How far can mods go?

[Wablamo0821]

So, RCT3 mods worked by modifying assets using 3rd party (and unsupported at that) importers. Planet Coaster modding could work exactly the same way - it just relies on someone reverse engineering our resource format in the same way they did for RCT3. If anyone has any questions about the resource format they can post here and we'll do our best to answer the questions.

Of course, this isn't very helpful. As we've said before, we'll have more to say about modding "soon". Adding mod support to a game is very, very complicated. Especially so given how Planet Coaster has to be written in order to remain performant. It's also worth pointing out how much more complicated the authoring process is in Planet Coaster compared to RCT3. So, we're working on it - give us some time and we'll be able to tell you more.

Cheers

Andy

I don't think you're supposed/allowed to do that. PC's game files are 1) encrypted and 2) are Frontier's property and attempting to reverse-engineer it in any form may put you in legal trouble with them, unless you are an experienced mod developer/programmer and is hired by them to make such.

Oh, i didnt know that

I used to make "mods" for games a few years ago but it was mainly swapping a 512x512pixel .png to a different 512x512px .png file etc. So I thought I could do something similar with Planet Coaster. For example change the coaster crash fireworks and overwrite it with the regular explosion effect. I think this is a form of "modding" so i'm wondering how I would do this with Planet Coaster?

You guys should check out the dev response in this thread. Andy describes, somewhat, what is allowed via mods for PC. Andy specifically talks about reverse-engineering the files in his post.

 

[Ramm]

Mods are not at risk of legal issues. That's a myth that people like to spread around for some reason. You can modify whatever you want.

that's good news, i already thought so otherwise it would be very difficult to mod any game. As long as you dont upload/share existing game files I guess but that seems to make sense. So making a mod that overwrites the fireworks explosion and changes it to a regular explosion would be possible, but you cant upload the regular explosion since frontier made it. So you would have to find a way to share this mod without infriction whatever legal bla so thats maybe the difficult part

 

[Wablamo0821]

Can I get banned for asking for a trainer? If not, someone needs to make a trainer/scenario editor... stat!!

Otherwise, if so, disregard this message. [haha]

 

[FinalMantasyX]

Honestly a trainer is probably the easiest thing to make for any game, versus mods that change game files. A trainer looks at the game's running state, and then the person using or making it has to figure out which values that are changing represent what in the game. When they figure out what = money, they can make a "change money to x, y, z" option. When they figure out what number = number of trains on a coaster, they can make a "cahnge number of trains" option. Etc.

8 Cars Planet Coaster...

 

[Ramm]

Can I get banned for asking for a trainer? If not, someone needs to make a trainer/scenario editor... stat!!

Otherwise, if so, disregard this message. [haha]

well in singleplayer games modding/cheating should always be allowed

butt he thing is it uses Steam, so I dont know how Steam thinks about doing this in singleplayer games. Some people really care about archievements so I dont know if that also matters. However for Cities Skylines (which was also on Steam) there as an Archievement enabler mod so I dont think it's a real problem.

you could always try cheat engine, start with modifying your money in the park and see if that works or something

 

[gregorburns]

PC's game files are 1) encrypted

Well, this isn't entirely true. The assets themselves are not encrypted (those contained in the .ovl and .ovs files) however I believe the save game files (.prk) are. The .ovls are reversible, as was done in RCT3, though the format itself now appears to be completely different from what it was back then, aside from the file extension. Unless you have a good understanding of binary storage methods, however, reversing them will be no simple task.

What does Atari's fourth party dev studio with a 5 dollar budget have in terms of resources to get that into the base game that PC doesn't?

That's an easy one: Unity.

 

[AndyC1]

What does Atari's fourth party dev studio with a 5 dollar budget have in terms of resources to get that into the base game that PC doesn't?

Their choice of game engine makes this significantly easier for them - it becomes "Unity's problem" to solve a bunch of stuff which we are working hard on solving. And let's be honest here, that engine was a pretty massive compromise for a game like RCTW / PC. Sure, it makes some things including mods "easier", but at fairly massive costs in terms of performance and technique. There's a reason RCTW doesn't try and render thousands of peeps, and while not the only contributing factor Unity isn't doing them any favours.

Cheers

Andy

 

[AndyC1]

.prk files aren't encrypted - they are simply the zlib compressed result of our save / serialisation system. They contain checksums to ensure that the loaded file hasn't been corrupted, but they're standard checksums not any kind of encryption. I wouldn't attempt to modify these to be honest, although as long as you fix up the checksum then there is nothing stopping you from doing so!

