Update #16
Ho there, adventurers,
We're happy to announce that flail items, user-friendly modding, and Steam Workshop support have finally arrived! Regarding the shipping of physical rewards and the re-opening of the Spirit NPC creator website, we still need some more time - thank you for your patience.
The most important features of modding support are as follows:
- Mod Manager with Steam Workshop support: Easily manage your mods with our new Mod Manager, which includes seamless Steam Workshop support for hassle-free downloads and updates.
- Modding Toolkit: Access an amazing mod toolkit featuring a generic form editor, asset browser, creature editor, item editor, and spell editor to bring your creative ideas to life.
- Asset Browser: Use your own images and sounds in your mods with our intuitive asset browser, allowing for a personalized touch to your creations.
- In-Game Editing Mode: Press F9 in the game to activate Editing Mode, enabling you to easily place position markers and spawn points in game areas.
- Simple Mod Publishing: Upload and publish your mod on the Steam Workshop with just a few clicks, making it easy to share your creations with the community.
- Additional Tools in Development: Stay tuned for more exciting features, including a dialogue and quest editor, currently under development.
Dive in now and start creating your own mods to share with the community!
Modifying existing game files
For existing game data files, the Modding Toolkit for Black Geyser currently supports only file-based modding. For example, when you modify an NPC, the toolkit saves the entire NPC file into your mod, rather than just the changes made from the original version of the NPC.
Therefore, if two mods modify any stats of the same NPC, they will be incompatible. This is because the second mod will completely overwrite the NPC file used by the first mod. As a result, a warning will be displayed, and only the changes from the mod that is loaded last will be applied to that NPC.
Managing Incompatible Mods
For incompatible mods, the Mod Manager displays a warning. This doesn't mean you must uninstall one of the mods; rather, you should ensure that the two mods are not active at the same time. If you choose to keep both of them active, be sure to understand how their changes are applied based on their loading order.
The Mod Manager allows you to set the loading order for active mods, which determines the priority of their changes in the game. Additionally, organizing incompatible mods into different modsets—distinct collections of mods you can create in the Mod Manager—can be a good solution as well.
Publishing Your Mod On The Steam Workshop
The video below presents the most important steps of uploading and publishing your mod on the Steam Workshop by using the Black Geyser Mod Manager:
Ensuring The Best Experience For Mod Users
While file-based modding has its limitations, it also has the benefit of providing a predictable experience for players. In the example above, you can be confident that the modified NPC in your mod will function exactly as you have tested it in your local game—ensuring a consistent experience for everyone using your mod.
In the future, we hope to add content-based modding as well for existing game data files. This aims to extend the Modding Toolkit with an intelligent, scripting-based feature that will enable you to manipulate existing game files on a content level.
Steam Cloud, Dual Wielding & More
By the way, in case you missed it, we recommend checking out our previous
update as well. This introduced Steam Cloud support, dual wielding, fast travel to questgivers and several other novelties to the game.
Full changelist
Below you can find the complete list of changes and fixes of the current update:
- Added Flails as a new weapon type
- Introduced Steam Workshop support and Mod Manager
- Introduced Black Geyser Modding Toolkit
- Command Company now correctly applies the Havoc bonus
- Fixed an issue in Deron-Guld Mine which caused keybinds to stop working
- Duchess Kjarvalr no longer offers investigation options after the trial started
- The dialogue with Tattered Woman no longer triggers for invisible characters
We are truly grateful to everyone who has joined us on this journey and continues to support Black Geyser.
The Black Geyser Team
