Messages

*cough* Have you seen that spotlight mod someone made?
I'm sure it'll help with defense! (Also vanilla, since Realistic Darkness only changes the visual light levels, not the effective light levels.)

Depending on your experience with related skills and ability to analyse, a good starting point for me was finding an older mod to update. Don't have to publish it, it's just for experience.
You get Notepad++ and split your view with on one side the mod, and on the other the A15 vanilla XML file.
Compare the differences and either test out different things or use the forum's search function to search for specific things - in the hope the topic was raised by someone else already. In my eyes it would be worthwhile to create a new thread about a subject if that isn't covered yet, so that we build a 'library of knowledge' on the help section, so to say. Others can pitch in with their findings or use that thread as a reference. Never mind the easy, vague answers some of the older, experienced modders sometimes give, expecting newcomers to know all this stuff as if it is nothing.

EDIT: I forgot; I'm willing to share my knowledge and experience as a beginning modder. I know what it's like. /EDIT

Here's some direct feedback on your OP topics:

• Making animal armour might be a mash-up of that mod that adds hauling bags for animals and vanilla/modded armour.
  I believe Shinzy's Aparello did have shoes at some point. You could ask them if you could look at the latest version of their mod that added footwear, so you can learn from it for your own mod.
  Gloves should be similar, just use a different body part.
• Early game armor is done in Medieval Times, so you should be able to look at that mod to see how they made it.
• I'm not sure what you mean exactly with 'better efficiency'. Could you elaborate?
• Making sedatives should be relatively easy. I'm thinking a copy of medicine, but strip anything out of it that isn't the sedation?
  I'm fairly sure I've seen at least one thread on the topic before, might have been someone's mod or attempt on it.
  Not sure on bed restraints and straight jackets.
• Better medicine and surgery has been handled by mods already.
• Combat Realism is a hot topic. It changes the combat system drastically, but 'official' development had been dropped and I've got no idea if anyone has taken over the mantle for it.
  There's quite a lot of mods out there that add defensive structures already. They're fairly easy to customise or make from scratch. They're all just a derivative of the base building/wall structure.
• Shields are covered in a few mods.
• Animal traps sounds like a good idea! Changing the hunting job from carelessly firing from way too far away to just checking up on traps! This would require C# modding though, I'm sure.
  The hunting zones also require C#, and sound like a good idea as well. Maybe someone already made something?
• Changing the colour of clothes has also been achieved by at least one mod.

Yes, I know you wrote that you already knew most of those things exist in mods in one way or another. I'm not writing this as a "go install mod X and Y" but as a "perhaps go have a look at the files for mod X and Y so you can try and puzzle your way through understanding how they did it".

On a side-note; adding all of that lower tech content is awesome, by my book. I find it odd that you can go from crashlanding and having nothing, to making simplistic stuff from natural resources and the little bit of more advanced materials you can find from crashlanding/just out in the wild - to then quite rapidly having a shitton of advanced objects all over the place.
From what I remember, the modpack called Superior Crafting did a REALLY good job at spreading out all of that tech. It really gave you a sense of progression, nothing felt just like a stopgap between the next better thing. From what a mate told me, it kept being taken down because some modders were against the base ideas of a modding community, like sharing, and wanted their work to be taken out promptly.

No prob. I've also been trying the dotPeek thing within Visual Studio, but it's not working as easy as ILSpy is.

Is it the Ludeon site download/install or Steam install?

Only in some very obvious cases is 'spoon-feeding' even a thing.
Readers can't know WHY a question is asked, it might merely be for confirmation. Yelling that 'we should not spoon-feed by giving a complete answer' is short-sighted and only creates friction.

There's a whole dedicated subforum for help with modding;https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?board=14.0
Unfortunately, it seems a lot of sources (threads, wikis) are not really up-to-date, or they're not geared towards starting modders, or they're not complete enough.
I had to wrestle my way through a lot of scattered information to get started, but it is possible.
I've also tried the Slack, but mind you that it is an unofficial medium and therefore not officially supported/staff. It might or might not be a pleasant experience using it.
If I have the time, which I usually do, I'm open to answer questions and conversations through this thread, PM or other media(like Steam).

Is there a more specific question that you might have?

I don't believe so.
And the only way to simulate animation is rather comprehensive through C#, according to what I read around the forum.

