[Modding] Code or UI?

[Weyland Yutani (DayZ) 1159]

I was talking to a coder from the mod and he was concerned if modding in SA will be done with code or will there be a UI like Ark?

I guess this is a pretty big deal or no?

[Dancing.Russian.Man 1631]

Just for clarification, "UI like for Ark" means an editor of sorts, with things like the game view and object hierarchy/properties visible.

There will be some kind of graphical interface for the modding tools, maybe separate programs for separate things (but I'm just speculating). We've seen a few peeks a while back (namely some CLE tools), but we haven't been shown much else yet.

But you will definitely have to deal with code. DayZ won't use anything like Unreal Engine's "visual scripting" stuff.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Dancing.Russian.Man

[IMT 3190]

I don´t know how the modding of ARK works or what this "UI" means but they mentioned that EnScript would be similar to one of the C variants, not sure if it's C++ or C#. So a lot of modding will be done in a text editor or an IDE. There will be tools however to help you with creating mods.

Perhaps they will provide us an IDE, something like Unity which has all these tools but the scripts still need to be written by hand.

[Arkensor 29]

Hey @Weyland Yutani (DayZ),

I am already working with the current stable/experimental live builds and even though there might be some changes to how the workflow is I can sum it up like this:

You have modding and you have mission scripting. 

Modding is straight out editing the game via patching classes. This adds or edits models, worlds, GUI's or game configs. Right now this is done as before where you have your addons as pbos, have your classes in them for items, and settings in them and those are connected to the game then. There might be some visual assistance in form of a modding tool there, which would speed up working with mods, but eventually, right now you can mod the game with any pbo manager for packing and a notepad.exe from windows. You can not compare that to things like unreal engine where you basicly do everything with a sandbox editor with buttons to click and things to connect visually in blueprints.  

Mission scripting which I spend most of the time with is all just writing plain text files. If I remember it correctly they said they will provide some form of script editor / a general editing toolset which includes this too but again this is only for having things like autocompletion, syntax check and *maybe* debugging scripts. But you wont drag and drop some boxes around, connect them and have things done like that. I would be surprised if they would go anywhere near this.

tl;dr : All of dayz is text files to edit and change, tools might make this easier. This is how it is like in 0.62 right now, and I do not think they had the time to change the system completely for 0.63

 

Regards Arkensor

[Weyland Yutani (DayZ) 1159]

23 hours ago, Dancing.Russian.Man said:

Just for clarification, "UI like for Ark" means an editor of sorts, with things like the game view and object hierarchy/properties visible.

There will be some kind of graphical interface for the modding tools, maybe separate programs for separate things (but I'm just speculating). We've seen a few peeks a while back (namely some CLE tools), but we haven't been shown much else yet.

But you will definitely have to deal with code. DayZ won't use anything like Unreal Engine's "visual scripting" stuff.

Thanks for the response!

Yes, UI as a User Interface or Editor for modding. To elaborate, I think he was saying as well that the UI in ARK can be problematic and not as easy as code and it's a case of redoing things a bunch of times to get the desired result whereas if it was code he could get it done right much easier/faster/etc. I can ask him for more clarification.

I think a combination of the two would be great to be honest. I remember modding my DayZ Mod server and for someone with zero coding experience I encountered several hurdles. I was able to overcome those hurdles, but I really put my nose to the grindstone and it felt like I was taking a University level class. I had to read 65 reply pages of SARGE AI on opendayz.net, take notes, and ask a bunch of questions to the developer (who was super cool) to get it running the way I wanted it to. I think most people would have turned back after a while. I do remember the CLE tool and liked it. But it does look limited to my brain which is someone ignorant to all area's of coding (meaning I don't have all the facts).

I've been saying for years that if BI can figure out a way to put modding into the hands of people with zero modding knowledge, they would dominate the landscape. But I couldn't get my head around how they could do that with lets say turning on street lights in towns. Could that really be done with a UI?

Also, is there any word on a 3D editor like there was in the mod? We really really need that. I spent an entire Summer of 2013 in the 3D editor.

[Baty Alquawen 3688]

Modding is still a future thing, I will let you know when I will know because I still don't know. :)