Q: Are there any actual modification "mods" for this game?

[BobWyglz1]

Hey all... Need help re: reading up all the game .xml and .lua at once, nothing big!

 

I really thought there'd be subforums like the mod section, so I could post this in the equivalent of "Modders Resources and Tutorials", but maybe there's just not enough of us to justify this 8+ years down the road.

 

Anyway.

 

I need to know if there's actual additional code that's been added, or if it's just tweaking existing variables and rearranging established function calls and such...

 

Let's use a real example: So I think with all the development and various heads we built for D-Walker, it's autonomy is trash. Having it be a slightly-aware turret that returns fire is lame! ol 'Sal can have a world-class A.I. and some corruptible nearby telekinetic kid wreak havoc, the FOB drones can autonomously patrol and engage... D-Walker must be fully autonomous at least 5x as badass as Quiet.

 

I want to make it a "him"... a true companion; Smart AI, far-ranging tactical awareness, targeting and lock-ons, engagement protocol (chase, guard, flee, non-lethal, lethal, or preference), other various bits of logic code (lua additional new code not just editing a value to be higher / lower.) to know when to prefer your Skulls sword to your shock cannon to dual Uzis to running them over, ala steamrolling like Quiet in relocate mode, stunning everyone she runs into.

 

It seems there's very few actual mods that extend the game; they're at best "Infinite Heaven" stuff, that tweaks small things with additional defined variables, but can only be self-referenced since we don't really have engine source; and most it's about changing variables that already exist. I suppose if that's all we can do without someone brilliant giving us a modding framework, that's all we can do then? It's a great learning resource but I want to know what's possible.

 

I've got all the archives blown out with the recursive extract tool, (handy!) and am looking at the code bits, there is a lot. but just extending the range of detection or returning fire isn't what I'm trying to do. Again, much like IH, sure, you can make things much more difficult by having them see you ~120M out and go into active searching mode, or hear your fulton opening a wormhole at ~80M, but those enemies will still perform the same behaviours.

 

I need "real" modding, and I don't know if I can pull it off just with established variable tweaking, and really? I kind of want to know before wasting dozens/hundreds of hours to figure out I can only implement 10% of what I want. Or, can I mix-and-match things from existing code / characters to emulate what I want? I'm thinking Dog is the way to go in investigating, since his lethal, nonlethal, fulton, etc modes are exclusive.

 

There doesn't seem to be a single Walker mod that does - anything different.

 

I am loathe to page people like BobD and Tex who might already know, but they could probably answer in once sentence what I'm up against. :-)

 

Thanks for reading, regardless.