Nice.
Do the wall mounted turrets have free range over all sides of the wall, or do you have to select which 'side' it's on?

[Double Sleeping Spot]

Double Sleeping Spot
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=26000.0
Adds a double sleeping spot. Your lovers can now sleep together on the floor.

Faux Rock Wall
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=25834.0
Walls that look like natural rock, but is functionally the same as the regular block wall of the same stone type.

Firefoam Mortar
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=23545
A mortar whose projectile extinguishes fire upon detonation.
Must be manned, requires specific ammo to be crafted at machining table. Research required.

Flare Mortar
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=24463.0
Manned mortar that fires a flare to light up a large area, but is inaccurate. Removes darkness penalty for aiming colonists.

Spotlights
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=24192.0
Manned and automated spotlights that light up the area around a target. Limited to combat range. Removes darkness penalty for aiming colonists.

Wow, seems like a lot of work, but, I'm happy to see you got it updated.

That it was. It made me understand C# though! I tried sooooo many different things to get it to work! XD
In the end I put in some effort to copy the vanilla Building_TurretGun code and make an edited version of it that I could use.
Wasn't easy getting some important parts that weren't being decompiled correctly, but I got it there.
Now for that pesky manned version...

[- Removed CCL dependency & features]

HUGE new A15 & v2.0 update!

Version 2.0
   - Removed CCL dependency & features
   - Completely changed the backend code to this mod (almost) from scratch
   - Spotlights now follow their target as long as it is valid
   - Added glow effect around spotlight itself once light is on
   - Removed UI icon, reverted back to vanilla style
   - Added back in sound effect for when the light goes on
   - Added new custom texture
   - Reverted cost to now include stuff cost again (also includes option to build a wooden base!)
   - Code-wise, turret no longer fires - just targets at something
   - Cleaned up the XML files

After a lot of work, I present version 2.0 of my Spotlights mod! Not just an update to A15, I've basically rewritten the entire thing.
I've added a metric shitton of C# code which is the start of my C# modding attempts! Some parts are inspired by other mods, some parts are supplied by others, some parts are my own work entirely. I consider this more to be a collaboration between some people than solely my mod!
The manual version was acting up when using the Force Target button in the UI, so I decided to release it without the manual version to show you guys the new functionality!

Please provide me some feedback! As much as I tested it, there might be situations that I simply didn't think of.

specialFiltersToAllow and specialFiltersToDisallow exist.
I've used ILSpy to search for those terms. Couldn't find disallowedSpecialFilters and didn't spot what the exact difference is.

Code Select Expand

private List<SpecialThingFilterDef> disallowedSpecialFilters = new List<SpecialThingFilterDef>();

Code Select Expand

private List<string> specialFiltersToAllow;
private List<string> specialFiltersToDisallow;

Code Select Expand

// Verse.ThingFilter
public bool IsAlwaysDisallowedDueToSpecialFilters(ThingDef def)
{
for (int i = 0; i < this.disallowedSpecialFilters.Count; i++)
{
if (this.disallowedSpecialFilters[i].Worker.AlwaysMatches(def))
{
return true;
}
}
return false;
}

Not sure if that helps at all.

I think you're trying to run A14 mods on the A15 version of the game. Can you confirm?

Your game version and the mod version needs to be the same. Both A14 or both A15.
You get that error, most likely, because your game is A15 but you tried installing an A14 mod.

It would help you if you gave us some more complete information on what you have installed, what you're trying to install and any questions/uncertainties you're having during that process.

I think you'll find XML modding isn't that hard to do - once you know what's what.
If it's basically just adding or changing content, you should be able to do that with just XML files.
If you're looking to change behaviour behind/around a specific thing, it might involve C#.

I'd suggest downloading a mod that has something you like, and fish around the XML files to get an idea how it's built up.
You can attempt to put just that ThingDef in it's own XML file (don't forget the main ThingDefs tags as well!) and see if you can spawn it in with the DevMode in-game!

You can!
A purely graphical replacement mod is one of the easiest things to do.
Inside your mod folder, make folders named [About] and [Textures]. (Without the brackets, obviously!)
Then, use the exact same folder structure as vanilla (check the [Core] folder next to your mod folder!) and stick to the same names & texture sizes. You save them as PNG.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7f9v30xwn2hfbrb/resourcesA14.zip?dl=1 <- The vanilla A14 textures. You can use them as a base.