CK3 Dev Diary #37 - Making Mods

[KKrive500]

I started and stopped so many mods for CK2 because there were just certain constraints and knowledge gaps that made it impossible for me to actually finish my own mod. This seems extremely good for the modding community. I hope to one day release my own mod for CK3.

 

[ShadyGuy_SuspiciousGoal]

I have no idea what most of this is, but I like it. Seems strange to me that the fix for that one issue is being pushed back to the 1.1 release if it's already done, though. Is that a "We don't have time to implement this because we're in hardcore crunch time" thing, or is it just a game dev thing?

They have a version 1.0 that have been frozen a long time ago so that they can distribute it out to make Steam and other distribution platforms happy. All changes occured after that will have to be through a patch.

 

[Fabuloscriptor]

k_england_welsh:0 "Lloegyr"

Or

k_england = {
...
welsh="Lloegyr"
...
d_essex ={ ... }
...
}

This one seems to have got lost and I'm curious as to the answer. Are cultural landed title name changes handled like CK2, like EU4 or in some other way?

To extend that question, how about titles themselves? e.g. CK2's "city_empire_of_basque;...;", "tribal_duke_female_bohemian;...;" system or something more like EU4's system?

 

[PrDelahaye]

The biggest part of our playerbase plays mods and never touch the basegame, thats why PDX focuses on the modding community so much. How many people play mods? Well, most achievements i have have been obtained by the 1% of the community so its a big number.

The mechanics will be shown in time, we need the modders to understand the game so they can deliver good mods at launch

Because few people play Ironman, not because many play with mods.

 

[wilcoxchar]

The biggest part of our playerbase plays mods and never touch the basegame, thats why PDX focuses on the modding community so much. How many people play mods? Well, most achievements i have have been obtained by the 1% of the community so its a big number.

The mechanics will be shown in time, we need the modders to understand the game so they can deliver good mods at launch

That is... very much not true. For any game, the subset of people who play mods is minimal compared to the total player base.

 

[DaJay42]

That is... very much not true. For any game, the subset of people who play mods is minimal compared to the total player base.

Going by Paradox's own data, mod user account for about 40%-50% of the CK2 player base. As you'd've known, had you bothered to read the last two pages of discussion.

But here, I'll link it again:

CK2 Dev Diary #49: Mods and mod telemetry

Good evening, everyone. I’m Magne “Meneth” Skjæran, one of the programmers on CK2. In the past I’ve written dev diaries about modding, optimization, and quality of life improvements, and I'm writing this somewhat belated (due to technical issues)...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

CK2 Dev Diary #58: Modding and a bit of optimization

Good afternoon, all. I’m Magne “Meneth” Skjæran, the programmer on CK2. In the past I’ve written dev diaries about modding, optimization, and quality of life improvements, as well as last week’s dev diary talking about the life of a bug, and the...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Dragatus]

Localization and gui still effects the checksum yes as both need to be checked otherwise using the new more powerful gui and localization system mods could cause cheating and out of sync issues.

I can see how that would be a concern for multiplayer, but on the other hand I am annoyed how in Stellaris for example something like a ship name list mod makes my game ineligible for gaining achievements.

Any chance the game might calculate two checksums? One for the purpose of playing multiplayer and another for the purpose of achievement eligibility that will ignore anything that doesn't actually affect game mechanics?

 

[wilcoxchar]

Going by Paradox's own data, mod user account for about 40%-50% of the CK2 player base. As you'd've known, had you bothered to read the last two pages of discussion.

But here, I'll link it again:

CK2 Dev Diary #49: Mods and mod telemetry

Good evening, everyone. I’m Magne “Meneth” Skjæran, one of the programmers on CK2. In the past I’ve written dev diaries about modding, optimization, and quality of life improvements, and I'm writing this somewhat belated (due to technical issues)...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

CK2 Dev Diary #58: Modding and a bit of optimization

Good afternoon, all. I’m Magne “Meneth” Skjæran, the programmer on CK2. In the past I’ve written dev diaries about modding, optimization, and quality of life improvements, as well as last week’s dev diary talking about the life of a bug, and the...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

So that's data for... one day... three years ago... on a game that has been out now for eight years and would not have the statistics for all the player base considering it came out at a time when it was available for purchase through platforms that wouldn't be submitting those statistics. Really there isn't any info about how the data is collected so no information on what parts of the player base is being left out of the submitted data, so the given number is not very indicative of anything tbh.

It really is great that Paradox supports the modding community to the extent that it does, but people really need to understand that, just as the number of people who are on the forum and vocal on here are a small minority of the total player base, the modders and people who use any mods that are more than a minor tweak are also a small minority of the player base. The reality is that for every game out there, most people are going to be playing vanilla and vanilla only.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

Enchanced modability is always good.

 

[Preuße]

That is... very much not true. For any game, the subset of people who play mods is minimal compared to the total player base.

