Allow me to preface this by saying that I'm (obviously) quite new to this community and to this particular project (the modification of ToEE). I also have a slow connection. It took me three hours to DL 5.0.0, and I'm looking at almost four for Ted's voice and portrait pack. Anyway, I have several questions, which the more experienced in the group may be able to help me with or, at least, help get me started in the right general direction. First, I'll ask what may be the easiest question to answer: How limited is the Python scripting in ToEE, compared to the Ruby implementation in RPG Maker XP (Ruby Game Scripting System)? I'm using RGSS as the comparison point because that is what I have experience working with. Second question: What are the limits on the expansion of the system itself? Is there any way to, for instance, add new abilities for magic weapons, armors, or shields? (Think Arrow Catching or Bashing, for starters!) What about the creation of spells with effects that aren't already produced in the game? Epic level progression within the engine? Third: What area of the modifications should I turn my studies toward? I'd like to see myself of some use to the community, of course, but first I have to learn a whole new system. Time to decide which areas of that system to focus on, and I'm asking for your guidance on that matter. Thank you for your time.
Hey DrakoShade, Thanks for expressing your interest in modding. The Circle of Eight is always in search for new modders and we welcome new ones wholeheartedly. So, speaking of your questions: Exactly the same here, but that's life I believe. I'm on dial-up and I'm stuck on it until the prices get at least a little more reasonable where I live. The slow connection, however, does not hinder the regular tool development and update on my side, so I guess we dial-uppers have to just learn to live with it. That's probably not going to be the easiest question to answer, at least for me, because I haven't even heard about the RPG Maker XP... But anyway, as far as the Python scripting in ToEE goes, it can be pretty in-depth - at least all standard operators and functions of Python, including the ones that can deal with data on disk, are accessible. Standard modules are not accessible, however (for example, "os"), and that somewhat limits the possibilities, but not too much. As far as the game engine aspects themselves are concerned, Python scripting allows to affect and modify most of them, although it doesn't allow you to touch the hard-coded things directly (you can use the hardcoded stuff, but you can't recode it thru Python). Expansion of the system, in the way you say it, is possible in a very limited way. New abilities for magic stuff can only be added if they are not very complex ones (like, adding and removing some bonus to a stat when the item is equipped/unequipped, thru the use of the standard events like san_equip/san_unequip). More in-depth stuff requires DLL hacking (specifically, altering the temple.dll code) and that's something not many of us can do, and even less have the time to do it. Epic level progression is the hardest one in the list since it'll need you to recode a lot of stuff and add a lot of stuff to the game source, which is inaccessible to us. On a side note, I'm not sure how practical the epic level progression would be today because there are no modules for higher levels today, and AFAIK the only ones for higher levels are currently planned for the future (after KotB is done). That depends on what exactly you'd like to do. I won't be giving any direct advice here, I'm pretty much busy in the ToEE toolset development area and, therefore, do not modify the game directly myself. I merely provide the necessary tools. However, I'm sure there will be other modders who will reply shortly and who may need another modder to help them out with something. Good luck with modding! I hope to see you among the list of our modders in the future. - Agetian
Well, then... it would seem that it won't be too hard to learn the Python. From what I've seen in Shingted's tutorials, Python seems to be as much an object-oriented language as Ruby, so it's just a matter or learning a new dialect, rather than a whole new language. XD The limitations to the system itself worry me somewhat... but I can and will adapt. Thank you for the in-depth answer, Agetian, and for the warm welcome.
Python is by all means object-oriented. It's an easy, and at the same time very flexible and powerful language, I'd advise you to learn it. You can visit http://www.python.org for more info on Python, as well as some tutorials and stuff to get you started. As far as the limitations go, well - yes, there are limitations, but it's our job to push the game to its limits and make it do things the original game developers never ever thought it could do. Some of the accomplishments here at the Co8 very much confirm the fact that our modders have been successful in fixing and deeply modding the game that wasn't originally meant to be modded at all. I hope the potential limitations won't make you stop in your intentions to mod ToEE. They haven't stopped me in the first place when I was more than aware of them, and now I don't regret for a single second that I started modding and making tools. - Agetian
Well... I've had a couple of rather large downloads today: ToEEWB was small, but .NET Framework wasn't, and the community portrait/voice pack is bloody huge. Still, now that I have .NET installed, allow me to say that I'm quite impressed with ToEEWB. Good tools are the most important part of the equation. Between exploring that and learning the differences between Ruby and Python, I seem to have a lot to do in the next few weeks.
