Modding Support Status

Since the game isn't even out, naturally modding is in a VERY early state. Practically everything could change, so please don't get too attached to your mods at this stage.

Modding support will be broken into a few stages. The first stage, Pre-EA, is focused on just getting the bare minimum fully working and with high ease of use ASSUMING you know how to code.

After EA we will continue to flesh out modding features, with a focus on adding visual tools to make creating mods easier and faster, with less digging through code.

Here is a overview of features and their statuses. This is by no means a comprehensive list, and anything 'Under Consideration' is just that: not guaranteed to be added.

Feature	Description	Status
Core Mod Loading	Mod manifest, enabling, disabling	COMPLETE
Mod Saving: Custom Data	Serialized and deserialize strings to a save file	COMPLETE
Scriptable Lookup Table Modification	Add and modify assets in the lookup table	COMPLETE
Mod Generator	Simple tool to get started with a new mod	COMPLETE
Core Mod Asset Importer	Core asset importer feature to be used across many importers	COMPLETE
Static Model Importing	Importing of static GLTF models	COMPLETE
Texture, Audio Importing	Importing of textures and audio files	COMPLETE
Misc Item Importing	Importing of simple misc item	COMPLETE
Child Item Importing	Importing of child items	COMPLETE
Melee Item Importing	Importing of melee items	COMPLETE
Code-Based Quest Support	Very clunky quest creation via code	COMPLETE, Not documented
Code-Based Dialog Support for Quests	Very clunky dialog creation via code.	COMPLETE, Not documented
Very basic graph viewer	A very basic (and ugly) viewer for your dialog / quest graphs. Is not an editor, as it can only view.	COMPLETE
Item Importer 2.0	Currently all items are importing with a very simple importer, with each entry hand picked. This is not ideal. Seems like a much better way to go about it would be to have each item be its own JSON file, and then create a generic scriptable object importer that can overwrite values.	COMPLETE
Blender Rig	Ship the blender rig to make it easy to create new armors and clothing.	PLANNED
Armor Item Importing	Importing of armor. Will require some way to create ClothingAssets as well, potentially another importer? (This would mean we need a multi pass importer system, *shiver*)	PLANNED
Simple Modding UI	Currently the main way for mods to display UI is through dialog or the Alert system. Both are quite limited. The Moddable UI System would allow for new simple UI’s to be introduced, with the ability to create more complex interfaces, such as buttons, data lists, scrollbars, etc. They could support being opened via keybind, through interacting with an object, or some other way.	PLANNED
Lookup Table Tooling	Need a way to invalidate lookup table values, whenever a mod refreshes. This can be done via a cache index. Need better tooling to find IDs of assets	COMPLETE
Warn if mods aren't loaded correctly	When loading a save, and the save has a mod enabled that is no longer enabled, it should show a warning.	PLANNED
Tool: Position Debugger	Little tool that tells you where a position is in the world. Useful to figure out where you want to spawn items.	COMPLETE
Mod Settings: JSON	Add support for mods to have a json file for settings, to allow the mod users to tweak the mod.	PLANNED
Remove enum for item slot	Currently item slots for characters is an enum. This is not mod friendly. It should be ported to a scriptable object.	PLANNED
Mod Dependencies	Ensure mods can rely on others. Mod dependencies can declare whether they must be loaded before, or any time.	PLANNED
On Quest Start / Stop Hooks	Obviously any logic in a modded quest doesn’t need to be (and really shouldn’t) be part of the graph, but instead be in your code. Add hooks to on quest start / stop.	PLANNED
Code-Based Dialog Support without Quests	Support injecting dialog into characters without involving a Quest	PLANNED
Prefab Creator	Make a way to create prefabs from within the game tooling. Could potentially support simple VFX creation? This is a rabbit hole, however.	UNDER CONSIDERATION
Asset Bundle Importer	Add official support to import asset bundles, and to easily be able to reference assets. This is particularly important for VFX + potential complex prefab support.	UNDER CONSIDERATION
Unity Tooling	Right now I've entirely focused on having tooling being within our own pipeline. We could however ship a simple asset bundle exporter, along with some helper scripts.	UNDER CONSIDERATION
Tool: Item Editor	A visual editor to edit / create items.	UNDER CONSIDERATION
Tool: Item List Editor	A visual editor to edit / create item lists.	UNDER CONSIDERATION
Tool: Full Node Editor	A true editor for graphs.	UNDER CONSIDERATION
Tool: SpellData / Spell Creation	Currently spells can be created via code. (Not documented). This tool would allow for spells to be created visually.	UNDER CONSIDERATION
Tool: NPC Editor	Currently you can edit NPC’s via code. This tool would allow you to edit/view NPC data visually.	UNDER CONSIDERATION
Patch Mods	Mods are designed to be added “on top” of ardenfall’s codebase. This allows for hot reloading, easy disable/enable, and less issues when updates occur. Patch Mods would be a separate type of mod, that would actually overwrite the actual source code of Ardenfall, similar to Harmony. (In fact, we'd use Harmony to do this). This would take more effort to get working, and could break whenever a game update happens, but would allow for "Skyrim Script Extender" sort of modding platforms that the community could build if they desired.	UNDER CONSIDERATION
Simple Dialog API	Create a way to make a dialog graph SUPER simply, without all the fancy connected stuff. Example: CreateTopic(“What’s up?”).AddSpeak(“Nothing Much!”).Run(myMethod).CloseDialog();	UNDER CONSIDERATION
Mod Settings: Main Menu UI	Make mod settings modifiable in the main menu, not just through a json file.	UNDER CONSIDERATION
Custom Hair, Beard, Brow support	Make it easy to set up new hair, beard, brows in the creation menu.	UNDER CONSIDERATION
Custom Skills / Attributes / Traits Support	Make it easy to set up new skills, attributes, and traits in the creation menu.	UNDER CONSIDERATION
Custom Race Support	Make it easy to set up a new character race in the creation menu.	UNDER CONSIDERATION