CALL to MODDERS and ARTISTS!!! - Age of Lever Mod!!!

[digitalgdi]

Link to the original topic, at Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/discussions/-1/392184522719710469/?appid=243970

Spoiler

Hello, everyone. 
IF YOU ARE A MODDER OR AN ARTIST, PLEASE KEEP READING!!!
I'm a Game Designer, but not a programmer, nor an artist... so, I DESIGNED a Mod to Invisible Inc that I called "Age of Lever" (it is a homage both to Invisible Inc and to a heist show that many of you will recognize while reading the GD doc... I won't Spoil it here. ;-] ).
I put almost two months of hard work on it, and made almost everything that is possible to design without an actual build to playtest it... so, I have a firm believe that it will be very straightforward to code it, and it will work. And be interesting to play. And fun. :-]
So... I'm LOOKING FOR PEOPLE - MODDERs (CODERs) and ARTISTs - THAT CAN MAKE IT BECOME AN ACTUAL, PLAYABLE MOD. \o/
I will put a link below, with the 1.0 version of the pdf Game Design Document.
Please, note that I put the "Game Feel" of the Mod above everything else in this product, so, keep this in mind while reading. My objective is to expand Invisible Inc in a fun and interesting way, inspired by characters of that TV show that some of us came to love.
That's it! IF YOU CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN, PLEASE, GET IN TOUCH AND LET'S DO THIS!!! \o/

 

Here is the PDF link to download the Game Design Document of the "Age of Lever" v 1.0 Mod:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7798703/Invisible%20Inc%20MOD%20-%20Frank%20Malcher%20-%20Age%20of%20Lever%20v1.0.pdf

PS: for some reason, the color scheme of my previous post went insane... sorry for that, I didn't mean to do that! :-]
PPS: since Klei's forums permit it, I'll also attach a copy of the pdf here.

Invisible Inc MOD - Frank Malcher - Age of Lever v1.0.pdf

[Cyberboy2000]

That's a lot of text to take in at once! :-/

Well, I'm a programmer, and there are some things I'm going to tell you about modding in this game.

 

First off, if you think you need any complicated ai behaviour, someone is going to raise a flag. The ai klei made is not designed to do anything like that, and doing anything about it is way too much work.

What you can do, is take something that already exists and change it. It would for example be reasonably possible to make some sort of "trusted" mechanic since the foundation already exists in the form of disguises. You can also 'kind of' make guards go where you want them to with interest points, but that can also be a hassle if you want to make it complicated, since it's hard to get any kind of feedback when doing that.

Also, don't get me started on doors. The door and lock system klei has made is overly complicated for whatever reason. It would take a long time to make it accessible enough for modding(trust me, I tried). It's not impossible, it's nowhere near as hard as ai stuffs to be fair, but don't count on it soon.

 

The rest of the mod seems well thought out though, I would be happy to help when I have updated Advanced Guard Protocol

[digitalgdi]

Hello Cyberboy2000, and other modders!
(sorry for any bad English; I'm not native. ^^).

You see, I'm not a programmer, but I do have "some" programming training. Because of that, whenever I design a game that should run in a computing platform, I really try to lessen all complexities and implementation costs, and I also try to maintain encapsulation & Class inheritance (and "Class" extensions too) as much as I can. So, as you seemed to notice, I designed the "enemy AI" algorithms based on things that I thought were directly available to Modders, such as the "!" interesting points, and custom Flag variables to track agent's "state" in a kind of crude state machine (in order to implement TRUSTED, LEGIT and HARMLESS). So, the good news is that IF the code that is available to Modder's tweaking gives us the ability to generate arbitrary points of interest, to do something like CurrentPlayerAgent.getPosition(), to show dialog boxes with agents' and enemies' profiles pictures & custom text, and to track some custom variables -- even if they are just global Booleans or Integers (or even Strings!), I think the Mod is doable, and as I said in the doc, I'll be able to design and specify the exact algorithms to achieve what we need (even if I need some help, since I'm not fluent in Klei's chosen scripting language, and most importantly, the Game's architecture). :-]

