Let's talk about mods

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30-01-17
nightshade321

Let's talk about mods

I've been wondering, is there any interest in a discord chat for Vindictus? Could discuss all kinds of topics, modding, troubleshooting, or just whatever.

Now that I have my 1.65 server working 100% it's time to start modding the game. Add all the things I wanted in retail but wasn't able to do.

Let's start with transformations:

So far I've managed to give myself both transformations with capped skills by changing the total skillpoints at Lv40 from 40 to 200, then swapping between the two in Management Studio. This works, I can shift into either form, but it's not ideal. What I wanted was to combine both into one transformation, and furthermore to combine the second transformations into the first. So you just transform once and get everything.

So far changing heroesContent.db3 has not achieved this. So I suppose it's client side. Serverside might control what skills you have, but I believe client side controls what skills you can use, and further more, the properties they have.

Now somehow achieving this "All-in-One" transformation might be cool, but it actually means very little for a localhost client if you're using a GM item to solo raid bosses. The minor stats transformations provide really mean nothing to a soloist, if you're using a custom item.

What would be VERY cool and what I actually wanted in official was weapon swapping.

Imagine if you're playing Evie with staff main, and you transform into scythe Evie, then once transform ends you return back to staff main. Now that would be pretty freakin awesome. For some reason Official never allowed us to swap styles in the middle of a mission and I always felt it was missing. With only clientside mods, I didn't think it would be possible, but with the server controls and client mods, now it actually might be feasible.

A transformation mod like that would be a major task, would definitely require someone with more coding experience than myself to even know if it's possible.

Let's throw a linebreak here since this is going to be a large topic.
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Transformation reset

Has anyone found a way to change the hourly reset to a shorter interval? I'm not talking about a vocation.dbo trigger. I'm talking about changing reset from every hour to every 30, 20, 10, 5, 1minutes.

For that matter. . .

Skill cooldowns? This is probably client side, if I remember the fun in early official. Used to work real simple with GSL before that was changed to prevent it.

We need a tutorial on how to do this for localhost solo players. 20 minutes between ultimates is simply way too long. A complete tutorial or release with all skills for all classes (for 1.65 of course, and possibly 1.69) set to zero cooldown.

A tutorial on cooldowns would probably be best because it would probably open up. . .

Modifying buffs?

Not sure how but I'd like to change the effects buffs give, one example is adding extra movespeed to a hotspring powder. Would be awesome to have 10% movespeed in town and in dungeons on top of other misc effects. So you don't always have to spam dash to rush through dungeons.

Since I mentioned town, there is one thing I haven't figured out yet:

How to set the town to Halloween theme? There are a couple topics already asking how but the only answer is to use a clientside mod to change the town to Spring/Rainy/Fall or Winter.

No option for a nighttime halloween theme. Fall town is not halloween theme.

I feel that's enough for one post, plenty more to discuss but first lets see if we can find some answers to these questions before more are brought up.

Thanks for reading,
06-02-17
nightshade321

Re: Let's talk about mods

One week later, still haven't figured out how to set Halloween Town.

Initially tried changing FeatureMatrix in heroesContent.db3, then heroes.db3. Changing heroes.db3 actually gave me a blackscreen for town, had to force close.

Here's what's interesting, I went ahead and downloaded the official 1.75 EU client. Loaded that up on my localhost server, and it has the WinterTown effects. I unpacked all the 1.75 hfs files and took a look at heroes.db3. Was the same change I tried earlier for my 1.65 client. Just a 1 value in FeatureMatrix.

So, I tried just sticking the 1.75 heroes.db3 inside my 1.65 client and loading that up. Same black screen at town start. Note: Character creation, and tutorial worked, game did not Black Screen until Town load. I could talk to Tieve and everything.

I believe, like with the free beautyshop, I'm missing one step that either allows the event or does not. Not sure what though.

- - - - -

Besides Halloween town, I've been working on many other mods, some of which have worked amazingly.

Managed to create a perfect "All-in-One" pet that does everything. Picks up loot, Mines ore, Buffs player, Taunts, and of course attacks.

Also managed to change buffs, altered the Hotspring Bath Soap to provide a small constant regeneration and increased movespeed effect.

Not only that, but I did actually find a way to change transformation reset times. No MSSQL editing/triggers required. Can change it to anything, 45min, 30min, 5min, or simply once per dungeon, instant refresh at start of each dungeon.

- - - - -

After one week working with my localhost server I've answered most of my thread's questions except:

Halloween Town?

Skill Cooldowns?

Merging Second Transformation Skills into First?

- - - - -

I believe skill cooldowns are probably the most important right now. Having to wait 20 minutes after using my SP skill during a solo raid battle kinda sucks. If I have the SP to cast Meteor should be able to do it, maybe on a 2minute cooldown, but definitely not 20.

