General / Off-Topic Modding Planet Coaster

[SoapyIllusion]

While at some point we may see the developers allow us to mod the game using some form of export/import tool. Right now we don't.

I see a lot of people requesting things they aren't seeing.

Most games at least in the olden days did not offer much mod support. Most gamers were left up to their own devices to make it happen. I was hoping to start a discussion on what we would need to start the modding process ourselves. Anyone have any ideas? Or a firm grasp on whats currently stopping us?


Please keep the legality of all this out of this discussion. This is more of a "how can we" thread VS, lets actually do this....

 

[gregorburns]

Interesting question.

I have spent some time in the past year or so, on and off, studying the game files to see what I can make of them. And I can honestly say they are extremely complex beasts. The only form of "mod" I've made so far is to remove Gulpee's textures so he was naked a plain model... And I can't even remember exactly how I did it [haha]

There is nothing stopping us from modding the game, other than a lack of knowledge about exactly how those files are intended to be read by the game, and what each of the many complex components of them is for. I am currently working on developing a tool for my own use that will help me uncover some more of the secrets that I don't know about yet, but it is still very much WIP. As a basic idea of how the game files work (without saying too much here as I don't want to say anything that I'm not allowed to), the file structure is like this:

Each game asset, or group of assets has a .ovl file, which describes all of its data (this could be textures, models, animations, strings, anything)... Sometimes a .ovs file is also present, these appear to store data for high-quality textures (LODs) only. The .ovl files are partially compressed, and the .ovs files are entirely compressed with the standard "deflate" compression algorithm.

Together the .ovl and .ovs files make up groups of data, sort of akin to a zip file. But unlike a zip file, the files stored inside are stored in an extremely complex way, much of which I have not worked out details for, hence the lack of mods after a year's worth of work. [haha]

I am aware that RCT3 also used the .ovl format, however from what I can gather, after reading through source code for modding tools made for that game, there are no similarities between the formats other than the name. So Planet Coaster is an entirely new format. (It may be similar to Elite Dangerous if anyone has any experience there).

If anyone has any questions about what I have discovered about the files so far, and has a good understanding of binary formats, and programming (preferably C/C++) please feel free to message me and we can help each other out to experiment with the game files.

 

[breezerHOG1]

(It may be similar to Elite Dangerous if anyone has any experience there).

Thanks for the read, wish I could help [cool] it will be very exciting if people ever get around to modding PlanCo!! seems worth posting a message on the ED forums to find experienced modders in that game who might like to transition to PC if they can [up]

 

[Ramm]

While at some point we may see the developers allow us to mod the game using some form of export/import tool. Right now we don't.

I see a lot of people requesting things they aren't seeing.

Most games at least in the olden days did not offer much mod support. Most gamers were left up to their own devices to make it happen. I was hoping to start a discussion on what we would need to start the modding process ourselves. Anyone have any ideas? Or a firm grasp on whats currently stopping us?


Please keep the legality of all this out of this discussion. This is more of a "how can we" thread VS, lets actually do this....

I think we currently aren't able to open the .ovl game files etc to start modding. Eventhough i'm not sure how this worked in the past, for other games.

I think another reason might be that Planet Coaster isn't as popular as you would expect it to be. But this could also be because there is no mod support, so people really can't play the game how they like yet and that means less people playing so less people making mods. It's a bit of a vicious circle.

Really I do hope we will get mod support soon. As soon as the first mod is out and people can learn from that mod, many people would jump aboard.

And if this game has mods, then we would really see an explosion in players. Especially in combination with the workshop, take a look at cities skylines for example. They support mods and look how well that's doing. [big grin]

 

[gregorburns]

I think we currently aren't able to open the .ovl game files etc to start modding. Eventhough i'm not sure how this worked in the past, for other games.

Ever feel like you are invisible? [weird]

 

[Ramm]

Ever feel like you are invisible? [weird]

Sometimes why? Or do you mean because of your post? I replied to OP, didn't read the whole thread when posting that if that's what you mean.

But now since I have, i'm very interested to know what you discovered so far. Could you share what you know? Maybe an 'official modding thread' could be made by you if you actually managed to do some stuff because this is the first time i'm hearing it.

Thanks!

 

[Robert K]

Planet Coaster is the only coaster game that can't be modded, RCT2, RCT3, RCTW, Theme Park Studio, No Limits, and Parkitect all allow the importation of custom content made outside the game, PC currently does not. Except for the ability to import images and videos, and music. RCT 1 and 2 were fun, but I hated being stuck on a 2D plane with no ability to ride the rides in first person view. Parkitect you can mod the game to be more like RCT3, walk through your park and ride the rides.

 

[Ramm]

Planet Coaster is the only coaster game that can't be modded, RCT2, RCT3, RCTW, Theme Park Studio, No Limits, and Parkitect all allow the importation of custom content made outside the game, PC currently does not. Except for the ability to import images and videos, and music. RCT 1 and 2 were fun, but I hated being stuck on a 2D plane with no ability to ride the rides in first person view. Parkitect you can mod the game to be more like RCT3, walk through your park and ride the rides.

Well it took some time but apparently it's finally happening now. https://forums.planetcoaster.com/showthread.php/29039-Planet-Coaster-modding-Is-it-possible

But right now it's only simple stuff like removing track limits. Still very exciting though. Who knows what the future will bring. [big grin]

 

[SoapyIllusion]

Going to start a planet coaster modding discord server please PM if you'd like an invite. Greggor I'd really like to dig in the weeds on what you've achieved.

 

[Nemmie]

Planet Coaster is the only coaster game that can't be modded, RCT2, RCT3, RCTW, Theme Park Studio, No Limits, and Parkitect all allow the importation of custom content made outside the game, PC currently does not. Except for the ability to import images and videos, and music. RCT 1 and 2 were fun, but I hated being stuck on a 2D plane with no ability to ride the rides in first person view. Parkitect you can mod the game to be more like RCT3, walk through your park and ride the rides.

Don't forget that RCT3 sat firmly in the same boat as Planet Coaster. It was never intended to be modded or ever had mod support. It's only because Jonwill is a wizard and cracked the code and made the first importer and then Klinn made some CSO that the floodgates opened.
The difference with PC though is that Frontier have never closed the door on future modding. So an official importer may happen sometime down the line. And also, Gregor is doing some silly stuff so far. So we really don't know where this will all go. RCT3 survived for so long because of the creative community and the endless custom content keeping it fresh. I'm guessing something similar will happen for PC.

 

[Joeywp]

In an older video some of the people who actually work on the game even told about some modding tools apparently being in alpha, yet we never heard anything of that, so I assume that was cancelled or something. Probably had something to do with the DLC?

I myself also got stuck at the file format for the "ZIP" part. It might indeed be usefull to look for help in the ED community, as the fileformats share some similarities (except ED is BigEndian where PC is LittleEndian, and some smaller differences), it helped me a bit further at least. The old OVL format seems to be completely abandoned though, at least I didn't really find any similarities there.