Questions about modding the game

[KittenAqua]

I've recently begun modding Desktop Dungeons, and I have a couple hopefully quick questions. I don't know where QCF Design stands on discussing the technical details of modding here, so if this is out-of-line I apologise. The questions are probably mostly directed at the Extreme Edition dev team since I've been using an EE-installed game as my reference point when learning the codebase (and also since I'm not aware of the existence of any other DD modders).

1) The Extreme Edition mod uses custom art assets. I see the code used to do it in dnSpy, and I can view/extract/replace the assets by opening the resources.assets file with other programs, but I can't figure out how to add new assets. How is this done?

2) More generally, how do you insert the modded files into the game without using dnSpy? A full-on installer in the vein of EE is possibly beyond my abilities/ambitions, but redistributing the game files wholesale is an obvious no. This is my first time modding a game that doesn't have official modding support, so I have no clue how to handle it.

Many thanks to anyone that can point me in the right direction.

[srid]

Hi,

If this is your first post, I think it has gone through a forum admin's approval, so I guess it's okay to discuss it.

For asset edition, we use UnityAssetsExplorer and AssetsBundleExtractor.
If you're only trying to add new item or effect sprites, you can just extract some asset sheets from
ressources.assets and add your new sprites in them (some sheets still have blank spaces).
If you want to add a new sheet or new portraits, the procedure is a bit harder:

You need to add your new asset to ressources.assets then, extract the ResourceManager
asset from the mainData file and edit it to add your new asset in the list.
You also have to increase the array size at the beginning of the file.

Then we use dnSpy to update the game's code and plug in our own assembly.

I don't know how our installer works, but manual install simply replaces the original game files with their modded version.

There was another person on the Steam forum who was trying to mod the game, mostly to unlock higher Bank level
and add more locker slots.

BTW, what kind of stuff are you trying to the game?

Also, if you know how to code and if you're interested to contribute to the EE mod, you'll be more than welcome.
We're making steady but slow progress, as I am the only dev and, sadly, have very few free time.

For those lurking around, I think I'll post an update soon on the EE thread because I know it's been a long time since we didn't communicate about our progress.

[KittenAqua]

[shade_of_ox]

Hey,

Given you've already figured out how a lot of the game works, any help you can give would be much appreciated. There is a huge amount of content planned for the mod, and very few people with very little free time to work on it. And if you're planning on making your own content for the game, I'm sure we'd be interested in hearing (and probably stealing ) your ideas on those.

[Spleen]

You wouldn't happen to have made... a DD autosplitter, at any point, would ya?

[KittenAqua]

[Spleen]