Breaking the Silence
It has been a long few months trying to get both the SDK and Co-op into an even better state than last illustrated. Since this mod is also doubling to work with making an SDK for the game, time is distributed as best as it can be between the two of them. It's also why this article is coming 2 months after the previous one, but rest assured progress is being made, and this mod ain't dead. Media way be a little difficult to illustrate since it's a lot of backend tinkering that has to happen, but once I cross a certain barrier I'll be able to post an ABUNDANCE of cool content you can do.
Custom Weapons, Enemies, and More
The main focus of the past few months has been getting the SDK to a state where I can insert new entities, weapons, and etc into the game and it working seamlessly. I'm happy to report that I'm about 70% of the way there to full success. So far the means of importing the new things into the game are completely done, with them being spawnable. HOWEVER, the game is experiencing crashes when this happens due to some misalignment with the classes in the SDK as compared to the actual binary. I am on the case, and am hoping my next blog can have something cool working in the game.
Minor Forward Fixes
A few smaller, less impressive fixes have been pushed through on the Co-op mod. For starters, triggers can now be hit by any player, meaning objectives and skill point applications ( even some cutscene ones ) are now properly fired. With them fired, I can gather the data it sends and save / transmit them to all the players on the server ( even those late joining ). Now there'll be no issue with skill point mismatches, or objectives being blank for the non-hosting player.
Another minor fix comes from ragdoll interactions. Previously you couldn't even interact with the ragdolls, unlike the singleplayer, but not anymore! The fix came mostly the same way as the prop fix, but now you can play with the corpses of your enemies with friends.
And just for entertainment sake, here's a funny clip while I was testing the dragging. It wouldn't remove the trigger so it ended up following me everywhere.
Next Steps
That laundry list of fixes that still need to be added is still in effect, but there are a few minor ones I want to tackle first. Stuttering of the weapon model, chains not being climbable by more than one person are in the top minor ones. Resetting the player PROPERLY when they die is in the major list.
On the SDK side, I am looking to finish the CBaseEntity extraction and getting all the functions / properties exposed. That should fix the entity crashes and lead to a lot of good fun.
Development Diary Posting
I posted another development diary summarizing this and venting a bit on discoveries. I'll leave that right here:
Reminder that I do actively talk with people who inquire about the mod over on the discord, so feel free to join with the link: Discord.gg ( select Dark Messiah from the #role-assignment channel )
You can ping me at any time if you want to talk, don't be shy or nervous!
pog