Modsystem New Year Wishlist!

[Puman]

While I generally think the mod system in this game is great, flexible and powerful; I still hit my head against more or less visible boundaries more often than not. I'm going to use this post to document my (and possibly others) ideas of how the mod system could allow us to make even cooler mods.

Features in my very own order of priority:

1. setMaterial - would enable all kinds of funky stuff
2. room interaction - like finding location of prisoner cell or finding a deliveries room
3. new materials - this is limited to one mod now, but I'm guessing this might be hard from a graphics engine perspective
4. documentation of statusEffects on prisoners - rather tedious to research manually
5. enable new staff that can be assigned to jobs
6. JobCompleted could take an argument for worker
7. NeedUsed(user) to interact with users of need providers
8. NavigateCompleted(object) / NavigateAborted(object, reason) - to make it easier to interact with moving objects
9. destructor method - like a reverse Create to clean up things
10. defined electricity use
11. enable import of lua scripts

Bugs or thereabouts:

1. autoorder turn off - it makes logistics difficult when all jobs have their material requirements auto-fulfilled even when I don't want them to be
2. maxStackSize is not a hard limit - workers can stack items far higher than the max defined
3. Game.TimeInDay - difficult to make timed events happen regularly when you don't know how much time is in a day
4. multiple jobs on same square - now they replace each other, again making logistics difficult
5. CTD on doing item.variable when item does not exist (Object.GetProperty returns nil instead of crashing)
6. CTD on doing error() inside item that does no longer exist

Things that have been fixed recently (I do notice ):

• consume variable on needs fixed to actually consume item (will allow me to release the only mod I was never able to finish!)
• access to nested variables
• easier variable syntax
• deletion of self
• CTD when deleting object with an open debug window

[lugaru]

Yeah, for me 're-doing' goods so that they can be traded and also partially consumed (in increments or at once) would blow the game wide open for mods. Stuff like Magazines would survive lots of reads and trades, while a bottle of booze may contain enough to get a holder drunk 4 times and a syringe may only have one use of drugs.

Create a 'positive' version of suppressed which gives prisoners an 'inspired' moodlet when they accomplish reform tasks, perform certain tasks they love, reach their 'release day' or if they are heavily bribed.

Bribed? Give each prisoner a 'money' account to open up interaction with vending machines, facilitate contraband trading and allow for a Commissar where prisoners can buy luxuries. Money is accrued via visitation, prison labor and rewards (set up to incentivize behaviors such as snitching or attending reform programs). All money spent at the Commissar is added to your total, all money given to prisoners is subtracted. Ideally every dollar you give out, you eventually get back after it changes hands a bunch of times.

[seronis]

Real jails have money accounts for inmates so I completely support that idea. They never hand over the money to a prisoner though. Its just 'on the books' and the money cant be directly traded between inmates. Now i dont want arbitrary limitations like that added to the game if money itself is added because limitations should never be hard coded

[Chad]

Here are a few things I would like to see in modding, I've tried to order them a bit. If some of these things are already possible, please tell me:

Objects

1. Actual use of electricity and water with proper behavior (like blinking 'no water/electricity' icon and auto spawn of cables/pipes when build)
2. get current room of an object with coordinates of the corners (or maybe some kind of room object)
3. Change item types or stack contents (would allow to spawn a custom stack of items)
4. function Object.Order(item,quantity) (may replace AutoOrder)

Providers

1. A way too free a slot and block a slot. Some object may be only used at daytime (like a sun lounger or some other custom behaviors that would permit the use of an object) or has limited uses that cannot fully satisfy the need.
2. Specify what stacks in slots will be decreased.
3. Instead of the provider itself an item provided by the provider satisfies the need (prisoner uses the provider to get an useable item).
4. (these would allow to mimic the behavior of the serving table)

Staff/Jobs

1. Some rudimentary behavior (idling, take jobs)
2. define an idle-room and/or work-room
3. more pathfinding and/or search methods (find room, item, object, person)
4. function Object.useItem(item,time) play an animation of using item for a specific time

Bugs

1. this.Needs.need doesn't work
2. some variables are not changeable
3. some variables are not changed by the game (like electricity)
4. only one job per object possible

Graphics

1. colorize custom graphics (like clothes and faces)