Re: Modding Source Materials

CaptainBinky wrote:WORLD MODDING

To edit the Project Zomboid world map, you will need the following:

• Tiled Map Editor
  
• Project Zomboid Modding Tools
  
• Blank map (with just tutorial house) - (Thanks Hachune-Miku for suggestion to make this easily possible)

The Modding Tools ZIP file contains all the world tile assets (unpacked), the tile packager (to turn the source unpacked tiles into game-ready packed tilesheets - the tool was based off SpriteSheetPacker, by Nick Gravelyn) as well as a simple tool for turning flat wall images into isometric wall tile sets. These tools requires .NET Framework 3.5 so are PC only, currently (sorry about that).

You should place the temp.tmx file in the same directory as all the unpacked textures.

How do I add a new wall / floor tile?

Until we have released the full mod support it is not possible to add new compressed tile sheets to the game. However, new source tile sheets can be added providing they then fit into the compressed tile sheets.

For optimisation purposes, a lot of the tiles are repeated on multiple compressed tile sheets so at a slight cost to speed you could probably free up quite a lot of space.

Limitations

Until scripting is moved into moddable text files, it's not possible to disable the Baldspot/Kate scripting, or to move the player's start position. It's probably safest to leave the tutorial area the same for now.

A few tile-sheets, such as blood and barricades, are in the map file (a hangover from early dev) and are referred to in code by their position, as such any new tile sheets should be placed at the end, and none should be removed from before the blood / barricade tile sheets otherwise it will break blood and barricading. This limitation will be removed in the next version.

Tiled isn't too great at erasing multiple layers easily. As such erasing large parts of the map may be somewhat cumbersome since buildings necessarily use numerous layers.

The current system used, namely Tiled, leaves a lot to be desired and has sort of evolved through development. We're hoping to develop our own tools and workflow, so in the meantime it's probably more of a fiddle on than we'd like.

Due to Tiled not handling height, higher map levels are actually offset 3x3 tiles upward to make them appear to be higher vertically. This means multi-story buildings cannot extend high enough that they would require tiles to be placed off the top left/top right of the map.

In Tiled program go to Edit then Preferences then make sure that Store As Tile Data As: CSV. This is required for it to work, but is only settable within Tiled.

CHARACTER / CLOTHING MODDING

To be implemented in a future update.

SCRIPT MODDING

To be implemented in a future update.

OBJECT MODDING

To be implemented in a future update.


MODDING LEGAL INFO

Map modding is classed as cosmetic, so edits to the demo map are allowed. Full information can be found here.