I haven't played the basegame for like 6 or 7 years and I know of others who did the same thing. I've only been playing mods or rather overhaul mods all this time.

 

[wolfgag]

the map files are 8192x4096 according to this bit in the developer answers thread


▲ What is the resolution of the map files? (asking for modding purposes)
► 8192x4096

That's a curious resolution. The maps we've seen so far haven't been as wide as all that. If you fit the images we've seen into a 2:1 image you would be left with a gap on the side(s). A very curious gap indeed. Overlay a world map and squeeze it to fit CK3 proportions and who knows what you might be able to broadly infer about the future direction of game development.



EDIT: By the way, using Lake Baikal as reference I wouldn't be surprised if Japan were included in the top right corner. I'm onto you, Paradox

All I can say is Tennoheika Banzai!

EDIT2: I stitched together a *tentative* *speculative* map extension.

My method was first to create a 2:1 file in GIMP (2,000x1,000 for ease). Secondly I grabbed a map screenshot, square-cropped it to the edges of the actual map, with some give at the edges just in case, and resized it using the height (1,000) as benchmark. After that I further traced along the eastern "torn edges" of the map and cut out the table there. I then cut out a piece of East Asia from a world map I had on hand and scaled and rotated it to match the in-game coastline of Burma, paying special attention to that indentation that leads into the rest of SE Asia. I then traced Lake Baikal as it appears in-game on a separate layer and put it at the top so I could use it as a reference. Then I used the Unified Transform Tool to push and pull the corners of the overlay image so that Lake Baikal on the overlay would be aligned with the in-game map, while keeping it (somewhat) aligned with the southern coastline of Burma. Needless to say the alignments are not exact: the Burma-India coastline ended up being off, and the lake is also stretched. I also made an effort to insert Japan within the boundaries for the only reason that otherwise I always ended up with a cheeky Kyushu and cutoff Honshu at the edges, but this made no difference to the Burma-Baikal alignment. A small limitation to this method apart from the problems already mentioned is that the border of in-game Eastern Tibet intrudes into the overlay of China too much. A huge limitation to this method is, obviously, the screenshot is (seemingly) distorted to begin with, the map being narrower at the top. If the apparent perspective of the map is distorted then the proper location of Lake Baikal should be slightly further to the east, affecting the proper placement and distortion of the overlay.

NEVERTHELESS Paradox is pretty creative with coastlines and projections, so while there are obvious drawbacks to this method, it makes little difference because as we know from their treatment of the Mediterranean, for instance, they are perfectly free to twist and turn the map as they see fit, provided only it looks and feels right. Hopefully this *total speculation* is instructive on just how feasible it is, given what we know about the map resolution and how it looks in screenshots, to include East Asia on the map, even as far as Glorious Nippon.

 

[GingerContingent]

That's a curious resolution. The maps we've seen so far haven't been as wide as all that. If you fit the images we've seen into a 2:1 image you would be left with a gap on the side(s). A very curious gap indeed. Overlay a world map and squeeze it to fit CK3 proportions and who knows what you might be able to broadly infer about the future direction of game development.

Considering how much CK3 has clearly been built with a long term roadmap in mind... this makes a lot of sense.

 

[ShadyGuy_SuspiciousGoal]

So that's data for... one day... three years ago... on a game that has been out now for eight years and would not have the statistics for all the player base considering it came out at a time when it was available for purchase through platforms that wouldn't be submitting those statistics. Really there isn't any info about how the data is collected so no information on what parts of the player base is being left out of the submitted data, so the given number is not very indicative of anything tbh.

It really is great that Paradox supports the modding community to the extent that it does, but people really need to understand that, just as the number of people who are on the forum and vocal on here are a small minority of the total player base, the modders and people who use any mods that are more than a minor tweak are also a small minority of the player base. The reality is that for every game out there, most people are going to be playing vanilla and vanilla only.

Bruh you can't just refute the legitimacy of one data point and proceed to give no data to back up your claim. That's cheating man. "The reality is" just doesn't cut it here. Give us more data! And I highly doubt games like The Sim, Skyrim, GTA, City Skylines et cetera have less players playing with mods than the base game... Especially Skyrim and GTA.

 

[Riamus]

So that's data for... one day... three years ago... on a game that has been out now for eight years and would not have the statistics for all the player base considering it came out at a time when it was available for purchase through platforms that wouldn't be submitting those statistics. Really there isn't any info about how the data is collected so no information on what parts of the player base is being left out of the submitted data, so the given number is not very indicative of anything tbh.

It really is great that Paradox supports the modding community to the extent that it does, but people really need to understand that, just as the number of people who are on the forum and vocal on here are a small minority of the total player base, the modders and people who use any mods that are more than a minor tweak are also a small minority of the player base. The reality is that for every game out there, most people are going to be playing vanilla and vanilla only.

