Modding Livestream Recap

[CamDawg]

For those that may have missed it, I'm currently livestreaming the creation of a new mod, the G3 Community Item Pack as a live tutorial so that folks can come by and ask questions as we go along. The plan is to stream a couple of hours each day until we're done. After each day is complete, I'm going to post a recap and relevant links from the day's stream in this thread. More importantly, if you have any questions from the stream, feel free to ask below as the plan going forward is to start future streams with a Q&A from previous streams.

Thanks to everyone who joined today; the fact that we had non-zero viewership already exceeds my expectations.

We'll see you again tomorrow at the same time, 1600 GMT: 9 AM California, noon ET, 5 PM London, 6 PM Berlin, 1 AM Tokyo.

Today's stream:

Chapters

0:00 Coming soon
4:45 Introduction
7:40 Tools & References
13:08 Setting up Github
19:30 Basic mod setup
50:57 Setting up mod testing in game folders
56:22 Intermission
1:01:20 Item creation: Basics & Akkabar's Battleblade
1:35:48 Item creation: A Caster's Guide to Self-Defense

Other links and mentions from today's stream:

Tools & Resources

Near Infinity
WeiDU documentation
Notepad++
WeiDU Notepad++ Highlighters
Modder prefix list

Links:

The mod on Github: https://github.com/Gibberlings3/G3_Community_Item_Pack

[jastey]

5 hours ago, CamDawg said:

the fact that we had non-zero viewership already exceeds my expectations.

You're really selling yourself short. or IE modding. Or both.

On a not so serious note: I'll hold you responsible if we get flooded by item merchant mods!1

Thank you for your efforts, I am looking foreward to the continuation today.

[RoyalProtector]

It was great, and it already gave me homework to improve the quality of my mods 

[Luke]

Hey @CamDawg, great work!

I would have opted to make the entire item creation process in WeiDU rather than NI, but I can see that would probably be difficult for beginners...

Having said that, I can immediately see an "issue" with A Caster's Guide to Self-Defense: as you surely know, op146 may trigger the Cowled Wizards, so unless that is desired, you would want to add the effects directly on the item ability itself (rather than casting the corresponding wizard spells). Speaking of that, I definitely plan to add a tweak to Tweaks Anthology in order to account for this engine quirk (will most likely require EEex...)

[mickabouille]

OT: I don't like that so many things are starting to require EEex

[zenblack]

I like EEex in that it makes impossible things possible. I'm glad it's still being developed by @Bubb

Edited October 21 by zenblack

[subtledoctor]

3 hours ago, Luke said:

Having said that, I can immediately see an "issue" with A Caster's Guide to Self-Defense: as you surely know, op146 may trigger the Cowled Wizards, so unless that is desired, you would want to add the effects directly on the item ability itself (rather than casting the corresponding wizard spells)

Eh, that has lots of disadvantages: incompatibility with mods that change spells, inability to be detected as a certain spell being cast, etc. 

IMHO if and item says “can cast X spell” then it should just cast that spell. The Cowled Wizards should be just as concerned with someone throwing Fireballs around the city from a book as from memory or a scroll…

[RoyalProtector]

4 hours ago, Luke said:

I would have opted to make the entire item creation process in WeiDU rather than NI, but I can see that would probably be difficult for beginners

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that would have put off most people.

[Luke]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

The Cowled Wizards should be just as concerned with someone throwing Fireballs around the city from a book as from memory or a scroll…

Yes, makes sense...

However, there might be (are?) some edge cases for which op146 and friends are not supposed to trigger them...

[jastey]

@CamDawg Maybe you could mention that AL|EN's tool in its original form also packs a one-fits-all zip mod package.

[skellytz]

3 hours ago, jastey said:

@CamDawg Maybe you could mention that AL|EN's tool in its original form also packs a one-fits-all zip mod package.

While AL|EN's Infinity Auto Packager is definitely useful, it adds only Windows and macOS WeiDU installers to the package; users still need to download WeiDU for Linux separately. It doesn't offer any customization, so the package filename always defaults to the name taken from the given mod's Project Infinity metadata (which tends to be rather long) and version string taken from the TP2 (which may sometimes produce unwanted results.)

Check out Argent77's WeiDU Mod Packager. It's customizable and can even pack Windows, macOS, and Linux installers into a single ZIP archive (the "multi" variant). You can change the package name to be generated from the mod's base TP2 filename and the release tag version number.

[zenblack]

@CamDawgSince you are doing items and I didn't see one on the list, would you mind making one of the items buildable by Cromwell so we can see an example of that?

[jastey]

Again, thank you for a very informative session!

I had a weird problem today, where every other 5 to ten minutes or so, the stream would hop back 1-3 seconds and repeat what just happened. So I think I didn't miss anything, but it got a bit tedious after a while. I am not sure what would cause this or if there is anything I can do on my end to prevent this.

[CamDawg]

Apologies that I've fallen behind on these a bit.

Part II

0:00 Starting Soon
2:38 Introduction, Q&A
15:06 General Game File Overview
23:01 Using ADD_CRE_ITEM to Assign Item to Creature
35:38 Item Creation: Countability in Summoning Matrices
42:54 Item Creation: The Power of Real Change
50:55 ADD_CRE_ITEM Redux
54:13 Wrapping Up Otems
1:02:53 Item Creation: Vine Shield
1:25:03 Intermission
1:31:35 Item Creation: Slippery Court
2:02:15 Item Creation: Graze
2:12:07 Nightly Build
2:19:08 Outro

Part III

0:00 Starting Soon
1:58 Introduction, Q&A
6:03 First Foray into Scripting
1:07:21 Intermission
1:10:06 Cat Sighting: Iris
1:11:00 A Little More Scripting
1:12:09 Item Creation: Lunar Shards
1:40:26 Item Creation: Never Alone
1:40:26 Item Creation: Tinkerer's Spectacles
2:28:09 Nightly build
2:31:20 Scripting Shouts
2:34:28 Outro

Part IV

0:00 Starting Soon
2:32 Introduction, Q&A
6:42 Creating and Using Arrays
22:19 Assigning Item Prices
47:45 Intermission
52:59 Reason  #895,118 Why Icewind Dale is the Superior Game
54:40 Multiple Disconnects, Hooray for Rural Internet
58:09 Item Creation: Belt of Urdunnir
1:14:37 Item Creation: Peril-Sensitive Goggles
1:32:01 Item Creation: Executioner Putty
1:58:36 Nightly build
1:58:57 Advanced Array Chicanery
2:09:39 Outro

Part V

0:00 Starting Soon
2:08 Introduction, Q&A
5:26 Spell States
22:06 Descent Into Madness: Creating The Realmshaper's Brush Item
1:10:46 Intermission
1:13:56 Return to Madness: Creating The Realmshaper's Brush Item (cont)
1:57:57 Item Creation: Robe of the Archmage Jasteya
2:09:16 Item Creation: Emerald Ioun Stone
2:26:11 Nightly build
2:29:59 Outro

[CamDawg]

On 10/21/2024 at 7:44 PM, zenblack said:

@CamDawgSince you are doing items and I didn't see one on the list, would you mind making one of the items buildable by Cromwell so we can see an example of that?

We are going to start tomorrow's stream (part VI) with some upgradeable items.