Halloween town is actually probably more important than transformations. I'd just like that atmosphere for my client. Pumpkins and all.

Transformations, it's a neat idea, that could unlock further improvements such as an expanded skill tree, and new effects, but probably too much work for really too little right now.

Once these three things are done I'm probably going to start working on manually adding in content from 1.75 into the 1.65 database. Already pulled some inners and hair from 1.75 and stuck them in my 1.65 client.
09-02-17
Gigawiz

Re: Let's talk about mods

Wow.. that's alot of reading. I'm gonna try to keep my response as short as possible (lol).

Quote:

Originally Posted by nightshade321

I've been wondering, is there any interest in a discord chat for Vindictus? Could discuss all kinds of topics, modding, troubleshooting, or just whatever.

If one exists, I would definately be willing to join it. At this point I'm in the discord for my private server with a few people who are very well-versed in editing heroes/heroescontents and even the server itself), but it covers more than just vindi, so it can get off-topic quick (plus, not everyone is around when I am lmao).

Quote:

Originally Posted by nightshade321

One week later, still haven't figured out how to set Halloween Town.Initially tried changing FeatureMatrix in heroesContent.db3, then heroes.db3. Changing heroes.db3 actually gave me a blackscreen for town, had to force close.

You need to edit it both server and client side. Only some things in heroes are client specific, but most everything is enforced by the server/heroescontents.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nightshade321

Here's what's interesting, I went ahead and downloaded the official 1.75 EU client. Loaded that up on my localhost server, and it has the WinterTown effects. I unpacked all the 1.75 hfs files and took a look at heroes.db3. Was the same change I tried earlier for my 1.65 client. Just a 1 value in FeatureMatrix.

The fact that you got 1.75 to connect to the TW server release actually amazes me. Tannakra did some digging and wasn't (to my knowledge) able to find a way to get them working (due to a missing UI server and updated ProudNet sources).

Quote:

Originally Posted by nightshade321

Halloween Town?

I'd guess that its an event in featurematrix, however Schetille (one of the people in my discord server) would know more about that (and might actually be able to tell you the specifics on it)

Quote:

Originally Posted by nightshade321

Skill Cooldowns?

I'll ask Schetille about that one. In theory it would be a heroescontents/heroes edit, but im not 100% on that lol

Quote:

Originally Posted by nightshade321

Merging Second Transformation Skills into First?

The issue with that is the UI. You'd need to update client.dll in your client to reflect that change (a sudden missing page).

Quote:

Originally Posted by nightshade321

Once these three things are done I'm probably going to start working on manually adding in content from 1.75 into the 1.65 database. Already pulled some inners and hair from 1.75 and stuck them in my 1.65 client.

Why not just use 1.75? In theory, kai would be fixed, delia would work and you wouldn't need to go through the trouble of backporting stuff (and dealing with Winnsi crashes [if you're using it anyway]).
19-02-17
nightshade321

Re: Let's talk about mods

I created a discord for Vindictus Server development. Will admin it for a time until others want to step up. Join to get help, discuss mods, get to know others. Invitation link: https://discord.gg/bJ4hY5P

Regarding Halloween Town: change has nothing to do with heroes.db or heroesContent.db. It's a client side HFS file, possibly only available on clients downloaded during the Halloween period. So it's unlikely I'll be able to mod in Halloween Town until either October this year if I wait to download official, or if there is an older client available with the files still available.

Regarding Cooldowns, I've changed motion files, expression tables, action states, can't find anything to alter cooldowns. This one is slightly depressing, a 20min cooldown ultimate when you're soloing a 24man raid boss is just not fun at all. But it might not be possible.

I thought I remembered cooldowns being hacked in Official back in 2010 with a console. I'm open to that option as well if we can get a working console for v1.65. Doesn't matter how it works, if it works.

Regarding transformation skills, I managed to change the placement of the skills and combine paladin skills into dark knight, but I have not been able to control what stage they are used. The plan is to make the Second Transformation actually the first, and just skip the first transform entirely. Possibly combine the two cutscenes into one. (Just play them back to back, maybe sped up 20%.)

Answering Gigawiz: Just because 1.75 connects to localhost does not make it bugfree. v1.65 is the only stable version. Better to stay on stable and enhance it than to play unstable and encounter bugs that might not be possible to fix.

The problem with working on a server like this is you could spend months trying to fix something that just isn't fixable. Or mod something that just isn't moddable. IMHO sticking to stable release and making changes to see what works and what doesn't is the best approach, you control the variable results.

It might be possible to use backwards compatibility to simply bring all or most of the 1.75 content back to 1.65 anyways. Perhaps with alot of effort one piece at a time, but each piece would be very stable.