Modding Help Creating a monster, wich files do i need?

Hi there all,

I have just modding for the first time(includes coding even though i don't know anything about it) and i could really use some advice. I need the right files to make sure i can spawn the monster i have made so far.

Here are some small details: The monster is actually simply a recoloured unique monster with his own elemental type so for example he went from fire to ice, i recoloured him to look like an ice type and used a few other sound files for attacking and such. I'm not really sure what i'm missing and if i made any coding mistakes but i mostly just copied almost everything from that one monster and changed it to what i want it to be.

Any advice/suggestions help?

Thank you kindly!

 

Hey, welcome to the wonderful world of modding!

The location of the files depends a little on the monster you're trying to create. Since you mentioned it's a recolor, let's assume that you're making a copy of a Gleap. To put in your custom monster, you'll need at least the following files:

/Starbound/mods/YourModName/monsters/walkers/YourMonsterName​

Inside this folder, you'd copy and paste all the files from the Gleap folder and replace every instance of the word Gleap with your new monster's name. Tweak anything else (like sound effects, etc,) including the spritesheet. The only thing I would recommend leaving alone is the dropPools in the .monstertype file unless you're looking to add different drops to your monster.
Now you need to tell Starbound where you want your monster to spawn. Let's say you want it to spawn in desert biomes. Inside the desert.biome file there is a section called spawnProfile that tells it what monsters spawn in this biome-- you'll want to create a patch file to add yours to the list. Create the new file here:

/Starbound/mods/YourModName/biomes/surface/desert.biome.patch​

And add your monster to the pool with this patch code, which basically accesses the array and adds a new item:

Code:

[
  {
    "op": "add",
    "path": "/spawnProfile/groups/0/pool/-",
    "value": [
      0.111,
      "YourMonster"
    ]
  }
]

That's the basic gist, there might be some more things you need to add that you'll discover in interacting with your new monsters, but it's no big deal, just poke around the logs and vanilla files to see what's what, and always feel free to ask if you're really stuck. Good luck!

 

Awesome! Thank you kindly i'l make sure to try this out once i'm home, i cudn't really figure a way to spawn him in the game. I'l update this post tommorow to see if it worked.

Sincerely
Applepie

 

Hi Applepie, I'm not sure how far you've made it with your project but I've been working on something similar. Here is a compilation of monsters I've made along the lines of what you're talking about. It includes particles, animations, a custom .behavior and some weird variations of familiar monsters. I hope you find it useful and can share your creation soon.

 

That's actually pretty awesome and it's almost the same as what i'm doing. I'm making fennix in the different elemental types such as ice, poison and electric. I'l use most of the files as an example to see if my creature makes it, thank you very much Monijir!

 

Okay seems like i managed to get him into the game, it took me a while but im glad he's finally in. I have a question about the code, i want him to spawn on ice planets or ice biomes but does this mean i need to adjust the code you have written or do i just need to get the other biome patch file and do the exact same, because i tried that with the ice.biome and icecave.biomes but the game didn't even load.

I would also like to know how to add him to the "collection" list if thats even possible, i managed to catch it and it has the description i want but it's not really possible to see him anywhere there. Is it also possible to make him drop an action figure the moment you catch him? Or atleast increase the chance, because thats what i would prefer.