I know it might not be the category, but I cant find another more suited to this, so here it goes:
During the first years of having this game, I was active in developing mods, and I have a nice, albeit small, public of users. They are mostly the reason I kept working in mods, and came back to make mods after I got somewhat burned out by it.
While I am always fond of the memories, and the present joys of playing this game, I wont be growing the mods in scope anymore.
The customization mod, thanks to the friends at funcom that adopted one of my trello suggestions and made it so customization mods dont need to change the game anymore, got to the stable form and wont be needing much more upgrades. I will make sure to the most of my ability, to keep it functional as it is.
The Thralls Kill mod, will still be having some tweaks to add abilities and the AI for dodging will be updated, but in a slower pace.
As a point of “honor”, I will finish the dialogue mod into a state that it is usable. But it will be derived from my work on Discord bots, which work with an LLM which I will emulate the functionality, but not in the Generative mode the Discord Bots use, instead, the Multichoice models, which will offer choices and decide the flow of dialogue from them.
Right now the works of the dialogue mod are taken from the works of the website that it is derived, like in http://esavgaming.com.br/ …
I will be working each time the web and discord work is production ready, to ensure that the NPC dialogue mod, Social Contract, gets to work similarly.
However, the Motion Pictures wont be updated to work on servers, just solo games. The Beyond Outdoors wont be expanded beyond what it is.
The UI mod and No Sci Fi map are doing what they do already, and have no scope to grow.
Permadeath mod, and the server building control mod, with renting, these are discontinued.
The mods I have up on workshop will still be maintained to be functional as much as I can, and any problems, the “bare bones” discord server is there for people to speak directly with me.
However I am moving to the projects using AI for the discord bots and websites, and those will take most of my free time, along with my “day job”, and modding will take a back seat.
I know some people are fan of the “dips” feature the devs have been perfecting since launch. To those who dont know, they showed it some streams ago, that feature in which your thralls will dip into foundations and ceilings if placed on top of some of them. Something about the “Apocalipse Factor”, I guess:
Maybe it was some sorcery:
But I had the “solid ground” feature back in a featurette mod for some small stuff. “Solid ground” is the feature that implements a partial boat mechanic to characters and prevent them from dipping into foundations, and to some extent prevents bodies and knocked down npcs from dipping into the ground:
Maybe we can have a sorcery power like that though. Might be funny.
Also the runtime animation engine so we can have those facial expressions back. The previous “selfies” were merely random occasion, but there was a time in which they would not be, so lets get it back:
My UE workstation went to have some cleaning up and fixes done. Guys at the shop gave me 72 hours to clean, tune up and fix anything needed.
Until then, the updated mods are running ok and the features that were crashing the old version arent anymore.
While I am still not with my UE workstation back (I know, but this is Uruguay, it seems I am not supposed to expect changing some parts and cleaning up takes a few hours), still working on the design for the crafting system UI that goes with the crafting stack I had developed before the “crash”.
Decided to design a inventory system to go with it so the “unreliable” inventory updates dont crap on the trade and future crafting system too.
Well, station back, after we download needlessly over 200Gb of files and install it, there is work to be done then.
They really dont need to tuck all the assets they do on default instalation of the devkit. Half of the modders dont need 2/3rds of Gbs in it. The bigger files are the ones most modders dont even have anything to do with it, and those who do could download it optionally instead of one block.
The very own devkit could be able to download it instead through a plugin.
Time to get the old stuff back working:
“In ESAViet Lands, you follow the Thralls”.
So I have worked on the update to have the dyes correctly apply to the armor pack customization.
This taskmaster now have a “Taskmastery” vibe if I say so myself.
Had to wait a auspicious point in which the wheel would censor the customization of the one in the wheel, because I forgot to actually put any armor on that one.
So finished working on the whole process of “Hiring” NPCs.
I was not sure I would do it because I thought: Hey, the game is moving away from thrall workers and going to do all workers like the barkeepers.
However, it seems there will be sometime before fixing it all up, so I decided to get it working.
Now it is to define some dynamic to process the “hiring”. Maybe some gold, or some kind of trade to unblock it.
The old campfire to stove mod also there. It is meant only to add recipes to the stove that were originally in the campfire, and presented itself needed.
Might receive some recipes if something comes up, but it is intended to be just that, as I dont want to spoil its usefulness.
And the latest updates were uploaded to the Workshop for Social Contract:
The flow with Siarra still there, but the test content shown in the videos is not. Later on I will be updating some more content. For now the Beyond Outdoors functionality is also here.
With the core game system of Smart Objects which is essentially the same thing as poseballs from the old Second Life, I am unburdened on keeping my specific code for that, and instead I can focus on automation for that system.
Still driving a fine line to decide what to do given that most of what I mean to do are things Funcom probably will do themselves.
The new roadmap consists on featuring the tavern here to function as a hup for traveling around, gathering information and getting the thralls to walk around and work like the old mod did:
That might take a little more time, as it did then. The baseline of those systems were created early in 2019 and by 2021 the mod was still building up those features.
However now I can benefit from systems the game has that it had not at that point in time.
Not at the grade of the old mod yet, but the Tavern to be Inn is expanding:
The next step is to make use of the “Smart Objects” (at least to the point is is working) to get the thralls to not only go to places, but make use of things even if it is not their “thing” to use. Like getting bearers to sort out stuff, manage inventory, etc…
That must have some tricky updates to work around the relevancy on those systems. So it might take a while.
For now just fixing the camera around. It can be set up with the table.
Further updates will let it change automatically when you leave the view and another camera is there to see you.