Cheers

Andy

 

[gregorburns]

.prk files aren't encrypted - they are simply the zlib compressed result of our save / serialisation system. They contain checksums to ensure that the loaded file hasn't been corrupted, but they're standard checksums not any kind of encryption. I wouldn't attempt to modify these to be honest, although as long as you fix up the checksum then there is nothing stopping you from doing so!

Cheers

Andy

Ah, that's my bad then. It appeared that way from a first-glance. [cool]

 

[coolraver]

.prk files aren't encrypted - they are simply the zlib compressed result of our save / serialisation system. They contain checksums to ensure that the loaded file hasn't been corrupted, but they're standard checksums not any kind of encryption. I wouldn't attempt to modify these to be honest, although as long as you fix up the checksum then there is nothing stopping you from doing so!

Cheers

Andy

Wow, this actually sounds interesting, lol! Thanks for the information!

So if the devs are already looking at modding possibilities then I guess all we have to do is wait. It feels better to mod the game "officially" without compromising its core stability.

 

[FinalMantasyX]

Engine's a pretty good answer, I hadn't considered that. I mean, PC's engine was made in house, so on some levels it seems like this shouldn't be a problem from the outset as it is, but at the same time, Unity has it built in, so they have a leg up on PC anyway...

 

[Wablamo0821]

Honestly a trainer is probably the easiest thing to make for any game, versus mods that change game files. A trainer looks at the game's running state, and then the person using or making it has to figure out which values that are changing represent what in the game. When they figure out what = money, they can make a "change money to x, y, z" option. When they figure out what number = number of trains on a coaster, they can make a "cahnge number of trains" option. Etc.

8 Cars Planet Coaster...

Let me know when it's ready!

 

[xyphic]

Engine's a pretty good answer, I hadn't considered that. I mean, PC's engine was made in house, so on some levels it seems like this shouldn't be a problem from the outset as it is, but at the same time, Unity has it built in, so they have a leg up on PC anyway...

Engine is pretty much always the answer to this type of question. Commercial engines like Unity, Unreal, etc. are designed to make it easy for developers to get their own assets into the game, so they already come with all the tools to do so. It's a prerequisite that these tools are polished. For RCTW, the challenge for UGC was to provide an interface to allow assets to be imported into the game in real-time using the mechanisms already provided.

Frontier are using an in-house engine, and while there *is* a requirement that tools are polished to a degree (after all, they need to be used by many different disciplines within the business) I'm sure there are bits of them that aren't quite suitable for public consumption -- build scripts, lack of documentation, that sort of thing.

I'm pretty sure that mods won't have been an afterthought in this game, and that the work required is less about rewriting the engine to support custom assets, and more about providing an officially supported toolset (or at least process) to allow them to be brought into the game without having to start rewriting the asset files on the file system (which would become a problem with Steam updates, for instance).

 

[Ghosrath]

will we be able to add functionality to the game via mods as well? Will an API or SDK be made available? Making extra content sounds nice, but adding real features would make things really awesome!

 

[Yaffle]

Us mods can go pretty far. Often we think Tj goes too far mind.

 

[gregorburns]

Us mods can go pretty far. Often we think Tj goes too far mind.

I was wondering how long it would be before a comment like this appeared [haha]

 

[MrAdrianSW]

Did someone say "Unity"?
.
Rats I missed it!.
Okay, well better late than never...
"Unity!.. BWAHAHAHA!!!!!!"

Thanks for the amazing info there Andy.
I think what some people need to take away from this is... Patience....

 

[Ghosrath]

Did someone say "Unity"?
.
Rats I missed it!.
Okay, well better late than never...
"Unity!.. BWAHAHAHA!!!!!!"

Thanks for the amazing info there Andy.
I think what some people need to take away from this is... Patience....

Not much wrong with unity. Might've been the wrong choice for rctw but in the right hands it is a very powerful engine. Just look at games like Ori snd the blind forest, Cities skylines or kerbal space program.

Unity games have a bad name because the engine is very easy to use and free. This means that a lot of crap games are being made with it as well

 

[cerealfruitcakes]

Us mods can go pretty far. Often we think Tj goes too far mind.

 

[EmSay]

So, RCT3 mods worked by modifying assets using 3rd party (and unsupported at that) importers. Planet Coaster modding could work exactly the same way - it just relies on someone reverse engineering our resource format in the same way they did for RCT3. If anyone has any questions about the resource format they can post here and we'll do our best to answer the questions.

Of course, this isn't very helpful. As we've said before, we'll have more to say about modding "soon". Adding mod support to a game is very, very complicated. Especially so given how Planet Coaster has to be written in order to remain performant. It's also worth pointing out how much more complicated the authoring process is in Planet Coaster compared to RCT3. So, we're working on it - give us some time and we'll be able to tell you more.

Cheers

Andy

How I like the sound of this. [big grin]