Mod Merger, Manager and Updater Project Idea

[NoahsFactory]

Hey there, so, recently I've bought KCD and wanted to mod it, sadly, some mods are outdated, some others face compatibility issues, and more often than not, ripple effect bugs spring up from who knows where.

So, I came up with an idea looking at WhiteRebirth program, KCDTweak's - Royal Edition (https://www.nexusmods.com/kingdomcomedeliverance/mods/826) and joewalabel KDC Mod Manager (https://www.nexusmods.com/kingdomcomedeliverance/mods/460).

 

Making an all in one program wich would only need to know your KDC root directory to work

 

Now, since most mods edit xml files only, and since the patched table function was implemented (which i dont think will leave anytime soon after the official tools release) then its possible to just aggregate changes on one file named [table]__merged.xml whenever its necessary, for all xml´s the mod might deal with. Knowing that, then its quite easy to implement a tweaks section in which you could:

- Edit merchants gold by Traders, Fences or both. (With a small random variance, i dislike it when all merchants have exactly the same amount)

- Clothes Dirtying Distance from default value (5000), scaled by x2, x3, x5, x10

- XP gain multiplier

- Repair Cost multiplier

- Repair Kit Health

- Selling / Buying multipliers

- etc, ran out of ideas, but you should get it by now.

 

This would reduce the mod count too, since most are QOL tweaks, like the ones i just mentioned in one clean tool instead of multiple mods which may or may not be compatible.

 

Idk how to edit the non-xml files, like for animations, lua scripts, etc, so for whatever mods that use those other files, id just make a compatibility check between the mods to keep only one if they edit the same file, otherwise, just add them up together.

 

The real challenge tho would be from the Location files as far as i can see, but i guess ill deal with it when i get there.

 

Im currently on my last semester of University, so I cant give the project as much time as I want (all of it lol) and will sadly probably take me a long time, hope not long enough to be a tool only usefull for me.

 

I program in python (bc im still too noob in other languages) and can already see the potential backend of everything. Set up the root folder, import mod compressed files, unpack, trace files routes and names, get id's of changes to review compatibility, etc. stuff that will just need time to debug and test, but i dont really know how to implement interfaces with Qt5 or Turtle, if there is anyone who does, it would be great to collaborate in some form (even if just by github) to do this.

 

I might me biting more than i can chew, but I had fun comming up with it and hope to have fun too developing haha.

 

BTW: The mod updater part would be the last to develop, i think it could work by first comparing the game original xml with the new one and just making the changes go into the table patcher file, but some mods really break order of lines or some rly old stuff, so it would need to be ready to deal with those, which could take a longer time, hence why its last on my list.

 

Thanks for reading!

Edited October 23, 2020 by NoahsFactory