a simple way to modifiy official mods#1030

I’d love to tweak easily the mods in captain session. Advanced armor is great but too easy and broker early game (just ingots ? really ? not even transformed ones in bolt and plates ?), T2 ammunition for sniper doesn’t require T2 production and iron, those kinda stuff.
Just be able to change via a simple interface or a txt file component, values (armor provided for exemple or health regen) and required modules to produce new stuff (like the new pistol and assault rifle from mods)

You can easily tweak those values by editing “.asset” files in the Volcanoids ModSDK Sample mods. Definitions (Items, Recipes…) and prefabs are saved as text files.

To build the mod you need Unity Editor. Building takes those text files and packs them into “AssetBundle”, which is package format readable by the game.

I was considering simpler way of modding based on text files, but decided no to go that way for couple reasons:

• extra work
• limited modding options
• slow loading

It would be possible to create and modify items, recipes, ammo and give them icons. It would be nearly impossible to create new devices, modules or character skins this way.

The other disadvantage is slow loading. Asset bundles are heavily optimized, loaded directly into memory in the format game likes. Text files would need to be parsed, objects would have to be created in the memory and registered into systems. Icons would need to be read from PNGs and decompressed into GPU friendly format. It’s not a lot of work for small mods, but as the modding community grows and players use more and more mods it can become an issue.

However, there is some basic support for “text” modding in the game. It’s called “Content patching” and it allows you to modify existing definitions. There’s sample called Content Patching in the Volcanoids ModSDK. You can create this type of mod easily with just text editor and upload it to Steam workshop directly from game. I’ve attached the sample mod.

Put those files into following folder and game should find it:
%userprofile%\AppData\LocalLow\Volcanoid\Volcanoids\LocalMods\YourModName

If you’ll look into the files, you’ll find bunch of IDs there. To find IDs of specific items / recipes, you’ll need Volcanoids ModSDK or you can write a DLL mod, which will dump all IDs into text file. Other modders done this, ask for LordGregory on our Discord (#modding channel).