Very curious about modding NS2

Bladerox4Bladerox4 Join Date: 2013-07-03 Member: 185887Members
edited October 2017 in Modding
<b>I am looking for other modders to give real advice and answers</b>

So I am an enviromental artist looking to do some cool stuff with NS2 as I absolutely love this game. I just have a bunch of questions...

1. Does NS2 Ranked allow model minipulation such as Adding/changing the viewmodel of a weapon. If I created a custom Knife, would it be allowed to be used in normal matches or even work at all?
2. Is it possible to minipulate pre existing Decals?
3. Is NS2 running the Spark engine after the 64bit update?
4. What is the physics engine used ingame if any?
5. Is anyone looking to make mods for this game anymore? I see a ton of random one off skins and oddly made maps and stuff here and there.

Best way to get in contact with me directly is at => -SolarTara's Steam-

Im also looking for someone who knows the engine well enough to create even a basic mod

Comments

  • Kouji_SanKouji_San Sr. Hινε Uρкεερεг - EUPT Deputy The Netherlands Join Date: 2003-05-13 Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
    edited October 2017
    1. AFAIK, view models are allowed to be disabled/moddedin ranked matches/scrims/clan wars. Those and the HUD files are on the white list in general. Anything that is actually in the world (world models/map models and textures) are not allowed to be changed. But for matches they are also using different maps, with less light entities for more FPS, and the maps are a bit brighter overall
    2. Not sure if they are whitelisted, but they are just *.dds files so they could be modded
    3. NS2 is running on the Spark engine, which now has 64-bit support
    4. Physics is running on third party plugins and libraries to support physics for both ATI/AMD and NVIDIA
    5. I can't really answer this question as of right now, but I've not seen much modding going on lately. Right now all I see is mostly maps, simple crosshairs and texture modding. There are still a few full blown mods with different gameplay though all of them are on the workshop. Skulks with Shotguns, Last Stand, Siege, Infested and NS2Large come to mind

    I suggest jumping into the NS2 Discord server, modding channel, to chat with some of the people and devs there. They can give you much more info, quicker and more detailed
  • BeigeAlertBeigeAlert Texas Join Date: 2013-08-08 Member: 186657Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
    Bladerox4 wrote: »
    <b>I am looking for other modders to give real advice and answers</b>

    So I am an enviromental artist looking to do some cool stuff with NS2 as I absolutely love this game. I just have a bunch of questions...

    1. Does NS2 Ranked allow model minipulation such as Adding/changing the viewmodel of a weapon. If I created a custom Knife, would it be allowed to be used in normal matches or even work at all?
    2. Is it possible to minipulate pre existing Decals?
    3. Is NS2 running the Spark engine after the 64bit update?
    4. What is the physics engine used ingame if any?
    5. Is anyone looking to make mods for this game anymore? I see a ton of random one off skins and oddly made maps and stuff here and there.

    Best way to get in contact with me directly is at => -SolarTara's Steam-

    Im also looking for someone who knows the engine well enough to create even a basic mod

    Hi Bladerox!

    1. The way mods work is you won't be able to modify _your_ view model alone, you'll have to get a server operator to add your modded view models as a server mod. But in terms of ranked vs non ranked, as long as it doesn't change gameplay, there's definitely no cause for concern. (eg knife can't suddenly one-shot onos. ;) )
    2. Not sure what you mean by pre-existing decals. You mean the shoulder patches for marine skins, or do you mean "decal" decals... like blood splatter?
    3. Yes, we didn't change engines, we just upgraded our engine to be 64-bit.
    4. We use PhysX. Apart from corpse ragdolls, there's actually not a lot of dynamic physics in ns2. Most of the "physics" used in game is just used for things like collision detection.
    5. We've still got a bunch of talented modders in our community, though I'm probably not the most "in the know" person about what they've been working on.
  • Bladerox4Bladerox4 Join Date: 2013-07-03 Member: 185887Members
    edited October 2017
    BeigeAlert wrote: »
    Bladerox4 wrote: »
    <b>I am looking for other modders to give real advice and answers</b>

    So I am an enviromental artist looking to do some cool stuff with NS2 as I absolutely love this game. I just have a bunch of questions...

    1. Does NS2 Ranked allow model minipulation such as Adding/changing the viewmodel of a weapon. If I created a custom Knife, would it be allowed to be used in normal matches or even work at all?
    2. Is it possible to minipulate pre existing Decals?
    3. Is NS2 running the Spark engine after the 64bit update?
    4. What is the physics engine used ingame if any?
    5. Is anyone looking to make mods for this game anymore? I see a ton of random one off skins and oddly made maps and stuff here and there.

    Best way to get in contact with me directly is at => -SolarTara's Steam-

    Im also looking for someone who knows the engine well enough to create even a basic mod

    Hi Bladerox!

    1. The way mods work is you won't be able to modify _your_ view model alone, you'll have to get a server operator to add your modded view models as a server mod. But in terms of ranked vs non ranked, as long as it doesn't change gameplay, there's definitely no cause for concern. (eg knife can't suddenly one-shot onos. ;) )
    2. Not sure what you mean by pre-existing decals. You mean the shoulder patches for marine skins, or do you mean "decal" decals... like blood splatter?
    3. Yes, we didn't change engines, we just upgraded our engine to be 64-bit.
    4. We use PhysX. Apart from corpse ragdolls, there's actually not a lot of dynamic physics in ns2. Most of the "physics" used in game is just used for things like collision detection.
    5. We've still got a bunch of talented modders in our community, though I'm probably not the most "in the know" person about what they've been working on.

    Hey BeigeAlert and Kouju_San! Thanks for the reply's

    so if I created a custom knife to be used in the view of the player they would not be able to use it in a server that does not have it as a server mod? Im just looking to Replace the view model of the axe not modify its properties or add a completely knew knife. I want it to be accessible to all players regardless if the server uses it or not.

    I was asking about blood splatters but that's not my main focus so you can just disregard that

    Congrats on the change to 64bit engine, im sure it was no easy task. and thanks for answering everything else

  • KeatsKeats United States Join Date: 2014-11-04 Member: 199413Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited October 2017
    This is the default consistency check. (On actual servers it uses json, but the content is the same.)
    {
        check = { 
            "game_setup.xml", "*.lua", "*.hlsl", "*.shader", "*.screenfx", "*.surface_shader", "*.fxh", "*.render_setup", "*.shader_template", 
            "*.level", "*.dds", "*.cinematic", "*.material", "*.model", "*.animation_graph", "*.polygons", "*.fev", "*.hmp" 
        },
        ignore = { 
            "ui/*.dds", "*_view*.dds", "*_view*.material", "*_view*.model", "models/marine/hands/*", "sound/*_client.fev", "shaders/DarkVision.hlsl", 
            "shaders/DarkVision.screenfx", "shaders/DarkVision.shader", "models/marine/male/flashlight.dds"
        },
        restrict = { 
            "lua/entry/*.entry" 
        } 
    }
    
    As you can see, viewmodels (*_view*.dds, etc) are ignored, i.e. not checked. So if that's all your mod touches, it would be allowed by default. However, servers are free to modify their consistency checking as they wish, so there's no guarantee that a server ignores viewmodels. I would say it's likely though.
  • HandschuhHandschuh Join Date: 2005-03-08 Member: 44338Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Community Developer
    In that case I'd love to have disabled viewmodels - if they are forced :)
  • Bladerox4Bladerox4 Join Date: 2013-07-03 Member: 185887Members
    Awesome thanks guys, ive since been getting help with all this stuff over in the discord server. Thanks
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