Modding Guide

Wildermyth is intended to be pretty moddable. Here are the guides for doing it!

For background on writing, as opposed to the mechanics of creating mods, see instead: Writer's Guide and Story Inputs and Outputs

Encounters (events)

Developer guides on steam

• How to: Add an Event to Wildermyth, Steam post with attached video, by game designer Nate Austin.
• Adding an event. Creating your own event with relationship choices and sharing it as a mod.

User written guides

• Adding a wilderness encounter. Creating a basic wilderness encounter.
• Adding an encounter with a choice. Creating a more complex encounter, which has a choice.
• Variant text. Adding variety to the comic text, varying the text by the personality types of the speaker.
• Modding repeated roles. Adding an NPC, who can re-appear with the same name and appearance in a later encounter.
• Encounter Consistency. Preventing victory comics that don't make sense for a particular battle.

More complex topics

• Modding multiple branches. Creating a complex encounter, which has several choices and "branches"
• Modding site activities. Creating an encounter which appears as a flag on the map, such as a treasure map or request for help.
• Modding quest chains. Creating a linked set of encounters, or "quest chain".
• Modding scripted missions. Creating a mission which has a specific map and script, as opposed to random monsters on a procedurally generated map.

Campaigns (Villains)

Using the "new campaign" tool

How to create a campaign

Heart of the Forest

This is a series of blog posts that walk through how to create a villain (campaign story). The story is called "Heart of the Forest" and the mod is shipped with the game so you can inspect it or use it as a baseline.

• Part 1 Creating a Mod and a Campaign
• Part 2 Custom Fights
• Part 3 Custom Monsters

Other topics

Equipment

• Adding equipment

Monsters

• Adding a monster (this is mostly duplicated by Part 3 Custom Monsters above)
• Adding a custom ability to a monster

Factions

• Replacing the monsters in a faction

Tidings

• Adding a tiding

Intermediate level FAQ

• Intermediate level modding FAQ

Mod mechanics

How mods are loaded

Each mod lives in its own folder, and mirrors the folder structure of the game itself. When the game loads, all mods are scanned in order to show available scenarios, which can come from any mod. When a particular game is started, the mod where the story is found is always used, and additional mods can be specified. Mods can override any of the main categories of data that the game uses, and can provide new images too. Not all image-modding functionality is supported currently, however.

Where to find installed mods

• Mods included with the game are stored under steam\steamapps\common\wildermyth\mods\builtin
• Mods that you create are stored under steam\steamapps\common\wildermyth\mods\user. Also, mods that you download from other sites such as nexus will instruct you to install them in this folder.
• Mods that you download from the steam workshop are harder to find. Under steam\steamapps\workshop\content, you need to know or guess the numeric steam game ID. It seems to be 763890, so go inside that folder. Then each mod is assigned a numeric steam mod ID. If you have several mods, you may be able to guess which folder goes to a particular mod by the date you installed it. If not, go into each folder and double click on the preview.jpg file to view it. This is the "splash screen" of the mod. Once you have found the steam ID of a particular mod, it may be easiest to write that down on a sticky by your monitor.

Using an existing mod as a starting point

1. Before changing and publishing a mod, discuss with the mod author. It is not fair to make a tiny change to a large mod and then re-release it as your own. Most mod authors are happy to have other authors learn from their published mods, but check before getting underway with something you plan to publish.
2. Subscribe, download and find the mod, as described above
3. Create a new, blank mod. Select "Tools" at the main game screen, then "Open Editor", then "Content and Comics Editor". At the upper left, click "Mods", click "Create New Mod" in the browser, and fill in the form. This will pop up a file browser showing the files the tool just created; note that the directory is steam\steamapps\common\wildermyth\mods\user\<your mod name>.
4. Exit the game
5. In file explorer, copy the folders from the numeric steam directory to your new mod directory.
6. Restart the game, so it loads all the files. You should see entries for your "new" mod as well as entries for the previous numeric mod.
7. Edit the mod as desired.

How to publish your mod

Once you have created a mod, publishing it is easy. There is a button right in the game itself.

1. Obviously, test your mod and make sure it is polished enough for others to use it.
2. In the mod folder, make sure there is a file preview.png (currently only png format works). This is the main image people will see for your mod. Square aspect ratio is preferred.
3. Make sure you are logged into steam and launch wildermyth from within steam.
4. In the game, choose tools, click "open editor", and click the bottom choice "Steam Workshop". This will show all of your mods on the current computer.
5. Set the tags you want your mod to have using the "edit mod tags" button shown here:

   

6. Click "share" on the mod you want to publish. This will upload the files and show the steam overlay on your mod. Now it is on steam, but it is only visible to you.
7. The mod description on steam is filled in from the description field of your mod files. But this is very short, and you will want a longer description. Write the description in the steam form.
8. Because any update you do will wipe out the description, cut the text you have written and paste it into a notepad file, or equivalent, on your computer. After any update, you will have to replace the description. (This may be be fixed in a later game release.)
9. Once you are sure the description and preview image are correct, find "Change Visibility" on the lower right, and choose "Public".

Congratulations, you are now a published mod author!

See also

• Data Format Overview (A broad overview of the files in Wildermyth and how they work together)
  • Aspects
  • Effects
  • Outcomes
  • History
  • Scenarios
  • Plots
• Comic Editor Reference
• Tag Reference
• Text Styles
• Face Tags
• Expressions
• Adding/strengthening relationships