Babysteps in Modding

Heyaaa Bear here!

I've been super interested in seeing how modding could look in Third Crisis for a long time now. This weekend, I finally forced myself to make time to actually do it!

Massive disclaimer:
I am not promising that there will be mod support in Third Crisis. This is just me toying around with some tech that could maybe, eventually, potentially, possibly enable it in some way.

Here's what I have right now:

Essentially, it's a way to play modded dialogue that can be loaded from anywhere on your computer.

If you are interested in modding, you can try it yourself right now using the 25$ pledge tier. The instant access version on discord has all the features used in the demo above. IF enough people are interested in modding, maybe we'll continue to look into it. However, this will take away time from content implementation, so it would be a tradeoff that we would love to hear y'alls opinion on!

Here's the info for the nerds who wanna try it:

There are the following file types:

- Manifest
---- This file holds metadata about the mod. It is the file you load when importing the mod into third crisis. It has references to all files as well as some generic information like the version, creator name, and such.
---- The Manifest also has triggers. Triggers are pretty much what they sound like. You place them in a level and when Jenna walks into them "something" happens.

- Dialogues
---- A collection of Lines, each with text, a speaker, expression and possibly choices
---- Choices can lead to Conditions or other dialogues directly.
---- Each dialogue can set a Savekey when it's played.

- Conditions
---- Essentially a fancy way of "If this, then do X".
---- Works with Savekeys. This is tech that we already use in game. With Savekeys you can store information like "DidEatIcecream". You can check if "DidEatIcecream" is true or false. Depending on wether it's true or false, you can do different things. This lets you create complex dialogue structures.

I've made a github project for this test project that you can use as a base to make your own mod: https://github.com/AnduoGames/TCModExample 

To open a mod, open the console in the 25$ version from our Discord instant access channel and type ModManager. That will bring up the mod manager letting you load mods. The command RefreshMods will reload all mods, thus getting any changes you made to the jsons into the game.

Obviously, this current implementation lacks major features like showing CG's in Dialogues and having modded dialogues start when talking to a NPC. But I'd love to hear feedback on the current iteration of this feature!

Much love for all the support over all these years and please tell me your opinion on this!

- Bear
<3