery, door, etc. Material is a block along the world's grid that makes up the terrain like Dirt or wooden planks. An item is something like a iron bar, copper bar, etc that cannot be placed or used - Mainly only for crafting components.
     
  15. Xoriah

    Xoriah Void-Bound Voyager

    Thanks, that should be able to get me started.
     
  16. AstralGhost

    AstralGhost Pangalactic Porcupine

    I assume you mean steganography? (Was it ever really 'all the rage'?)

    In which case, I have to disagree a little on it's uses. While it's certainly not something you might use everyday it's actually got tons of uses that are rarely exploited. The real key point there is that your messages don't need to just be text, it can be real data.
    How is that useful? Well think about it... What could you do with something like a regular image if you could also send additional data with it that you'd not normally see unless opened by the right program (but still viewable by everyone else)? There are tons of uses for that.

    One use was demonstrated by the game 'Spore' a long time ago. The game Spore introduced the mechanic of allowing players to simply just trade viewable PNG files and actually create real creatures in-game from only those images. The images were completely viewable from the user's perspective and displayed the creature itself in the image - but when loaded into the game the program itself knew to look deeper. The data hidden within those images allowed the program to recompose the creature captured in the image. Restoring that creature from the image allowed you to instantaneously import it into your game from only downloading a simple image file.

    That was a creative and interesting use of steganography that benefited both the developer and the users. The developers have less to explain about how to swap creatures and the users themselves have a very user-friendly method of transporting their data.

    I believe some programs have also transferred data in images to allow them to be viewed in true 3D using steganography, while for everyone without special 3D rendering hardware/software it displays simply as a regular 2D image.

    It doesn't all need to be about trying to avoid your boss or the FBI or whatever else people try to do with it. It has limited uses, but the uses it does have are very interesting and also very useful in certain applications.

    In terms of Starbound, imagine being able to download what appears to only be an image of a modded item or a NPC, when in actuality it becomes that mod itself in-game when placed into the right folder. That'd be pretty cool.
    (This was actually a feature I was going to create for a game I was working on a while back that I had to shelve for a while.)

    Edit: I apologize for going off-topic..... TC, I'm still looking into how to mod Starbound myself, too. It doesn't seem there is much proper documentation anywhere. It seems most beneficial to simply view assets or mods already in existence and learn from those.
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2014
    Tsunder and severedskullz like this.
  17. The | Suit

    The | Suit Agent S. Forum Moderator

    Right, never trust spell check to get the word right :p
    There maybe tons of uses - but out of everyone I knew, I had about 3 people who had a moderate interest in technology compared to me. None of which was interested in such things. Not to mention I was no secret agent which required to pass messages to other people without anyone really bothering to read.

    But that is definitely some pretty interesting stuff that I never even knew about.
    Well there really isn't any proper documentation yet.
    I had an ebook a long time back which talked about modding - but problem is they kept changing so many things. It was a pain to constantly keep updating it.
    Anyway 90% of it is self explanatory. The rest you can just create a thread and most modders will help ya out with the rest.
     
    AstralGhost and severedskullz like this.

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