I don't claim to know what the actual stats are and it could be either way, but you are disagreeing with the data and making an assumption of your own. Just because other games may have few people using mods, there are going to be others where most people use mods. It just depends on the game and how easy it is to get good quality mods for it. The modding community for CK2 is pretty impressive and I expect CK3 modding will grow even bigger as it sounds like the game has made modding much easier (maybe not in terms of technical ease, but at least in terms of time and effort). I can easily see a bare minimum of 1/3 of players using mods and it's likely much more than that.

I personally don't use mods in games very often, mostly due to lost achievements (I'd love to use the realistic water mod for Skyrim, but it's not worth losing achievements to me just for nicer water), but I've played CK2 with a couple overhaul mods just because they are interesting in how they change the game. I still mostly play it vanilla, but the mods are definitely fun and interesting and worth playing around with. Perhaps you'll get a different number based on who uses mods exclusively and who uses them occasionally, but even if you break it down that way, I still expect over 1/3 exclusively using mods (or almost exclusively).

If you have information to show that the mod users are much lower number than is believed here, please feel free to show the data. But you can't just make assumptions and expect people to agree with you, especially when there's evidence to the contrary.

 

[DingoWalley]

My question is how easy is it to turn characters from 3D to 2D? I'm not the greatest with programs like Blender, and for my modding purposes 2D Characters would be easier for me to work with. Is it even doable to turn the regular Characters into 2D?

 

[RelVleDy]

How user-friendly is editing character models/portraits, or is that hard-coded?

 

[Riamus]

How user-friendly is editing character models/portraits, or is that hard-coded?

Depends how you want to mod them. They aren't hard-coded and can be modded. If you're just wanting to change the DNA so you can make a character look differently, that sounds like it will be pretty easy to do. If you want to make a non-human character, that will be possible, but far more challenging from my understanding.

 

[Meathim]

CK2 Dev Diary #58: Modding and a bit of optimization

Good afternoon, all. I’m Magne “Meneth” Skjæran, the programmer on CK2. In the past I’ve written dev diaries about modding, optimization, and quality of life improvements, as well as last week’s dev diary talking about the life of a bug, and the...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

CK2 Dev Diary #49: Mods and mod telemetry

Good evening, everyone. I’m Magne “Meneth” Skjæran, one of the programmers on CK2. In the past I’ve written dev diaries about modding, optimization, and quality of life improvements, and I'm writing this somewhat belated (due to technical issues)...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

So, if 48-42% of players use mods, and -+10% are Ironman players, almost 40%+- of players play vanilla.

And Sindai said that a minority uses mods, which is not correct.

At least me, if im not playing Ironman i just dont play vanilla, there is no point of playing that version of the game with so many awesome mods out there.

Personally I only mod games that I feel I have exhausted (like rimworld, and still i have only found like two or three mods that are actually good, but my standards for a good mod might not be ... normal). In CK2 that never happened. I assume CK3 will remain unmodded as well.

 

[Azarias59]

How come there isn't a "minor_titles" folder?

 

[Granty]

It's here wohoo! Reserving my seat so I can ask questions hehe. Didn't know you were a modder Matthew! You da bomb!

• How moddable is the mouse-over entries on a character? Are relationships still hard-coded? Can it be exposed as an entry like "set_relationship_with_player" so we can do our own relationship calculation if we want to (please :>)? How moddable is the text?
• Is it possible to create an entire new GUI window using the scripts? For example a new dynasty tree viewer. Okay possible with workaround.
• I assume that the character portrait is a GUI element and can be pasted anywhere just like other elements (buttons, texts)?
• is family related stuff included in the dynasty folder?
• do you have a portrait viewer or editor in game?
• can we add another base model or will it be restricted to only one?

This isn't directly linked to the content of either this dev diary or #30, but it's a question about modding, so...

Perhaps my favorite mod for Crusader Kings 2 is the Game of Thrones mod, which (among other features) has dragons. As many of you on the forum likely know, the mod tracks dragons like characters—just like Chancellor Glitterhoof, Spymaster Mittens, and Sir Bearington. All of these nonhuman characters were possible with 2D portraits because you can just draw an animal or dragon and stick that in the project folder.

However, CK3's portraits are human-shaped character models, and while there are many ways to alter proportions, facial structure, texture, etc, there's no indication that you can simply replace that model with another one (not that modeling and rigging a dragon model is a trivial task in the first place!) How do you see mods with nonhuman characters as a central feature, whether they be rulers' accessories (as with the GoT mod) or rulers in their own right (as with the Faerun mod and Pope Glitterhoof) faring in Crusader Kings 3?

Just as an added detail, Matthew is/was the lead dev for the CK2 AGoT mod, although I believe that it's currently feature complete and only bug fixes are really being worked on.

Personally speaking, I'm sure that stuff like this has occurred to him and others, and that they'll have accounted for it. Reading between the lines a bit, the fact that things are explicitly so moddable, with very little being hardcoded, would seem to imply that if needed or desired, modders could probably choose to ditch the 3D models and animations altogether.