Adventures across the 3rd dimension

A cube with 7 sides

Sounds about right

Why do I even bother trying to understand mods?
Today I haven't done any 3D - just experimented with "simple" patch files to change parameters. "All of which are easy to modify" according to the game devs. Except that one. And that one. And you can add loads of stuff. But not that thing. Ooooor that thing.

And the things I have changed are available so late in the game I don't have the patience to play a new one all that way to see if it works, nor the patience to come up with some sort of God mod so that everything's unlocked from the start, just so I can test stuff. Yes there is a mod kit. I know that it contains 3D files and stuff but I can't seem to get much use out of it. The tutorials talk of it as if it was software when all it seems to be to me if a bunch of folders... There are example files but not examples of what I need to understand.

AND IT'S TOO WARM.
AND MOSQUITOS.

I've never really bothered with creating my own mods. There was a time when I would have loved to try that back when I attempted to make my own games, but now my patience doesn't stretch that far. I do still have the Skyrim Creation Kit installed but it remains completely unused (ditto with Trials which has an interesting level editor with an active community of fan-made tracks that I only play on). And if I did try to make and insert my own models I'm pretty sure they wouldn't fit with the quality and style of the stuff that's already there which is another mild annoyance with some mods.
Since getting a graphics card I did look into installing the Skyrim ENB with all the improved shaders and lighting but having already commited hundreds of hours to my current save I'd rather not ruin it.

Well, I miss making 3d stuff and some games just need MORE. Founder's Fortune seems to have been made with modding in mind - and my impression is that they deliberately made some things very limited. There's an awful lot of flower pots, though. I guess they felt modders needn't bother with those

Yeah I sort of miss it too but my efforts were never good enough or quick enough. With portrait painting I can get something "finished" in a couple of hours but with 3D I can waste months failing to get things right before giving up and sulking.

Did you see that recent challenge on YouTube?
I only really heard about it when it was over after I kept seeing the entries...



If I'd spotted it earlier I may have been tempted to have a go but I know the result would have been frustrating and poor.

Answer: nope. I pretty much only use youtube to listen to music....

I did manage to get that "mod testing mod" done today, so now I have all skills and all research unlocked. And it still takes forever to get all the materials needed to make the items I want to test for that other mod that's not yet working.... oh well. I managed something. And that's.... something...

I can now add that the mod I actually wanted to make is also working* and while testing it I realised I could include a much lower count of items needed to build stuff () so I didn't need to go on forever just to gather resources. Still, it feels like a fairly wimpy little mod as it's only adjusting three of the in game recipes. And still I had to include oodles of code, as apparently I can't pinpoint exactly what details I wish to change without making a mess.

I would have loved to be able to add in some new resources (the poor little colonists have fairly limited options, especially early on) and new recipes, but I think both things would be the kind of new resources that cannot be added.


*there were error messages on the load/save etc screen when I quit so I guess I might have gotten some commas wrong, but then again I had error messages sometimes, even before my modding attempts...

In today's 3D adventures...
I finally found a short mention of how to get the blender file into the scene in Unity.... Drag & Drop.
Then I figured out how to add a material and eventually that that too, was dragged and dropped onto the object.
So I tried to drag and drop a texture. But no. No textures are linked to the materials and "it's as simple as creating a folder called textures and putting the image file in there" - but no mention of how to apply it. Looking at some example objects I noticed a tiny wee square in front of the materials colour box and THAT's where the texture goes.
Unity might be "simple" but it sure as hell isn't obvious.
Still haven't quite figured it out.

Also tried smoothing surfaces in Blender (because you seem to need Unity Pro to do it over there). Blender apparently has some pre-determined smoothing setting. You can then apply a modifier to determine the amount of smoothing, which instantly makes everything look awful. So that's not quite right, either.

I then opened another file where it seems I built something back-to-front. And try as I might I cannot rotate the whole thing as one, but each piece is rotaded along it's own axes.

In short, a day full of frustrating failures. Though I guess I did at least learn to apply simple materials without texture.... (Then again, other "material spheres" have more than one colour and that's still a mystery to me....)