Modding in Elegos — More than just an afterthought.
If creating a first-person, narrative-driven RPG wasn’t going to be hard enough as a small indie team, why not make life more difficult for ourselves and allow the game to be as moddable and open as possible!?
Luckily at Perpetual Games, we enjoy a challenge, so…
What is a mod? 🛠️
In simple terms, a mod (short for modification) is anything that changes a game from what it was originally released as. Mods can modify anything from in-game attributes and text to entire overhauls such as texture upgrades and total conversion mods (making a new game essentially).
These mods are created by a modding community that many of the team at Perpetual Games have been part of for many years, and it’s this community that brings us to the next question…
Why make it moddable at all? 🤔
Before this project had a single line of code written, we wanted it to be moddable. The benefits are obvious — it is great for building and engaging with a community which in turn can prolong the lifespan of the game. Also, why wouldn’t we want such delights as the Skyrim Shuffle in Elegos?
Games can be put on a scale between providing no mod support at all and actively encouraging mods. This doesn’t mean that mods won’t exist for games with no mod support - modders are an innovative bunch and have always worked out a way to adapt a game whether the studios like it or not.
We are very much on the “actively encouraging mods” end of the scale and are aiming to build a vibrant community by developing tools to create, modify and distribute mods for Elegos.
It’s important to us that we interact with the community as early as possible to help design and develop what tools are needed.
How moddable will it be?
As much as humanly possible! Elegos has been designed from the ground up with “modability” in mind and this means that (nearly) everything can be adjusted every time the game launches. The ease at which the game can be modded is our primary goal and this is shown with the tools that we are developing. (more on these soon!)
Modding a game shouldn’t require opening up a complicated piece of content creation software if all you want to do is tweak some stats.
We have split modding into three main difficulties, each requiring certain tools to overcome the complexity.
Low - Simple data, attributes, stats, strings and settings.
Medium - World sculpting, object placement, texture swaps, dialogue changes, quest designing, scripting.
High - Model replacement, Animations
How will this be achieved?
It’s our aim to have a full suite of tools to help modders of any ability be able to intuitively achieve all of the above and more. Right now we are hard at work developing these tools alongside the core game and we can’t wait to show you and tell you more about these tools as they progress.
In the meantime, here’s an early look at how our Modular Architecture is being created.
Stay tuned and make sure you follow us on Twitter, Instagram and IndieDB for more updates!