To put it simply: with some patience, I think I'll be able to understand the limits and potentials of Invisible's Engine Modding (that is, what you and other programmers already learned through personal experience that are too costly to implement, or simply impossible, and why), and thus, I'll be able to iterate and modify the design to change any affected feature(s), or to cut them completely if needed. I intend to do it as professionally as I'd do any other Game Design job, so, I'll make my best to help programmers to get in that "FEAR NOT!" stance, ASAP. ^^ Heck, I'll even write the expected behaviors' documentation using pseudo-code whenever needed! :-]

I look forward to work with you and with others that want to make this Mod real. As you noticed, I really tried to think everything through. When you finally come to be available, please, get in touch through the email I put in the PDF, so I won't miss your time window. :-]

Thank you very much!

Any other programmers or artists, you are welcome to join the boat too! \o/

[Shirsh]

The booklet is difficult to read. Because of design and watered text. Instead of messing around just write what's that heist show name.
For now I didn't see how any of this ideas can be fun to play, because it's hard to break through different sorts of "flavoured text" in search for mechanics descriptions.

[digitalgdi]

Hello Shirsh. Direct criticism is important: it makes us grow and get better at what we do, so, thank you for your comment.

Just to make sure I understood your point: you think I should write a purely Technical Document, describing exactly how the features work from a mechanical point of view, without "flavor text". Is that it?

It can be done; I just did not do it initially because i thought a more eye-pleasing and "Fluff-full" doc would be a better Pitch document to Modders... after all, remember that I wrote to Artists and players, too, and my primary goal was to communicate the Game Feel and "personality" of each new Agent and Item. Also, I wanted to put in this first pdf all the Flavor Text that would actually be seen by the players, when they play the finished Mod (couldn't put all of it, but 90% is there). ;-]

So... recapping: you think I should write a purely Technical Document, describing exactly how the features work from a mechanical point of view, without "flavor text". Is that it, or I misunderstood what you asked?

[Shirsh]

I dunno, do whatever you like, I seen this topic yesterday and was curious enough to check .pdf (with irritation because you didn't bothered to write short description for it, plus because it require to agree with some terms of Adobe to read it), and my eye was not pleased: there's no overview of mod (short overview about you and your decision of designing mod told nothing about mod), next there just a stack of character lists. I didn't see how some other full team can fit into Invisible inc team, I didn't get what heist show you was reffering (I guess because I just never heard about this one and you didn't bother yourself to mention it in .pdf. Or you do, but I didn't bothered to dig through pdf properly), left column with blue text in inconvenient to read because of font that works not good (can't say that it was convenient to read in other places much). And you like to use caps lock so much, it's hard to say when you want to introduce a new mechanic and when you use it for a dramatizing effect or something... Ok, so I understand nothing, was irritated and just consider to silently pass by.
But today I seen you added link in a couple of Steam forum threads, so I return back to pdf, tried to dig it again, was irritated again, made a post this time.
Keep in mind that I'm not interested and will pass by anyway. Because reasons, let's say I'm not became infected with your dreams.

[digitalgdi]

Got it Shirsh, thank you for your comments.
I intend to learn with my errors, so, whenever I do a new doc on something else, I'll remember them to not make the same mistakes.

Anyway, the TV Show is "Leverage". Especially Season 1 to 3. To those that do not know, I recommend it; it's very fun and well-done.
Leverage; Link 1: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1103987/
Leverage; Link 2: http://www.allmovie.com/movie/v476674

PS: I had NO IDEA the PDF would ask for anything; I made it to be completely open. Maybe that's Klei's attachment policy, maybe that's Dropbox. The pdf is 100% open for reading, no-questions-asked.

[digitalgdi]

How they "fit in" is simple: I made a Parody of how Leverage characters would be if they lived in Invisible Inc.'s world, and somehow, were invited by Central to join forces against the corporations, as a kind of "sub-team".

The Mod is all about Game Feel and exploring many gameplay possibilities that are not found in the core game, but could be, and all that being flavored to fit Leverage's agents' personalities and skills, and also to fit Invisible Inc's core gameplay, but expanding it in meaninful ways.
That's it. :-]