A few questions regarding what to expect in terms of DW2 modding capabilities

[swizzlewizzle]

Hello all. Very interested to do a total conversion for DW 2, and wanted to throw out a few questions that I hope might be answerable at this stage of development by the team.

1. What sort of rigging needs to be done to ships before being able to import them into DW2? Will we be able to set module points, turret firing arcs, etc... from within something like blender, and then import, or is all the rigging setup done via manual entry in xml/other?

2. Will we need to set up ships for import with a certain format, or can a "standard" .obj model with diffuse/self illumination/normal textures be imported?

3. Following that, are there any specific requirements for textures on custom imported ships? Will DW2 be using a PBR based system?

4. How expansive is the scripting side of DW2 intended to be at launch? Will we have access to LUA? Comparing with X4:Foundations, Stellaris, and sins of a solar empire, how close to the code might we be able to get in DW2? At this stage, are there any major restrictions we should be expecting?

5. Will we be able to modify AI code (how the universe AI boids make decisions/decide where to move/etc..)? (this is something locked down in hard code in many other otherwise freely moddable games..)

Interested to prepare some things before launch, so I hope some of these questions will be answerable now or later this year.

[Erik Rutins]

Hi Swizzlewizzle,

We're not ready to release modding guides or documentation yet, but I understand it's important to give the modding community some answers on these sooner rather than later. I'll get together with Elliot and some of our other folks and see if we can move modding up on the preview schedule. However, some of this is still work in progress and not yet final, so we may not be able to answer everything until we are pretty close to release.

A few quick general answers. Because of the sub-mesh system we use for our external ship components, there is definitely a bit of a learning curve to getting a 3D model fully ready for DW2. We have a good process for our internal artists and some tools to help with validation and integration, but before we release to the public some more polishing needs to happen. Our goal is for the initial release to allow anyone with a decent 3D modeling program and the modding documentation to get a working 3D ship or station into the game. It should not require any specific or expensive 3D software. We're also hoping to do something to make it easier for ship modders who only work in 2D to at least make texture modifications to customize some generic 3D hulls, but that remains to be seen and initially the community may have to do some of the lifting there.

Some of the component setup is done during the modeling and rigging, the rest in the ship hull data. We are using the Xenko engine and while we have modified it for our purposes, you can get an idea of how it works with 3D models by downloading a free version here http://xenko.com/

We also have as a goal to make as much of the game data (similar to what was accessible in DWU) easily accessible for modding in the initial release, including our new event scripting system, but I doubt we will have time to do more than that in this release (i.e. AI scripting that was previously brought up and such).

We intend to gradually increase moddability over the course of future releases, based on what we hear from the modding community after the initial release.

Regards,

- Erik

[Anonymous]

[Deleted by Admins]

[rjord2021]

Hi Erik

Thanks for letting us know that you are using the Xenko engine. This will give me an idea on how it will work with 3D models.

[swizzlewizzle]

Amazing news Erik and really appreciate the open friendly communication

[swizzlewizzle]

So just to follow up then, Erik, you are using PBR materials for all game objects right? I'm assuming things like the shader code won't be available for us to tweak, correct?

[elliotg]

ORIGINAL: swizzlewizzle
So just to follow up then, Erik, you are using PBR materials for all game objects right? I'm assuming things like the shader code won't be available for us to tweak, correct?

The DW2 ships and bases use the standard Xenko PBR materials. See documentation here: https://doc.xenko.com/latest/en/manual/graphics/materials/material-attributes.html

Xenko materials have quite a lot of flexibility: layering, using your own shaders or shader fragments that inherit from the base Xenko shaders, etc.

Much of the rest of the game uses custom shaders, especially the planets/moons/stars, etc. However you will have access to use these shaders to make your own custom planet types, etc.

[swizzlewizzle]

Awesome Elliot!

[BlueTemplar]

(Posting here instead since it seems more appropriate...)

ORIGINAL: larrybush

One other little thing Erik - I think your on holiday but I'll ask anyway!
Should I continue to master DW Universe modding to give me an edge when DW2 comes out - or will DW universe be totally superseded and I'm wasting my time?

I don't think that even Code Force can know that at this point...

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Otherwise, I'm sad that you decided to tie yourself to such a Microsoft-linked engine... Is DW1 already coded in C# ?

[Erik Rutins]

I actually answered that in the ohter thread.

[BlueTemplar]

Whoops, my bad...